Automatic Trip Charge for Certain Zones

[cecilshv]

There are certain surrounding cities/counties we service that are a little further out than our normal service area, and because of this, they incur an additional $25 Trip Charge. I already have Zones set up in our system for the different areas we service. It would be great if specific invoice items could be attached to specific zones, so that each time a call is booked for a client in one of those further out Zones, the $25 Trip Charge is automatically added to their invoice. This way, it can't accidentally be forgotten whenever someone is creating their invoice.

[Steveng]

Another option would be to create zone job types and have the invoice's default services show a zone fee from the pricebook.  We had job types in the past for z1-z3 for this purpose but ended up dropping zones all-together after researching how many we have billed and if we increased our service fee (all zones) by about $2 we would recoup the dollar amount for the difference.  This prevented call backs to customers to reset cost expectation and CSR errors caught by a tech that would then have to have the fun conversation with the customer, refunds, etc.  Less errors creates less animosity amongst departments and annoyed customers.  

Zone 1 - $89

Zone 2 - $109

Zone 3 - $129

By increasing our rate on zone 1 by $10 and making it universal for our entire service area we were able to have one service fee for our entire area of service and earn $20k more per year.  In our case we did not have very many zone 2 and zone 3 service calls.  I recommend doing the math for your company and seeing if it makes sense, it may not.  

[wch_alex]

Hi, ok I think I found what you are looking for but it might need to some setting up with your CSM as this has been updated. What I am referring to is called "Rates" which appears to have been updated to be called "Dynamic Pricing" which is now in beta. Dynamic Pricing should allow you to charge by drive time and should allow you to increase the job cost per the drive time. I know this isn't the flat rate of $25 for those far away zones but since I don't have "Rates" setup or "Dynamic Pricing" setup myself this is as far as I can get you.

Rates Academy

Dynamic Pricing Academy

Dynamic Pricing Beta Signup

[wch_alex]

Or... You could just create a new "Service" called something like "Outer Region Calls" or something fancy like that, that just has a fee of $25 added onto the original service call... that the tech can add on as "trip fee" or something.

[Sethmtraut]

But how do you know to add the charge from the call screen? Just have to know the towns i guess? Any thoughts? Thanks.