Customers, work addresses and appliances from Commusoft.

Commusoft’s backup and reports

Commusoft’s backup is a zip file of Excel spreadsheets holding all the customer information in the account. The backup can go to Google Drive each Sunday instead, as CSV and Excel files. Commusoft’s reports download as Excel spreadsheets.

Files come in through Import, in Settings. Which column is which shows each field beside the column matched to it, with that column’s first value, and any match can be changed. What this would do counts every row. It lists up to 500 rows, those not brought in first, and each of those says why.

Excel stores a phone number as a number. A number that lost its leading 0 gets the 0 back, and a 44 number that lost its + gets the + back. A number Excel wrote as 4.47911E+11 has lost its digits, so it is left out. How the file was read counts both.

Customers and their work addresses

Commusoft files a customer’s work addresses, such as a tenant’s home or a building site, under that customer and apart from its main address. Here each work address is a site of its customer, and every job is at a site.

A customers file is one row per address. The first row for a customer files its address as the billing address and the first site. A later row with an address the customer does not have yet adds that address as another site, and is marked Added to that customer.

Tenant or Occupier in a column matched as What the contact is files the contact as the Occupier of the site that row’s address adds or matches, on the customer’s first row or on a later one.

• Company in a column matched as Business or private makes a new customer a business, and a word the import does not know, such as Private customers, leaves the choice made under What are most of these?
• Landlord, Letting agent or Managing agent in a column matched as Classification gives a new customer the type Landlord or Managing agent
• Principal contractor or Main contractor in that column gives a new customer the type Principal contractor, with or without a VAT number, and a customer of that type with none on file is not reverse charged

Commusoft’s parts list

Commusoft’s parts list downloads as a CSV file. It holds a cost and a markup percentage for each part, and no selling price. It comes in as Parts. The Cost column is matched as What it costs the firm. Part name and Part ID are not matched by their names. Chosen as What it is and Code, they become each part’s name and code. A part with no code is given one.

The Markup column is not read. With no price in the file, each part is priced at its cost plus the one markup set for the whole file under Markup on cost where the price is blank. Without that markup, or without a cost above zero, a part is not brought in. A part already in your book keeps its price.

Invoices still unpaid

A Commusoft tabular report is built from the columns chosen for it. Its own example of overdue unpaid invoices lists the invoice number, customer name, contact telephone, due date and grand total. A file comes in as Open balances once four columns are matched: the customer, the invoice number, the invoice date and Still owed, including VAT. Each customer must already be in your book.

The figure matched as Still owed, including VAT is filed as what is left on the invoice. A grand total matched to it brings a part-paid invoice in at its whole total. Each row becomes a sent invoice under its own number and date, as one line with no VAT split out of it and no PDF.

Nothing is emailed as the rows come in. While Chase an unpaid invoice is on, an overdue invoice whose customer has an email address gets one reminder in place of those it missed, and its later reminders go out on their dates.

Appliances at each address

Commusoft keeps appliances against a customer or one of its work addresses. Here each row of an appliances file names the customer, and the postcode or the first line of the address picks which of that customer’s sites the appliance is at. Where several of those sites share a postcode, the first line decides.

The file never creates a customer or a site. A row that does not say which of several sites is not brought in, and its note names the column that would decide. A serial number already at that site is matched, not added twice. Rows with no serial are matched row for row on kind, make and model, so twenty identical rows are twenty appliances, and the same file brought in again adds none.

The next service date is taken from the file, or counted on from the last service by the interval that kind of appliance carries. Appliances is offered in Import where one of your kinds of work covers appliances.

Gas Safe, OFTEC, NICEIC and NAPIT at booking

Every kind of work in the gas pack names Gas Safe, and the oil pack’s boiler service, repair and installation name OFTEC. Each is the person’s own registration, and the person booked is checked for it, the first visit of a new job included.

In the electrical pack, a rewire, a consumer unit replacement and a periodic inspection name NICEIC or NAPIT. The firm’s own registration with either one covers them.

Registrations do not come in from a file. The firm’s own go under Registrations in Settings, and each person’s on that person’s page, with the date each runs out. Under Booking someone not certified for the work, a booking the registration does not cover is warned about with Warn and allow or refused with Refuse the booking. Don’t check checks nothing.