Contract Manager will allow the Contractor to build custom contracts for clients that will establish a pattern (frequency) of service over a specified time period. The Contractor can specify, the Client, Job Site and equipment that will be covered by the contract and in doing so, will set up Events that further specify when the Contractor will be scheduled to visit the job site and what equipment and how the mobile user will service while visiting.
Once the Contractor has set up a contract with the client and has received a signed contract agreement, the Contractor will be able to mark the contract as accepted. The contractor can then begin turning the contract events into Service Request Work Orders that can be assigned and sent to the mobile users. By creating and setting up a contract, the Contractor can assign specific tasks to the mobile user and require these tasks be completed under the rules set forth by the contract.
The mobile user will see a new set of informative screens that are directly linked to the work order and will provide new information about both the contract and the tasks that have been assigned. Because the Contractor can specify the equipment at both the contract level and the event level, the mobile device will now be able to tell the mobile user which equipment is to be serviced by the contract and what inspections or records need to be completed to fulfill the obligations agreed with the Client.
This help document will cover all the web pages for the Contract manager and give overview of the mobile screens that will be provided to the mobile user as a result of working on a contract job.
Client Contract Listing
When you click on the Contracts menu link you will be taken to the Client Contracts Listing page. This will be empty the first time you visit until you start building your first contract. In the upper left you will see the Create New Contract button. This is where you will start all new contracts. Pressing the button will launch the Contract Settings popup. You will also see a link to the Events Listing page. This is where you will be able to see a list of all events for all contracts in order by date.
Contract Setup Box
In this setting box you will notice a number of similarities with the Service Request page in the information being collected. This is because as a contract you are building a container for a set number of jobs, these jobs that are called Events in the contract will all eventually be passed to the Service Request module and have to meet the Service Request requirements.
The setup popup will require you to fill out Contract Options, Job Details, Job Info and Purchase Tax info to start a new contract. The majority of this information is required to build a contract. To start we need to know who is asking for the contract and who the web user is that is building the contract. We then need basic information about when the contract is going to effectively start, end and how often the contractor will be required to service the Job Site.
Start Date
The Start Date is based on when the first time the Contractor will be expected to begin servicing the Job Site under the new contract. The first Event that will be created will fall on the first Monday following the start date. The system will assign all events to a Monday as a way to avoid placing frequency established events on a weekend by accident. These days and dates that the events are assigned based on the frequency are not required dates, just the dates that are suggested by the system based on the start, end and frequency. Once the system creates all the events for the frequency, the web user can change the dates to be any date they desire.
End Date
The End Date will be the date in which you desire the contract to effectively end. The system will stop building frequency events once it reaches the End Date.
Frequency
The frequency is how often over a year the contractor will be visiting the Job Site. The contractor can use the Frequency to rapidly set up a number of events between the Start Date and End Date. Currently there are six frequencies offered by the system. Annually, Semi-Annually, Quarterly, Monthly, Biweekly and Weekly. Once the frequency is set and the contract saved, the system will create events using the Start Date as the first date and repeat the frequency until it reaches the End Date.
If the contractor decides that the frequency needs to be changed after Events have been created by the system, the web user can change the frequency only if there is NO equipment assigned to any events on the contract. If all equipment is unassigned, the user will be able to reopen the Contract Settings and change the frequency. When the contract settings are resaved, the system will remove all the existing events and create a new set of events based on the new frequency. It is important that the contractor set the frequency correctly before building events as once you begin to assign equipment, any change to the frequency will have to be done manually by removing or adding events one event at a time.
There will be times when you may require certain equipment to be assigned to different frequencies. When this is the case, the Contractor will choose the greater frequency and then you will be able to assign certain equipment only as needed. You will read more about this under assigning equipment to Events. As an example you may be servicing some equipment on the Job Site quarterly and other equipment Biannually. If this is the case, you will set the frequency to quarterly and then on the biannual events, assign the extra equipment.
Job Details
The job details section of the setup form will collect information that pertains to the job and QuickBooks Online. The contract will have to be assigned to a Group and Accounting Group so that the jobs that are created can be assigned appropriately. The option is available to assign a Tag to the job also.
