Tech Credit for Jobs
I am looking for a best practice that others maybe using to assign technicians revenue credit on jobs. On jobs, we normally create the final invoice from the quote, but doing this does not bring any of the technician worked time to the Technician tab and consequently doesn't assign them any revenue for that job. Then when I run any of the technician sales summary, it deflates their gross profit dollars because they might have some inventory they used from their vehicle and their labor time for that job, but their is no revenue credit associated with it. They are assigned those costs, but they are not assigned any revenue and it affects their performance from the reporting standpoint. It would be nice to give our managers one snapshot for dispatches and jobs in one report. What do others do to address this?
Ben
Comments
Do you create invoices from the quote? If so, how do you use the dispatching & time tracking features in ESC?
If you create dispatches from the quote, add the tech's hours, then invoice from the dispatch I think the following will work:
The Sales by Technician Report (Sales --> Reports --> Sales Reports --> Sales by Technician) shows the amount of the invoice, split by % of the job completed by the Technician. For example, if you have 2 technicians on a $10,000 job and they both have the same hours at the job, $5,000 of the invoice is attributed to each tech, with the costs of each tech shown to the right.
I haven't personally used this report but it looks like it might help... or am I not reading your question correctly?
We end up with two invoices. One of the invoices has the technician labor and any materials from their vehicles. This will end up being $0 billed to the customer. The second invoice is the quoted work of what was done along with the billing to the customer. Because the technicians are not on the invoice with the revenue; therefore get no tech credited is generated because their labor is on separate invoice. The way the system reports dispatches vs jobs makes no sense in my opinion. Even a simple merge invoice would solve this.
OK, I think I understand what you're doing:
You are referring to quoted jobs, and the invoice needs to match the quote exactly - without adding the labor charge of the technician's time, materials, etc. as the quoted price should have included that. So you create a dispatch to track the technician's time & materials, but because their time & materials have been estimated into the quoted price, you invoice this dispatch at $0 to close out the dispatch. You then create a second invoice from the quote that matches the price that the customer agreed to.
Here's how we do it, not sure if it will work in your situation or not... we convert a quoted job to a dispatch, assign it to the technicians, and create the invoice from the dispatch. All materials are added as line items on the invoice below the originally quoted line items, but only the cost columns are filled out (leaving the sales price field empty), and the "Print" checkbox at the far right is unchecked so it doesn't print the material description rows on the invoice. The labor costs are calculated on Tab 2 (Technicians) and are carried over to the bottom of this screen.
See screenshot below... I haven't finished adding the actual labor costs, but as you can see I'm getting both material & labor charges without changing the quoted price that was originally agreed upon (we included on our quote that extra refrigerant would be required, but we didn't know the exact quantity so this price is listed separately).
Can you try this with a test dispatch & let me know what you find out? Hopefully this helps...
Ben,
It seems like you are fighting the system. As Lance describes above, if you turn the quote into a dispatch and track from there, everything accumulates automatically. You can create the invoice from the dispatch (or mobile if you use it), and just take a minute to check the invoice before it goes out to make sure the total is correct.
This has the added bonus of having all the parts and labor in one place, so the next time you service whatever it is you'll have a reminder that you needed and extra left-handed gradunza that you didn't get to charge for last time.
As far as extra stuff required to finish a job goes, we are a bit flexible with this. However, quite often we will add the additional parts and labor to the bottom of the invoice. If it was our issue, misquote or estimate, we'll through in a discount of 100% on those items. This lets the customer know that you held to your quote regardless of extra costs incurred, and lets them see the value of the services provided. The next time you quote that service they won't be surprised and you won't get caught short again.
If the additions are on the customer, i.e. making the tech stand around waiting to start, or having blocked access to the job site, we let them know what's happening and add it to the bottom of the invoice with a note such as "Additional charges on-site approved by xyz"
It's all very customer and situation dependent, But long term I think you'll be happier and more efficient working with the flow of the software as it's intended to be used, rather than trying to stretch it to fit.
We find that our technicians cannot relieve inventory from their vehicles on the dispatch that would be created from the quote once the customer has signed the quote. Do you have all of your quotes signed? If so, do you run into this issue?
No, we don't have them signed electronically. I can see using it if a tech creates the quote on site and knows exactly whats needed up front.
We still give the techs printed copies of dispatches ( I know, but.....), so they can write a list of additions on the dispatch, which can be added when the invoice is imported.
Part of my problem with the dispatch /. invoice cycle is the near total inability for some people to grasp the concept that they should watch the mobile import queue, uninvoiced dispatch list, etc. So we still use paper work to push the process rather thank proactively pulling the information through. Even with that I occasionally have to get involved to make sure that everything that is dispatched gets invoiced. As I'm sure you're all aware, it's tough trying to get paid for work done a few months ago.
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