Anyone creating Service Work Orders? - D-Tools Forum

04-19-2006, 01:31 PM

Is anyone creating Service Work Orders where there is no equipment involved? I have Business Manager, but you have to have a sales order first and so I don't know what to do. Can I just leave it blank or do I use a labor SKU or something? Your ideas needed, welcomed and requested. TIA!

JordanC · 04-20-2006, 01:22 AM

I am wondering the same thing. We are just getting to the point to where we will be using these feature as well as Pack List to go with the service work orders. Anyone use this? (with possitive results?)

**Kevin Mikelonis** · 04-22-2006, 10:32 PM

When I first sought out BizMgr, it was to create service orders for my service department to handle projects designed in D-Tools which had been installed and completed.

I anticipated using work order to deal with this need. Unfortunately, D-Tools did not design the BizMgr for this specific use, and the requirement of creating a work order from a sales order called for some creative thinking and an extra step, but some great benefits have come from our approach.

-Making this all work starts with having Project Statuses and Project Phases in D-Tools account for project support through your service department.

So...

-Have a Project Status and Project Phase called Warranty Support

-Have a Project Status called Project Phase called Non-Warranty Support

-Upon completion of a project (collection of final check) make a copy of the project using 'copy project' and rename it Support XXXXX Residence. For instance if the project was named 'Blanco Residence Systems' the new copied project would be named 'Support - Blanco Residence Systems'

-Archive the original project using 'archive'

-Set the project status for the newly created support project to 'warranty support'. This is useful in other ways as you can now see all projects that are in warranty by sorting by column in your project lookup window. Set an annual recurring reminder in your CRM program or company MS Outlook Calender for the date you do this to take the project out of 'warranty' and place into 'non-warranty' and call the client for follow-up when the reminder trips your service manager to do so. Great customer service! A chance to offer upgrades!

-At this point, you have all the products in the original project available to push into a sales order from the support project if they need replacing during the warranty period, and beyond.

-See where this is headed? ... Say Yes!

-In the case of supporting a project which does not need any products to do so as in the original question asked here in this thread, labor SKUs are the answer.

-If you have really accounted for all the costs of a project, you will have included in the original project, a labor SKU for each system installed called 'warranty support' such as 'Labor - Warranty Support - Structured Wiring - X hours'. This labor SKU would carry your labor cost, but no sell price. This way you can load hours for each system into your projects to return to the project during the warranty period, and already have the costs accounted for, so they do not nibble away at your net profit during the warranty period. *ATTENTION COMPANIES THAT BONUS PM's FOR BRINGING PROJECTS IN UNDER ESTIMATED HOURS!* Creating similar SKUs for non-warranty support allows you to charge for system support outside the warranty period.

-So to handle a support call for a project, go to your 'Support - XXXXXX Residence Systems' project, use BizMgr to create a sales order for the support call, and select the items (or labor SKUs) to be applied to the work order for the support call. This also is handy, as you can see over time by reviewing your sales orders for this project, what type of equipment is failing. The clunky part here is having to create the sales order to get to the work order! TIP* Open the Support project ahead of time to get the component IDs of the items to be replaced adn added to the sales order, as they are not identifiable by system or room in the sales order!

-Lastly, create a work order from this sales order and assign resources.

-Dispatch and go!

As you can see, there is a way, but knowing how you business process works and having it built into D-Tools makes D-Tools a stronger piece of software which reachs beyond design and proposal generation!

06-21-2006, 04:27 PM

We were having the same issue for service calls for warranty items and bids involving our technicians. I have solved it by creating a SKU for labor that has no cost associated for the client. I create a project citing "Warranty", "Troubleshoot" or "Train Client" and use an hour of the "warranty work / costs associated with bidding" sku. This allows me to create a sales order and work order for the technician, but still allows me to change the initial proposal to include any items needed to complete the job.

I like the previous answer but for our group, putting that into practice is sometimes difficult.

JordanC · 06-21-2006, 07:16 PM

Kevin, It seems to me that you are on to something here, I am at the point where Project Status and Phase truly play a factor in how I am proceding with a project. I have about 11 Project Status options. One of those being "Service" which is set when all contracted work is completed. There after the work is set out as Time and Materials, and product, depending on wether or not it was warratied, is paid for via change orders as if the project was still in contract. The Work order is then generated via the change order and time is processed from the technicians work order, as well as any equipment that may not be considered warranty and processed from there. We haven't really concentrated on the Work Order feature all that much, but from what I can tell is that it's a full time Project managers responsibility to produce them, which we may work in at a later time.