Pricebook - Materials v. Equipment for Springs

[charringtonPSB]

Hi All-

Was reading this thread (https://community.servicetitan.com/t5/The-Up-s-The-Down-s/Pricebook-Setup-for-Garage-Door-Co/m-p/363...) and had a lingering question about adding springs as material or equipment. Can anyone share how they currently have them added to their pricebook and the pros/cons of that setup?

Thinking if equipment, we have the warranty info linked..

[Sheena_Palacios]

@charringtonPSB -- When setting up pricebook equipment, a good question to ask yourself is "do we want to track this item for a replacement opportunity?" and if the answer is "yes," then create it as an equipment and take advantage of the equipment types and conversion tags. Set up equipment types to track equipment replacement opportunities.

[AdamCronenberg]

I will also mention, I built a specific pricebook for my former employer, Garage Door Freedom, that you can use the pricebook connect catalog to import into your account and then just deactivate the items you dont want and set your pricing.  It can shave 100s of hours off of pricebook setup and get you going more quickly with a structure that will allow you to customize from there.  Just wanted to let you know there are options out there to assist and may be worth seeing a demo with them just to take a peak at the setup.  Good luck!

[AdamCronenberg · Accepted solution]

There are many ways you can set up a pricebook, but I am a fine of having most items in as Materials and not as equipment.  Equipment was meant to be big items that you want to track warranty information on, perform specific services on and also items that tend to have a serial number.  For the garage door industry, this isnt springs in my opinion.  The only items in my pricebook that are equipment are the operator heads themselves as they do have a manufacturer warranty, I would like to know the install date (as opposed to the manufacture date) and I want to pull information about when that equipment was installed for future marketing opportunities.  

As for pricebook setup in general, I am a fan of having tasks/services as everything you sell to a customer and then the linked materials/equipment being the items used to make that job happen and the costing.  This also helps with flexibility because sometimes a "material" would be sold but sometimes the Material is part of a larger job and setting up your pricebook this way gives you more flexibility instead of constantly having to toggle between chargeable and non-chargeable materials on an item.  Here is an example, I can sell you a spring replacement and in that case I would want to charge for the springs, but I can sell you a torsion conversion where the springs would be included in the torsion conversion price and not a chargeable material.  With setting up the sales items as tasks/services you have more flexibility (IMO) to handle the situations we face in the garage door industry.

Pro Tips from my experience, especially if you are thinking of using the inventory module: Setup up spring replacement and warranty options as a task and not focus on a sales price for a specific spring.  For example, 2 Year Warranty 2 Spring Setup for $XXX.  Then depending on what springs the actual door takes, the technician can add the materials they used for costing and inventory tracking as they dont always know ahead of time which springs they may use and I have seen shops price specific springs at a specific cost and then have to use something else and try and go back and charge the customer, it can get messy.  This also eliminates the need for tasks for every single possible spring combination you can sell so more easily allows you to setup up estimate and proposal templates to make sure your techs are submitting multiple options automatically (and easily) to your customers.  Techs just wont do it if it isnt as easy as possible.  Lastly, using this task is what you sell, material/equipment is what is used model, setup your motors as a task with the rail and then link the powerhead equipment and the material rail.  For example, I have a task that is 85704 with 7ft Rail and 85704 with 8ft rail.  I have the 87504 Equipment Item linked to both tasks for costing and inventory tracking and then on the 7ft Rail and 8ft Rail Material linked to their specific item.  Hope that helps and good luck!

[marybeth]

When I originally set up our price book, I did springs as equipment. No real issues with them being an equipment. I am currently revamping the entire price book in preparation for Inventory implementation.  In this newest iteration of the price book, the springs are going to be material.  That way they can be added (as an add on material)to an equipment.  i.e. "Door installation" or "Torsion spring conversion" etc.

We keep track of warranty for Springs (Clopay Gold Bar, etc) on the customers page with a tag that they have an extended spring warranty.