Scheduling and managing service jobs in Commusoft allows you to provide timely service to your customers, leading to increased satisfaction and smoother operations.

By consistently scheduling and tracking service jobs, you can reduce missed appointments and stay on top of your customers' ongoing needs. This proactive approach ensures that your customers receive the service they need when they need it, contributing to a positive customer experience and a well-organized business.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, review the prerequisites.

Click here to explore the prerequisites.

Customer communication rules: To ensure service reminders are sent correctly, you'll need to check two things:
1. Global communication settings: Confirm that the communication methods you want to use (email, SMS, letter) are enabled in your Communication rules. This ensures the system is set up to enable these types of communications when new customers are added.
2. Individual customer preferences: Check the contact to verify their individual communication preferences. These preferences determine how they will receive service reminders, so make sure they have opted in to receive reminders via their preferred method (email, SMS, phone call or letter).
Job description templates: To ensure a smooth workflow for service jobs, make sure your job description templates are configured with the following:
- Service job checkbox and service type: Ensure the "Is this a service job?" checkbox is ticked and the correct service type is selected within the template. This helps streamline the process of creating service jobs.
- Automatic invoicing: Set up automatic invoicing rules in your job description templates. This is crucial if you're using a self-service portal for booking service jobs, as it allows the system to automatically generate invoices and enables you to take prepayments at the time of booking.
- Booking portal rules: If you're using the booking portal and want to define specific scheduling rules (e.g., time slots, engineer availability), configure these within your job description templates. This provides a smoother booking experience for your customers.

Adding a service job

Add via customer dashboard

➡️ Navigate to the customer dashboard > Ongoing works > Add new job

Fill in job details: Add all relevant job details, eg., select job description, job notes, etc.
Service job: Check box
Service type: Select the service reminder(s) from the drop down, up to 3.
- If the customer has an existing service reminder, the date will be displayed next to the type.
- A new service reminder wil be created if one does not exist, the due date will be set to today

When a service reminder is created via a service job, the due date defaults to the day of creation. The date can be changed later once the service job is complete.

Always make sure the Service job box is ticked to correctly link the job with the service reminder.

This ensures the service process can be properly managed and renewed.
You can set this to be ticked automatically for service jobs within the assigned job description template.

If you're trying to add a service reminder through a service job, and the option is unavailable (greyed out), it means there's an open service job for that property that needs to be closed first.

Make sure the previous service job has been invoiced or marked as free of charge before adding a new service reminder.

Add via service reminder widget

➡️ Customer tab > View all service reminders

Locate the service reminder in the list > Click + > Add new job.
Service job is ticked and service type selected by default.
Fill in the remaining job details > Click Save.

Use filters and search for specific customers (Check out More filters) to quickly locate a specific property.

Service jobs cannot be batch booked from the service reminders list.

Batch decision for work addresses

➡️ Navigate to the main customer's dashboard > Quick links > Service reminders > Work address reminders due

Batch processing allows you to efficiently manage service reminders for multiple work addresses associated with a main customer. This feature enables you to schedule jobs in batches and action customer requests to cancel or postpone services in bulk, streamlining the management of service schedules.

Individual property

➡️ Click + > Configure > Complete steps listed below.

Multiple properties

➡️ Check box on left > Customer decision batch process > Complete steps listed below.

Authorised: Choose how to interact with these properties.
- Authorised and add new job: A service job is created with the appropriate details.
  - Access method: Select the required method of access for all jobs.
- Not authorised: Select an action
  - Cancel service reminder just this time: Reset the service due date to the following period
  - Cancel service reminder forever: Delete the service reminder.
  - Postpone service:
    Select date to postpone until.
  - Unknown: No reason provided.

Setting service due dates after job completion

Setting the date for the next service is done when closing the job, by raising a final invoice or making as free-of-charged.

➡️ Save a final invoice / Save reason for FOC

A pop up will appear asking how to set the next service date.

Click here to see an example.

Set the service date to: A date will be displayed based on the service period for the reminder.
- For example: Yearly service period would set +1 year from the date displayed.
Change the service date to reflect a diary event: Sets the next service date based on when the service was completed and the service period.
- For example: Yearly service period would set +1 year from the selected appointment date.
Click Save.

Aborting a service job

➡️ Go to the job > Quick links > Abort job.

Choose a reason for aborting the job.
Click "Save."

Aborting a service job will not change the service reminder date.