Job Info
This is where you will select your Client, Job Site and if needed suite. If your servicing more than one suite on a Job Site, you will need to leave the Suite box empty. If you select a single suite you will be prevented from seeing any of the equipment from any other suites on the Job Site.
Purchase Tax
If the Job Site is tax exempt for all contractor purchases you will need to check this box and upload a tax exempt form. This will reflect to your web users when they attempt to purchase items from vendors under the assigned Job Site and resulting Work Order.
Manage Service Contract Page
Once you enter and save the settings for a new contract for the first time, you will be taken to the Manage Service Contract page. This is the overview of your new contract. From here you will be able to navigate to any of the details of the contract. The Contract Manager will allow the Contractor to build a contract document if needed, however Contract PDF Builder is not required. The web user can simply upload a signed contract from an outside source if needed.
Once the web user is satisfied with the settings information, Client, Job Site and number of events, the user can start filling in the Contract with Equipment and begin building events. The frequency simply creates an empty shell for each event, the web user will now have to assign equipment to each event and then tell the system what the mobile user will need to do with each piece of equipment as needed.
The user will have the option on this page to add files, notes and establish costs from the pricing page to track contract budgets. Budgets and costs will be discussed later under the Pricing page.
Assigning Equipment
Once the system is done with the initial construction of the contract, one of the first things the contractor needs to do is tell the system what equipment from the Job Site will be serviced by the contract. The web user needs to assign ALL equipment from the Job Site that will be covered at any point by the contract. The user will later restrict this list of equipment at the Event level to each event/job created for the contract. Just because equipment is assigned to the contract does NOT mean it needs to be serviced at every visit by field technicians.
By clicking on the Assign Equipment button, the web user will see a popup showing the user a list of ALL equipment that has been recorded to the Job Site.
There will be instances where the Contractor may not yet have been out to enter all of the equipment on the Job Site into the system. As a result, this may be required at the beginning of the Contract. In this case, the web user will need to take some extra steps to allow the collection of all the equipment at the Job Site.- Add an extra event to the contract by pressing the Add Event button at the bottom right of the Event table. The web user can then schedule this event to happen before the start of the contract service events. The Parent ID should be set as NONE, the event given a name such as Enter Equipment and the estimated number of hours required to complete the task. Once the event is saved, the user can continue on.
- Once the event has been created, the web user can then Accept the contract. This will allow the web user to concert the new event to a job.
- Press the Create Job button for the new event. This will send the Event to the Service Request system.
- The event will now show up in the Service Request Manager as a new job. The Logistics Manager can now assign technicians to the job and set a more defined schedule date.
- Once the Mobile Users have collected all the equipment information from the Job Site and competed the job, the equipment will show up in the Contract Manager for assignment to the Contract.
- The web user can now Re-open the Contract, assign equipment to the contract and begin setting up events.
Notes
The notes button will allow the web user to add notes through a text editor to a file related to the contract. These notes are only accessible to the web users.
Files
The files button will allow the web user to upload files to the server that pertain to the contract, this could be images, documents and such. The files are only accessible to the web users from this page.
Contract PDF Builder
The contract manager gives the Contractor the ability to create a full PDF document on the web to be used as a written contract. This contract will consist of a Cover, Terms & Conditions, Equipment Listing, Pricing and Equipment Scopes pertaining to the events. It is the discretion of the Contractor to use the PDF builder or not. It is not required that the Contractor build a contract online, it is however to the Contractors benefit to utilize the pricing page of the PDF builder because it directly effects the ability of the analysis boxes that provide information about hours, costs and pricing budgets pertaining to the contract.
Cover Page
The cover page popup will collect some basic information that will be displayed on the cover and all pages of the contract. This includes the header, footer and title. The system will automatically use the frequency, Client and Job Site information from the contract to complete the cover.
Terms and Conditions
The terms and conditions page allows the Contractor to insert text that outlines the terms and conditions of the contract. This information can be entered from scratch, pasted into the text editor or inserted from an existing text bloc. The buttons above the editor allow the user to save copied text to the system to use later on other contract terms pages. The buttons below the editor allow the user to save the page text as a whole and import the entire page later to edit and use with another contract. These features allow the web user to enter and reuse blocs of text without having to retype the text time and again.
