Video Transcript:
The different ways packages can be used in Service Autopilot some of the pros and cons and how do we actually set up packages. What I’m going to do is show you basically four ways that I recommend using packages in Service Autopilot for maximum results of buying time back and creating efficiency when routing jobs and be able to minimize that non-billable drive time so we’re gonna create a predictable way to build package jobs in Service Autopilot. If you’re joining me live here on the version here then I’m broadcasting tonight feel free to put comment in and say hello and let me know if you can hear the audio and in addition if you have any comments or questions drop them in the comment box here I’ll answer them live on Callahan’s Corner of you ask the questions and we have some live on Facebook or if it’s recorded drop the notes in there and we’ll also go into that as well. What I’m going to do is pop in and break the screen down as we normally do here and show you the four different ways to use packages in Service Autopilot for optimal results in there if you are watching live in the livestream just drop a comment in there let us know that you can hear the audio it looks like we’re good but you never know with these things going live especially in the middle of the . The first thing is we’re in Service Autopilot so the first service I’m gonna go into bed and maintenance so the first thing you want to do is actually build out a service I’m not going to get into building the actual pricing matrix out but I’m going to show you the basics of setting up the service so we can pull it into the actual master package so I’m gonna label this one here with 99 in front of it just so we can go into I’m gonna go and create a four-step bed maintenance package so obvious you’re gonna have more than stuff but the theory of this is gonna show you the process of building this out so I’m gonna do in bed maintenance I’m gonna do holiday lights shrimp burning and plateau steak setup and removal offer anybody in the snow removal industry at the end here as well so these are how we set each one of these up for best practice in my opinion so I’m gonna putin here just monthly that maintenance and just copy it down for speeding efficiency here so we’re going invoice description and that is everything we need here and estimates we would go in and plug in the estimate description and then we’d put the rate matrix in based on square footage of beds obviously in this example I’m not going to go in and set that up the idea is we want to set up monthly bed the maintenance. Now if you really want to go in and out detailed in you can actually break it out per month in the bed maintenance example I would not suggest that but in holiday lights and shrub pruning we are gonna have some definity of the services itself so we’re gonna go in and hit save and the next step is we’re gonna go into the gear icon and drive in under master package and it’s not a master custom package it’s actually going to be a master package so what we’re going to do is go in and add a package job and we’re going to name it and I’m gonna put it in the description obviously for time out just paste knees down renewal is probably gonna be January 1st of each year as traditionally what we set so the following year here January 1st and we’re gonna go in and name it bed maintenance spring bed maintenance late spring bed maintenance summer obviously this fictitious you’d be going probably monthly or bi-weekly or weekly depending on your location but I’m just gonna call it late summer and fall so this is the idea that we’re gonna pull it in and then we’re going to go in and pull up that service of bed maintenance now depending on the budgeted time in the frequency you may want a different service for each one of these and that’s what we’re gonna do with the holiday lights and the shrub trimming but for this example here it would be just as efficient to use the same exact service but once you have your services setup here the next thing is the start and end date so this is our bed maintenance spring so maybe that is gonna go from March 1st through March 31st late spring, and you would probably be doing this on monthly basis but you get the idea for the example, so I’m gonna go May 1st the end of May and then we are going in the summer so I’ll take 6/1 – July31st these are the start and end dates so this is when it’s apply it you can actually the soonest in latest you should be able to do this this is your ideal range the obvious this is a fictitious example with the dates and timing we’d be doing it a little bit more but this is going to give the idea of what this could look like. Now when you’re going in doing this the one thing you want to be aware of is minimum days in between now really probably not so dangerous for bed maintenance but maybe your spraying some chemicals there’s different things revolving in here so minimum days is the minimum days so you don’t overlap so if you did this application here at 6:31 you could potentially be sending the crew out the following day so maybe you wanted at least 10 days between each round you plug that in default budget hour to default rate I would leave that blank and allow the matrices on the service to dictate that to leave that blank but that’s the idea we’re gonna hit save now we have bed maintenance setup. Next thing is holiday light so we’re gonna go in and first thing again we need to add the packages so traditionally in holiday lights there’s two maybe three different ways that we can set this up so we want to go into our services and drive in the initial setup so we’re gonna go in and I’m gonna put the 99 in front of it so I can actually find it again by gonna put this is holiday light setup here now where it’s interesting and if you’re watching this in your doing holiday lights you may have an initial setup where you’re either incurring the cost or you’re leasing out the actual equipment itself the materials the lights the steaks everything else you’re sticking in there so you may have two different setups holiday light set up new and holiday set up existing on the life of those lights usually lasts around three years and if you’re cycling back so for job costing you may want to have two separate packages or two separate sets of services one for existing and one the initial setup because the initial setup especially if you’re doing recent garlands and things like that the initial setup time for the first time you’re out there that you do the job is going to be significantly longer than coming back to sequential years so for production and job cost you may want to have several different services as a protip her as we’re setting these up in the two day deep dives there’s definitely some granularity that we set this up for Service Autopilot users but if you’re doing it your selfI wanted to share that tip so we’ve got everything in here now obviously we goto reap matrix and set this up and that would probably be how they like to setup c9 based on the linear feet so I’m gonna get the setup I’m gonna save a new service mode is gonna be per unit and when I