I wanted to share a few tips based on questions that have come up recently.
Keep track of Incomplete jobs in the past. Create a custom report on the Jobs dataset. Run the date range on Job Start Date. Run it from some date in the past through yesterday. Filter the Status column to does not contain Canceled, Completed, On Hold. This will show a list of jobs with a start date in the past that are still open. It’s a best practice to keep that list to a minimum. Cases you may still have a job open in the past is if there is an upcoming appointment within that job. It’s important to complete jobs out so they can show up on the invoice screen to be exported, show up on AR if there’s an open balance, and show up on Company and Technician performance reports and dashboards.
Deferred Revenue. Make sure the membership sale task is tied to a deferred income liability GL account. Then the recurring service should have an invoice template with a + task and a - task. The plus task should be tied to an Income GL account and the minus task should be tied to the same deferred income liability account as the sale task. If you’re on monthly billing, the billing tasks should also be tied to the deferred income liability GL account. This will allow the deferred account to increase with sales and billings and the invoices for the visits where work is completed will recognize the revenue and convert from liability to income. For reporting and dashboards, the revenue will show on the day the visit is completed; or on the day the invoice is generated that recognizes the revenue.
Recall or Warranty? Recall (also commonly referred to as callback) is a workmanship caused issue and warranty is a component failure. When a customer calls in following a recent service, most of the time it is not known at the time of the call whether the issue is a recall or a warranty. One recommendation is to assume it was our “fault” and book it as a recall. It’s also advisable to let the customer know (depending on your company policy) that if it turns out the problem is unrelated to the previous service the standard diagnostic/dispatch fee will apply. So the call gets booked as a recall from the previous job. The new job should have a Recall job type. What this does is allows you to trigger a Warranty/Recall form to be completed for that job. The form should ask if it was a workmanship issue or part failure or unrelated. You can also setup a form completed alert to send to the dispatcher or someone in the office. If workmanship issue, it’s already marked as a recall, no change needed. If part failure, the Is Recall checkbox on the job should be unchecked and the Is Warranty checkbox should be checked. And the previous job number moved into the warranty from job field. Also if it’s a warranty, you should see a material or PO on the job for the replacement part. If the warranty part is being returned to the vendor for a credit, when the warehouse sends the part back, they can add a tag to the job called “pending credit”. Accounting can monitor jobs containing this tag and remove as credits are received from vendors. This should allow for more accurate recall tracking for technicians, as well as capturing those elusive warranty credits.
I hope this is helpful.
