Provides notice of potential data entry errors on Service Calls
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Overview | Samples | Variables | Alert Functionality | Best Practices & Tips | Related Alerts
Overview:
Overview
95% of the new clients we take on have inaccurate data in contract profit reports, mostly due to things like a technician entering a kilometer reading instead of miles. Then you have 97,000 miles showing as a cost on a contract. This alert is meant to catch where either users ignored the popup warnings for these values you setup in Tools/Options/Service Calls/Additional Options OR you do not have any values setup for the popup warnings.
Alert fires at time of call closure (tech must actually complete the call by selecting "complete") and if still not fixed, then again at time of invoice. It's important that these are fixed before they are invoiced as you will have to void and re-bill if you wait until invoiced.
We will alert you if an invoiced call exceeds any of the numbers you input for the corresponding values above. This alert will ignore calls that have status "Scheduled" until they are closed, at which time it will then check the sanity numbers..
Run Schedule: every 15 minutes
Type of Output: Email
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Sample:
Sample
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Variables:
Variables
These first group of variables are thresholds you set. We will notify if the value in Variable is exceeded when call closed and invoiced.
VariableW: Enter RESPONSE TIME (business hours) in excess to be notified of (must be whole number, no decimals), -ONLY CM call category types considered
VariableX: Enter quantity of TRAVEL HOURS in excess of to be notified of (must be whole number, no decimals)
VariableY: Enter quantity of LABOR Hours in excess of to be notified of (must be whole number, no decimals)
VariableZ: Enter quantity of MILEAGE in excess of to be notified of (must be whole number, no decimals)
Variable1: Select YES to be notified when Arrival Time = Departure Time (If blank, then = NO)
Variable2: Enter Branch Number(s) to trigger on, separated by comma, or leave blank for ALL
Variable3: Value given in Custom Property 'ZCJTech219' setting which techs to trigger for, leave blank to trigger for ALL techs. This variable is intended to be used when you want to control which tech's are considered for this process. If this variable is left blank, then it will only fire for techs with the Custom Property or a blank value in the Custom Property.
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Alert Functionality:
Alert Functionality
1. Alert will notify if the thresholds you've set in Variables W, X, Y, Z, and/or 1 have been exceeded when the Service Call is closed, and again if still not corrected at time of service call invoice.
2. Will consider any/every tech listed on service call when closed and invoiced. If you wish to control which techs this process considers, then use Custom Property ZCJTech219 (must be this exact Custom Property). You can also use this Custom Property to designate different groups techs considered for different clones of the alert. For example, your travel time tolerance for techs in one territory may be higher than those working in another territory.
The value in Variable2 MUST match the value you list on e-Auto Employee Record Custom Property ZCJTech219. For example Terr1 listed in Varaible3 (no spaces before or after) also listed on Tech Employee Record (no spaces before or after). Only techs with Terr1 in Custom Property will be reported on for ID219.
3. Alert can be cloned by selecting + under your existing subscription. Just make sure there is differences in your variable settings. More on cloning HERE.
For this alert you could use the clone function to have different thresholds for different technicians. For example, techs with Terr1 on their Employee Record could have travel threshold of 1 hour, while those with Terr2 have travel threshold of 3 hours.
Territory1 in e-Auto and on ID219 subscription:
Territory2 in e-Auto and on ID219A subscription:
And give each subscription a Clone Description so you can differentiate when reviewing all of your subscriptions:
Columns Explained
Columns Explained
Created By:
The creator is the person who invoiced the service call. However if using eAgent to auto complete invoicing of service calls, then it will stamp the creator as the user id that is logged into eAgent.
If ID219 catches a call and it's completed but not invoiced, then the "creator" is whoever completed the call. eAutomate stores the information for all un-invoiced calls in a series of temporary tables, then whoever 'created' the record is the Creator.
The invoice step creates a new set of records from these temporary tables and then deletes the temporary records when it creates the permanent records in the new tables. More clients are having e-agent auto invoice service calls therefore we lose visibility of who actually "closed/completed" the call because the "invoiced" records are created by an eAgent user id.
Branch:
Branch shown on alert email is the branch assigned to customer of service call
Invoice Number:
Will provide the invoice number if it's been invoiced; otherwise, will state UnInvoiced, Let us know if you are getting these too late.
Category:
Category Code of the Call Type on the Service Call (i.e. CC=Courtesy Call)
Technician:
Will show tech listed on service call at time of completion and/or at time invoices
Trigger Action:
Indicates what variable setting triggered alert (i.e. Response Hours, Travel Time, Labor, Mileage) per your variable settings
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Best Practices & Tips:
Best Practices & Tips
1. eAuto 16.1.5 has a bug on response time (corrected in subsequent versions): The response times are not calculating correctly when the service call is set on hold and the on hold code has the checkbox checked for 'calculate response time using release date and time'.
2. This report helps you find data entry errors that can cause profitability to be wrong. A technician or dispatcher may fat finger an odometer reading giving you a mileage of 9,234 miles. This may not show up in your balance sheet because most people use the same account for revenue and cost so they offset, but when you run profitability it will be hugely wrong.
3. Please see THIS LINK for Best Practice on correcting Service Calls
4. This alert will find errors like this:
Response Time: Elapsed time from when call logged to when tech arrives
Actual Hours vs. Labor Hours: Actual Hours is from arrival to completion. The difference between labor hours and actual hours is labor hours is what is billed on the service call (this can be overridden by the user or by eAuto depending on how you have your bill codes set up for incremental billing) and actual hours is the actual hours from arrival to completion.
Actions:
Void the Call and change the data to the correct information then re-invoice.
Please note Response Time shown comes directly from eAutomate. So if it is off, then review the Service Call to ensure tech dispatch time is correct. If it is, then make sure your Company Hours set in eAuto are correct and/or the the tech's eAuto Employee Record reflects the Service Hours he/she works.
Reason why this would not make any difference
Time:
For time to have an impact you have to have a set burden rate. You really need to have a burden rate in every employee file so you are charging the time that technicians spend on site to the contract. Otherwise all your contracts will have Zero cost for time.
(See THIS LINK on Calculating Burden Rate.)
Where do I find out what GL’s are being affected?
To find out where the cost of labor and payroll expense offset are done. This is all under the Billing account cost. You can find this in lists and codes. If they are the same they will offset and the net GP entry is Zero. Most companies do this. This still allows for tracking of burden rate to the contract without creating additional work for the Accounting staff.
Mileage and Travel
Mileage and travel is also done in the Billing Account Code and the same rule applies if they are both offsetting each other.
The difference is that Travel and Mileage expense are set company wide in the options settings:
We suggest to use the burden rate to travel cost and then set the per mile to your mileage reimbursement or $0.50 for company vehicles.
Stop Bad Data
Stop Bad Data on Service Calls:
How to stop bad data on invoicing on $0 service calls:
Within the eAgent Task Auto Invoice Service Calls, you can set to NOT auto invoice if any such warnings exist. These must first be set in eAuto via Tools \ Options \ Service Calls \ Additional Options. We suggest setting these to match your ID219 subscription:
CLICK HERE for more details on eAgent set up
Creating Custom Property
Creating Custom Property
Step 1 Create new Attribute
Go to Lists and Codes / Attributes, create New:
Attribute name: ZCJTech219
Description: Tech attribute to trigger ID219
Data type: Text Box
Step 2 Link to Employee Configuration
Go to Lists and Codes / Configurations (custom properties), edit your existing Employee Configuration
(1) Select ZCJTech219 from Available attribute(s) drop down
(2) Leave Default value unchecked
(3) Click QuickAdd
(4) Select OK to save
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Related Alerts
Related Alerts
ID1 - Call Dispatched (not arrived) between W & X hours
ID2 - Dispatched/OnSite After Hours
ID17 - Technician On-Site too long
ID18 - Guaranteed Response Time Could be Missed
ID93 - Pending 'CM' calls that are within (W) minutes of due time with EscalationAlert within X (customer down)
ID223 - CM Category Calls for Today where arrival time was after DueTime (ignores Reschedule Calls)
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