go in and reset this up now we’re gonna have at a bare minimal holiday like takedown now if you’re storing the materials or the product yourself which you probably are you can include thatall in the takedown so whether you have a if your shop or maybe a empty trailer or something you keep all these units in with bins and labeling them there’s some time there they’re maybe doing it separately so if there’s two different sets of crews doing the takedown and storage you may actually have three different jobs in your actual package job and that would be the way we would do that so I’m going to plug this in and just do a basic example. Next thing coming up is shrub pruning and plows taking as well as some examples for that so we’ve got everything we need here per unit and I’m just gonna plug this estimate in and we are gonna save that so once that kind of comes in we’re gonna go back to the gear icon and go back to master packages and master package so what we’re gonna do is go in and add our package for holiday lights and we’re gonna probably end up renewing this not at the end of the year but maybe August 1st of the following year because that’s traditionally when we may start selling holiday lights so what we’re gonna do here is click holiday light setup and we’re going to go in and grab that holiday light setup and our start time here depending if people maybe prepay but we don’t turn them out with an earlier it could be maybe as early as October 1st and the latest maybe right before Christmas so we’re gonna go in and put it maybe around the 19th or 18th depending how it’s following on that season so that’s the ideal range the latest we can go now we’re gonna go and put our holiday light take down our holiday light pink down is going to be the same thing but the different service now if you are going to put storage as a separate process I would put a third unit on here to actually cover your take down so you’re gonna go in here we’re gonna go in and say as early as January say first and the latest we want it done is by the end of January so I’m going to go in and do the 31st and this actually going into next year it needs to be the 21st that’s one thing to pay attention to that’s a common mistake even when we’re doing it sometimes you gotta pay attention to limit dates and how they’re gonna fall minimum days in between budget hours default rate wouldn’t be applicable so we’re going to save that up now we have a holiday light set up how did it like take down a potentially holiday lights storage package job.The next one is shrimp pruning so depending where you’re at in the United States, Canada or even some other people in Australia and England that we’re working with we’re gonna have some different options here so I’m going to show you a real basic package here and we’re going to go in and build out our services so we’re going to just view our two prunings and obviously the southern stage and may be doing this a lot more in your package job would also be probably going in to do an ornamental pruning and crape myrtle pruning depending where you’re at in the country as well so being in upstate New York usually I’ll do two pruning rounds the third one sometimes high-end commercial residential is a touch-up. I’m just gonna go in and build this out the basic example but obviously in your market if you do more you can follow this so shrub pruning round number one and this is a good one you get into the rate matrix may be doing different estimating before you schedule a new package the small medium and large shrubs hedgerows with without a hedgerow but the idea is I’m going into our main services how to set this up so once you have this setup we’re going to do the first round or save and new then we’re going to go in and build out our second round for pruning as well this is exactly what we did it Callahan’s Lawn Care our HOAs had a third round that went in for just some general touch up as well but this will give you the idea so now we’ve built out our two services and we’re going to save it so we’re going to go in and if you’re doing commercial residential it’s not a bad idea to have two packages as well something that was advantageous for us to see a commercial versus residential sales pipeline and workflow. So we’re gonna go back into master packages and we’re going to go in and build out shrub pruning package I’m going to go in and start that so traditionally in our market upstate New York that’s going to be usually be done between June 1 actually want to renew it on January 1 this is number one and shrub pruning package round number two now we’re going to actually pull up our services for each one so shrub pruning 1 and shrub pruning two and we’re gonna put the start time so traditionally in my market that would be June first and it would be done by traditionally you’d want it done before the fourth of July especially or high-end residential so I would say second to give you some leeway now we’re gonna go back in and traditionally this would start right around August 1st and roll up through the end of August so it was interesting we had enough commercial and residential work that that gap between 7/2 & 8/1 would be the gap that we could do the residential so the commercial would come first we’d fill in with all the residential and then we’d go into round number 2 for commercial and round number 2 is done with commercial be back in our residential it’s the difference of two different packages and that’s the the benefit of it and same thing minimum days in the crew training default budgeted rate really don’t apply here so that’s how you set up your proving package. The last one here is a bonus for our northern folks doing snow removal one of the biggest things in my company that we found as an issue was how do we go out and steak driveways or parking lots and actually keep track of putting them up and taking them down and doing plow repairs so traditionally what we would do is we would build out our services put him up and take him down I’ve already had this building out but there’s a snow staking and lawn repair so what I did previously is I set up a pre-season removal and then so pre season staking between 11/1 and 11/15 because our contract started out at 15th and then we do a postseason removal in the lawn repair 4/1 to and this should be probably about 4/15 here so the idea is once you set this up you can have a package to set them up and then something that fall to remove and repair that plow damaged so comments or questions drop them below but thats the four main things that we probably would suggest on a bare minimum setting packages so you’ve got bed maintenance holiday likes shrimp burning and snow plow stake removal and set up for you to set up that route density and run things through there so comments or questions drop them below but Callahan’s Corner you ask the questions we answer live here on Facebook so we don’t pick the topics usually you guys submit them and no matter how advanced or how basic the questions are were answering live here to give back to the Service Autopilot community and help you have a better season this year coming up.