To the right you will see a demo of what the terms page will look like when the PDF is generated. This demo is not exact and simply a rough mockup of what your page will look like. As you make changes to the copy on the left, the demo on the right will automatically update. Below the text editor you will see a place to upload an example page for example of what inspection reports will look like for the client. You will also see fields to enter and edit the Title and sub-title of the terms page.
Pricing Page
The pricing page is where the Contractor will define the budget for the Contract. This page is important in adding cost to the contract to help later contribute to Analysis. The page is designed so that costs can be entered and not shown to the Client. This allows the Contractor to enter all relevant information without having to revel all numbers entered.
The Contractor has the ability to turn off the pricing page and not show it at all from the options at the bottom of the Cover popup. The web user can also add items to the cost/pricing table and mark those items not to show by simply unchecking the items from the table. This will hide the items from the PDF.
Adding all the Contractors estimated costs to the budget allows the system to use the information against the actual costs from the jobs created to show how close to budget the contract is. Cost items can be added at the bottom of the page. Once items are added the information can be turned off as needed to keep the pricing from being displayed on the Clients PDF. Only Description, Quantity and Price are used in the PDF generated for the client.
At the top of the page you will see boxes to assign an Account Manager, Preferred Technician and Estimated Hours to the contract. The estimated hours of the contract are used against the actual hours accumulated on the Job to provide analysis for hours against the contract. The Preferred Technicians are carried to the Service Request Manager when jobs are created to inform the Logistics Manager who should be assigned to the job as needed. The account manager is used when notifications are set to keep the proper person informed at the Contractor level.
The Term Text will be viewed at the very bottom of the pricing page allows the Contractor to set a text bloc for collecting Signatures from the Client to agree to the contract. This text can be set one time in the Contractor settings under Contract Setup. It can be modified on a by contract level by clicking the Terms Text button as needed on any contract pricing page.
Contract Events
The point of the contract is the events that are created and bound by the contract. Events are jobs that have been promised by the contract agreement. The Contract Manager allows the Contractor to specify the frequency and length of the contract in which the system will create a number of events that meet the requirements to fulfil the settings. The Contract Manager builds events so that the Contractor can manipulate them as needed until the point they need to be converted to jobs. Once the events are set and the contract has been Accepted by the Client, the events can be turned into jobs.
It is recommended that the contractor only turn events into jobs as needed. The reasoning behind this is that once an event has been turned into a job, the event and job created can NOT be deleted or removed. If the contract is later cancelled or the Client decides at a later date to change the terms of the contract by increasing or decreasing the number of events, the contractor will have to cancel all the unused jobs one at a time, leaving the cancelled jobs in the system. If the events had not been turned into jobs, the contractor could have simply reopened the contract, added or deleted events as needed from the contract and then saved the new events. Once the contract was reaccepted, the new events could be changed to jobs as needed to meet the new requirement.
Events are created by the system initially and can be added and removed one at a time by the web user. The system will automatically sort all events by scheduled date whenever the page is reloaded. Creating events manually can have scheduled dates at any time, including before and after the Start and End Date. Events are structured to allow for a relationship to be established between events in which “child” events will copy or mimic “parent” events when the relation is established.
Parent/Child Relations
When events are created, if the time between the Start Date and End Date expands more than a year’s worth of time, the single year’s pattern will begin to repeat its self. When this happens, the system will create a parent Child relationship between the first occurrence of the event in the first year and all additional occurrences of the same event in corresponding years.
As an example, if you have a quarterly contract that expands two years. The system will create eight events, four of these events span the first year and four events span the second. The first four events, the system will see them as separate events in which the Contractor might be doing something different in each event. The second set of four events, the system will assume that the Contractor is repeating what was done the first year, during the second year. In this case, the fifth event (First event in the second year) in the contract, the system will assume the Contractor is going to be doing the exact same things at the Job Site as was done when the Contractor went out the first time during the first event. Because the system assumes that the same tasks are being done, the system will set the fifth event to be a “Child” of the first event (The Parent).
This parent/child relationship helps the Contractor build events faster because whatever is done to the Parent event is automatically copied to the child events. This copy/mimic relation will continue until the Contractor either makes the event a Job, or breaks the relationship by attempting to manually edit the child event. If the contractor chooses to edit the setup of the child event, the relation will be broken. All setting that were copied from the parent up until the point of breaking the relationship will be retained but going forward any new changes to the parent will not be reflected to the old child.
