Tasks are widely used within The Service Program and some companies prefer to call them "Work Orders". Tasks help to deviate the workload within an organization and are 1 of the most powerful tools within The Service Program.
When viewing the open task list, your tasks show up in a color coded manner (Red, Yellow and Green). The tasks can be filtered by Date, task number, entered by, assigned to, sub assigned to, and the customer name that the task is for.
Now that you have a brief description of what the tasks are, we will show you how to create a new task.
Step 1 - Creating a Task:
To create a task, click the green plus sign along the top of The Service Program. This will take you to the task detail screen where task info is entered.
Step 2 - Adding Information to your task:
Below is an example of the task detail screen. This is where you enter all of the information that you need to record. You will notice that there is a very large amount of information that can be added to a task so we will cover the main options in this article.
When creating a task there are only a few items that you MUST add before the task can be created. Please keep in mind that you can go in and edit the task at anytime. So, if you forget to add information or want to adjust the information that you have within the task, you can go back in and make the adjustments at any time.
Please Note - A resolution does NOT need to be added to a task in order to create the task. However, you will need to add a resolution to the task when you are ready to "post to notes" or "Invoice" from the task.
A. Customer name can be typed and added on the fly or selected from the drop down box containing a list of your existing customers loaded from QuickBooks
B. Task type is used for describing what work is needed to be done or why the customer called. It can also be generated on the fly or can be selected from the drop down box.
C. Task description is an area to further describe the problem or work needing to be completed. It is stored with the task type so each time a particular task type is selected it will pull fill in the task description.
D. Task specific notes are notes related to this job only. It can be shown on the work ticket for the field tech to see. For example it can be used to tell the tech to call before he arrives.
E. Resolution is entered when closing a task. Here you would enter what work was completed. It is stored in the customer history for future reference or reports.
F. This is the drop down box to select who is going to be completing the task/work.
G. Task type questions are very useful to help script your calls. These questions will be saved to the task type selected and displayed each time you use that task type. This area will help you get the most important information from the customer. These questions and answered can also be printed on the work ticket for the tech assigned to the task to see.
Step 3 - How to close a task without invoicing:
There are many instances where you will simply need to close a task without creating an invoice. This is a very easy process which we call, "Posting to Notes". Posting to Notes will close the task out (remove from your open task list) and places that task into the Task History for easy reference down the road (To see Task History go to Task Info -> Completed Tasks).
To "Post to Notes" all you have to do is enter a "Resolution" within the task and click the button that says, "Post to Notes".
Step 3 - How to close a task with invoicing:
You would follow the same procedure as above except instead of hitting post to notes we would select invoice. This will complete the task and prepare an invoice that will be sent to QuickBooks.
