2 software add-on requests
We desperately need 2 things. 1. The ability to insert a line on the equipment screen. This will allow us to enter new equipment data under a particular system. We have clients that have up to 10+ systems, air cleaners, wine coolers, ice machines, dehumidifiers, etc., (yes in 1 house, known as "cottages" in our neck of the woods) and it gets really confusing when all of the equipment cannot be paired with the location, i.e. bedroom, kitchen, pool house, etc. I have asked several times for this to be added. Please build that into the next update. 2. It would be very helpful to be able to select print or no print upon entering a history code, and not having to do so on each invoice. That would give us the ability to see any info from the history screen that we would not want the customer to see, but would be very helpful to us should we need to discuss the invoice with the customer. Please consider including this in the next update. Thank you. - Shirley
Comments
Good morning Shirley,
Hopefully this helps, here's what we're using:
1. There is an existing field for Equipment Locations (go to the Customer Info tab, the second to last item is Enter Equipment Locations). We focus on commercial HVAC, so we use "Ground Level", "Roof Top", etc. so this should work for what you're looking for. When adding/editing equipment, this field is located on the right-hand side beneath the agreement field.
If this won't work, you can add custom Equipment fields (open an existing Equipment record and at the bottom center there's a button to Define Custom Fields, a pop-up window appears where you can enter the field label & up to 20 options per field.
2. Regarding history codes, are you meaning you don't want to print the dispatch notes on the invoice? If so, go to the Company tab, System Setup, and in the Dispatch tab you can select "Carry dispatch notes to invoice" and deselect "Print dispatch notes on invoice".
If the history code is entered on the invoice later, the print box will need to be deselected manually... I don't think there's a way to set a default print option based on the billing code. We typically add notes to the dispatch before invoicing so it does this for us.
Lance,
Thanks for reaching out. I'm not sure we are on the same page with the equipment issue.
1. What I am asking for is basically the same as you would do on an invoice. Should you need to edit an invoice and add additional verbiage, you can go to the item column and directly below the text entered, simply press the "insert" key and another line will drop down. This option was available on the old DOS system. What I am looking for is exactly that. For example, we have installed 5 systems and entered all the information for those 5 systems. After the initial install, we go back and install a dehumidifier on 1 location (i.e. living room). I would like to go onto the equipment screen for the living room location and underneath the equipment for that location enter the dehumidifier info. That way we aren't jumping all over the screen (or dispatch, as this is important to the technician when on a service call) trying to find what equipment belongs to that particular location. It is all listed together. Trust me, If our clients only had 1 or 2 systems, this wouldn't be a big deal, but we have clients with 5 upwards to 12 systems. Any 1 particular location (i.e. kitchen) can have an HVAC system, electronic filters, dehumidifiers, wine coolers, etc. These pieces of equipment need to be listed together.
2. As for having a history code to default to no print, I am sometimes late getting the invoices out. I like to note on the invoice for our records when the invoice was actually mailed out. This way, should I get the blah, blah, blah from a customer, I actually know that it was my fault that the invoice wasn't sent out on time. This is trivial until we are hit back to back with hurricanes. When that happens, my getting invoices out in a timely manner is impossible. And should there be any other info that we may want to readily see but the customer wouldn't understand, is there for office info only.
The second one isn't critical but the insertion of a line on the equipment screen is very important as this information needs to also print on each dispatch ticket for the service technician.
Thanks again for your help. ~~S.
Shirley,
Thanks for clarifying, sorry I read your question incorrectly.
We've been using ESC for about 2 years now so I'm not sure what the DOS system had, but I agree that being able to have the equipment tab automatically sort by a specific column would be very helpful.
If you click on the column header it will sort it temporarily so that helps to find what we're looking for in a long list... but you will have to sort the equipment column every time you open a customer record. We have hotel customers, shopping malls, hospitals, etc. with 30+ systems of HVAC package units, chillers, IT room equipment which are located on multiple floors or different roofs, so this is a pain for us as well.
I just checked the Equipment database table and it's sorting by the Equipment Counter field (a hidden field). This explains why the newest equipment records are always added to the bottom of the customer's existing list of equipment.
I'd think that most companies would want to display their customer equipment records based on a certain fields... not by an invisible system counter field. It doesn't matter to me if the system requires a counter field, but it'd be helpful to be able to sort by something other than that.
I'd like to ask ESC to add custom sort options (maybe in the System Setup > Customer tab) to "Sort all equipment records by the following fields:" and have an option for "A-Z or Z-A" for each field so we can determine the best way to sort it by default. I'm thinking that most companies probably wouldn't need more than 5-10 custom equipment sort fields.
We'd like to be able to sort by the equipment's physical location (which floor / roof it's on), then by type (all RTU's together, etc), then by the customer's ID number (a custom field), then by manufacturer, then by model number, finally by serial number. That way the newest pieces of equipment that share the same model number at each location are listed at the bottom... wishing here! :)
Hopefully Scott can pass this on to the dev team for us!
Lance:
Agree! We do very little commercial work, however, the main one that we take care of is very similar to your description. Those units are all over the place and multiple pieces of equipment for each location. I've asked for this insert everytime I have spoken with them regarding any issue I may have. The old system (aka dinosaur) was user friendly on the equipment screen and the rest was a night mare. God forbid you are tying an invoice, the cursor move to the next line and you discover there was a typo. That meant typing the entire thing over! This is most definitely better, and we did our homework before going with DESCO again, but they still came out on top as far as we were concerned. Would have gotten off the dinosaur years earlier, however, at the time they had not incorporated the payroll, A/R and A/P into the new program. The dinosaur was set up with everything integrated. I would definitely give them 2 thumbs up and recommend them. I just wish they would hear my plea!!!!!!!!
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