This parent/child relationship can also be used to rapidly build out events in which all events may contain certain equipment and tasks that are needed to be done by the mobile users, but some events may require more equipment and tasks. In this case, setting all events to be a child of the first (setting the parent child drop menu to follow #1 first event). The user could then set the first event to cover all the equipment and tasks that are required of all the event, once those tasks have been set, the user could then break the relation on all the events that require more and add to those tasks as needed.
Setting Up Events
Events require only a scheduled date to be turned into a Job. This however is not all that is recommended. An Event Name, and Budgeted Hours are also recommended to make tracking events and allowing for Contract Hours to be analyzed. Although events are not required to have equipment assigned to them to convert them to jobs, it is however required by the Service Request Manager that jobs have equipment or Jobsite assigned to save the Job. It would also be beneficial to the Logistics Manager if you opened the Event up and noted in the Job Notes what the job is for. The Job Notes will be transferred to the Work Order Info box on the Service Request page. This box will then be transferred to the Work Order informing the mobile user what work is to be done on the job. It is of benefit to fill this box in with details.
Each event has a scope screen that can be accessed by clicking on the Add Scope of Work button in the upper right corner of the screen from the Manage Event Details page. The scope is a detailed explanation to the client and mobile user explaining what work is required to be completed while at the Job Site during this event. This could be just a list of all tasks performed or a more detailed list and explanation that breaks down by equipment type serviced. The scope can be as long or as short as needed and will be included in the Contract PDF if enabled. The scope is also accessible to the mobile user from the Contract screen as needed.
Equipment can be added to any event as needed. Only equipment that has been added to the contract is available to add to the event. Once the equipment checkboxes have been checked, the user will need to press the Assign to Container button. This will add the checked equipment to the event. The equipment will then show up on the right side.
Once equipment has been added to an event, the web user can then designate what the mobile user is going to be required to do with the equipment assignment. This may be completing a Service Record, System Inspection or Custom Inspection. If a Service Record is required, the mobile user will have to submit a record for the equipment assigned before work on the equipment is considered done.
When a System Inspection is selected, once the selection is saved, the web user will see a blue button marked System Inspections that will allow the user to specify which system inspections are required by the mobile user to be completed before the system will consider the work on the equipment complete. Regardless of the required system inspections, the mobile user will always have the option to complete any of the inspections provided by the system for the equipment type.
Selecting a Custom Inspection, once saved, the web user will have the option to select a custom inspection from the list that applies to the equipment type. Once assigned, the mobile user will be required to complete the custom inspection before the system will consider the work on the equipment to be complete.
On the left, the web user will see there are checkboxes for requiring a labor record, identifying Belt Changes and Filter Changes. If the web user requires a labor record, the mobile system will not consider the job complete until the mobile user uploads a labor record for the work performed on the assigned piece of equipment. The Belt and Filter boxes, when checked, will notify the mobile user on the mobile Contract Overview screen that Belts and Filters are required to be changed.
Budget Analysis
When set up correctly the system will track hours and costs involved in the contract. To do this, the costs and hours projected need to be entered into the system via the Contract Pricing page. The budget window on the pricing page will dictate the projected costs for the contract. Once the number have been entered. The Contractor will then have to assign hours to all the events created under the contract, this will populate the hours budgeted. When the events are turned to jobs and the jobs have been completed, the hours that are recorded by all technicians via the Time Manager will be compiled and shown as hours completed. Hours completed represents the total number of hours the technicians have worked on all jobs related to the contract. This is not to be confused with the labor hours billed through labor records. These hours’ numbers will update as the work on the contract proceeds giving the Contractor a live look at the hours as the contract progresses.
The Budget Analysis button located on the Contract Overview page will launch a popup window that will show the contractor total Costs for all Jobs that have been started and compile all available costs against the projected budget costs recorded in the Budget window of the Pricing page to form margin and profit comparisons. The accuracy of these numbers is based solely on the accuracy of the data put into the budget box and the costs recorded on the jobs by the mobile users.
