For businesses in Field Service industries, Method offers the following three apps to help manage work orders in the office and in the field.
Work Orders app - create and manage one-time and recurring work orders
Field Crew app - mobile friendly screen to view work orders in the field
Time Tracking app - manage time tracking entries from QuickBooks generated by the Field Crew app.
In this article, we will look at an example workflow in Field Services by showing you how the Work Orders and Field Crew app work together.
For our scenario, we'll use a company called Pop & Skate, which sells and maintains roller rinks across their city.
This example will be broken into four parts:
Part 1: Dispatcher Creates a Work Order
Our customer, Amy Ford, calls in with a request: she wants to have maintenance done on her rink every Wednesday for the next two months. The dispatcher will set up a recurring job in the Work Orders app.
The dispatcher will also set the work order's status to "Waiting on someone else". This allows it to be routed optimally for the Field Crew app. Further down in the Work Order, is a list of all the scheduled jobs with their dates:
For more information on creating and scheduling recurring work orders, please see the following articles:
Create a Work Order for a Recurring Job - How to create a recurring work order
View a Recurring Work Order - How recurring work orders work.
Part 2: Dispatcher Creates Route List
With the Work Order created, the dispatcher can create the route list for the day to be shown in the Field Crew app.
First, they must be routed in the Work Order app. The work order list defaults for the current day and the filter view must be changed to Shared Work Order Waiting List, because the route list can only be generated if the status of the work order is "Waiting on someone else".
Once routed, a map will show verifying the route.
By selecting Confirm and Route Order, Method will:
Change all the Work Orders status to ‘Not Started’ to remove them from waitlist.
Copy each item into each work order occurrence. When you first create a recurrence schedule, each individual job starts off empty with no items.
Calculate the total amount for the work orders.
Now these work orders will show up in the Field Crew app. For more information about creating a route list, please see our article:
Part 3: Employees in the Field Uses Field Crew App
The field crew employees can open up the Field Crew app to view their jobs for the day. The work orders will be listed in ascending order by time. The times for the work orders were generated when the dispatcher created the route list for today's jobs.
The field crew can select a work order, and see the details. While viewing a work order, they can:
Call the customer.
Bring up the customer's address on their mobile map app.
Start a timer to track their time.
Capture an e-signature.
Mark the job complete.
Add an item, product, or service to the work order to later be invoiced.
Once complete, they can stop the timer. This will create a time tracking entry for them (if set up correctly) and complete the work order, removing it from the day's list. They can continue on with the rest of their day and complete further jobs.
For more information on using the Field Crew app, please see the following articles:
Part 4: Invoicing Work Orders
At the end of the day, the dispatcher can invoice all the completed work orders for the day.
In the Work Orders app, when viewing the list of work orders, she can set the view filter to Shared Work Orders to be Invoiced.
Once the work orders are selected, she can invoice them all with Invoice Selected.
With the invoices to be created, you can set the date, and even flag them to not sync to QuickBooks.
And the day is done! The work orders are completed, the invoices are sent out, and the team can prepare for the next day.
For more information, please see our Field Services documentation: