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The purpose of this article is to cover the commonly used terms and workflow that will be referenced when discussing Smart Service Cloud. We do have articles here that cover individual processes for different types of services.
As you can see in the above graphic, everything will start with an appointment and progress from there. In the next few sections, we’ll break down each option on the way to creating an invoice.
An appointment is created whenever you choose to visit your customer. If you create a quote or a work order, an appointment corresponding to that visit will be created automatically. You can think of the appointment as the “folder” you’re placing all the documents related to this service into. If you offer a quote, it goes into the folder, same with work orders; if you make a phone call (and you want to note that) it can be attached to that appointment folder too.
This is what makes appointments so important. It’s a central location where everything we do to facilitate this customer’s request will be linked. Recurrence patterns (for services that last multiple days or are recurring) are also linked to the appointment level. You have the option to start off by creating an appointment from the dispatch board, but you don’t have to.
Times where we recommend starting off with an appointment instead of a quote or work order, would be in situations where you aren’t sure what we want to offer the customer. We could make an appointment to visit the customer, then let our field tech decide to either write up a work order or offer a quote.
Quotes have a lot of flexibility in Smart Service Cloud but are generally related more to sales processes. A quote here can be converted to either a work order or an invoice when you’re ready to proceed with the service.
They also have special statuses such as “SOLD” and “LOST”, and have a “sales pipeline” feature built-in.From your appointment, you always have the option to create a quote for the customer. This could be a quote for the repair in question or a quote for some other issue that arose during your visit.
If you plan on performing work for the customer, you’ll need a work order at some point. This would be the most common option our customers start off with. Create a work order, perform a service, and convert that work order into an invoice.
Another important feature of a work order is the ability to create a purchase order (PO) so you can order/pick up parts for the customer. This feature is unique to work orders and does not appear on appointments or quotes.
When something has been sold to the customer and you want to get paid for it, you need to send them an invoice. Invoices have their own special statuses of “Open” and “Paid” depending on if you’ve collected payment yet.
On that note, an invoice is the only one of these options where you can collect payment.If your company uses QuickBooks Online, invoices and payments can be sent to QuickBooks in the accounting center. This will also create all of the necessary items to create those recordings in QuickBooks including the customer, the line items, the invoice, and the payment record. Invoices will sit with a status of “Pending for QuickBooks” until sent over.
With Smart Service Cloud, you have access to our merchant service, CardPointe. This service allows you to process credit cards and electronic payments either in person or via your own hosted payment page (HPP).
A pro forma invoice is an estimate invoice typically sent to the customer to request payment for goods or services before they are supplied to the customer. This usually includes a description of the products and services as well as the total amount due.