What is installed at each site
A work type with Done on an appliance ticked gives every customer site a list of its appliances. Each appliance records its kind, make, model, serial number, install date and warranty end. A boiler also records its fuel, type, flue, output and GC number.
The Appliances page is the whole service book, soonest service first. It filters to Overdue, Due soon and No date, and to one kind of appliance where it holds several. It finds an appliance by customer, address, make, model or serial.
The kinds of appliance with a yearly service
A firm gets the schedules of the trades it sets up with. Any appliance without a schedule is recorded the same way, with no service date.
- Gas: boilers and gas fires
- Oil-fired heating: oil boilers
- Plumbing and heating: unvented cylinders
- Air conditioning and heat pumps: AC units and heat pumps
- Alarms and security: alarm panels
- Stoves and chimneys: stoves, and a sweep for each chimney
- Fire safety: emergency lighting, tested for its full duration, and fire extinguishers
The email, and who it goes to
The email goes to whichever of the customer’s contacts was added first, among those at that address or tied to no address, and to an accounts contact only when there is no other. For a Landlord or a Managing agent, its own contacts tied to no address come first, an accounts contact included, then the people at the address. Nobody at another of the customer’s addresses is emailed, and no archived contact.
It names the appliance by its make and model, the address and the day the service is due. A service already overdue gets one email, which says so.
While your enquiry form is online, the email carries an “Ask for a visit” button. The button opens the form filled in with the address, the appliance and the name and contact details of the person emailed, and the request lands in Enquiries marked as from the service reminder. With the form offline, the email says to get in touch to book it in.
The reminder never books a visit. Make a job turns the request into a job, and the office books the visit. No reminder goes while a repeat job at that address already has a visit booked up to three weeks after the due date.
Dates that move on with your own work
An appliance added with an install date in the last twelve months gets its first service date a year after it was installed. Any other appliance with a schedule has no date until the office sets one, an import brings one in or a sheet is signed off against it. No reminder goes without a date.
A sheet started against an appliance names it under Which appliance. Signing that sheet off sets the next service a year from that day, even with a result of Unsatisfactory, and the next reminder follows the new date. The service record every firm is given opens with the appliance’s make, model and serial. A make, model or serial the appliance lacks is filled in from the sheet.
A date changed by hand keeps the yearly cycle, and the next signed sheet moves that date on again. Each appliance shows when it was last done and when the customer was emailed. What a sheet found stays under What the sheets found here until it is put right.
Bring your service book in
In Settings, Import takes a spreadsheet of appliances saved as CSV. Each row is matched to a customer already in your book, and the postcode or first line of the address picks the site. A row naming somebody not in your book is refused, never added.
Each row can give what the appliance is, its make, model and serial number, its install date and its warranty end. It can also give a Next service due date. A Last serviced date is enough on its own, and the next service is worked out a year on.
The columns and what each row will do are shown for checking before anything is saved. A serial already at that address is matched, and rows with no serial are matched row for row on kind, make and model. So the same file brought in again adds nothing new, and only the service date of an appliance already there is set.
A service date is kept only on a kind of appliance with a schedule. A date on any other kind is counted in the check and not kept.
Warranty dates
An appliance with a warranty date still ahead has an email of its own, three weeks before the cover ends. It goes to whoever a service reminder would, and says what is ending and when, that there is nothing to book and nothing owed, and to get in touch if anything is wrong with the appliance.
The warranty date never moves on with your work. It changes only when the date on the appliance is changed. Turning off a customer’s reminder emails stops this email too. For the whole firm it has its own switch, Tell a customer a warranty is ending, which follows the service reminder switch until it is changed.
