Video Transcript:

How to handle installment billings in particular contracts… so what I’m gonna be doing is I just gotta hop on the other screen here and pull up the actual questions so I can put some context in it and so basically new to trying to set up get it all set up is Service Autopilot If you’re unaware of what that is they run a lawn and pool service they send bills out the first of the month or bill one month in advance so that’s one thing we want to keep in mind here is why we go to set this up should I have set up contracts for their total monthly amount rather than breaking down the price on a weekly basis and trying to get this all squared away before April 1 so I can invoice through Service Autopilot instead of QuickBooks please let me know your thoughts and directions PS we don’t have signed contracts not sure if that matters, thanks. Lindsay great question here so if you’re joining me live or in the recorded version I would love to have any comments or questions so we can answer them but first thing to do is shrink down the screen here and actually bring up Service Autopilot so you can actually see what I’m doing here so first thing is we’re gonna go into Service Autopilot there’s some foundational things we want to keep in mind from Lindsay’s question first one is if she has a monthly installment contract that includes probably one or several services underneath the monthly price, now once she has that she said she doesn’t have signed contracts and she may want to bill a month in advance so all these things are very doable underneath the system we just need to break them down in a systematic way. When a lot of people fly up to New York for our 2-day deep dive where we sit knee to knee and build out and set up Service Autopilot for them in two days a lot of times folks come into the deep dive thinking that they have all the data points so one thing that Scott Howard and I are the head trainer at SA Scott Howard he does Scott squared on the essays page when Scott and I are doing these regional training events a lot of times we’ll talk about good data in good data out and the ability to have database hygiene. I’m gonna kind of break this down on a high level but actually go in and set this up for you for Lindsey and anybody else watching as well so the idea here is we’re gonna going and I’m gonna go in and put our test client and pull that up so what we’re looking at here is we want to go down and scroll down to the contract now before we have the contract or set this up we need some data here that is going to be very important you know that we need to know what services are in the contract the prices for each service that would add up to the total installment contract amount and the budgeted time and hopefully the cost before profit . What we’re gonna do is go in and set up this contract here and I’m gonna name the contract just test contract actually know what we’re gonna go with Lindsey pool and lawn contract you maybe do these separately we’re gonna do a start gate so if I was to guess from Lindsey’s email we’re gonna go in and say it is in April first start date and let’s just say based on the season that she’s potentially in not too sure but let’s call it October 31st so that’s the start and end of the service range now the next thing we do is want to put a line item here and this is the line item that’s gonna show up on the contract right here so what we’re gonna do is going and paste missing for just speed I’m gonna say lawn and pool contract monthly installment so now when we hit the plus sign we can go in and have that and that’ll also automatically default on the installment billing I can have multiple and then sort up-and-down how you want them to be in there next thing you need a default service so in this test account I highly doubt I have anything from pool service but let’s take a look we’re gonna call it commercial maintenance so this could include maybe the commercial maintenance of the law and the pool at a commercial facility but the idea is that the default service that’s associated with. Now the next thing I want to do is go in and set our installment billing so April let’s just say it’s a thousand dollar contract every month so we can go in and actually auto-fill it here for speed if you want auto-fill and just going to delete the months that are not applicable now we’ve set up our monthly installment of $1,000 a month and it’s gonna crude our pool and landscape maintenance so what we’re gonna do then is go in and set the bill months so Lindsey your particular thing if you want to go the bill of one month in advance I’d say build the first of the month we want to build one month in advance so technically you’re probably one month behind right now you’d want to head trigger this in March but you could potentially set this up to go before the end of the month so based on the timing but that’s how we’ve set up one bill month in advance here. April’s invoice would be created in March on the specified date here and it’s that spell generate a little question so how are they gonna pay let’s just say it is a commercial client they’re gonna pay in credit check and we can auto generate its active and include sub properties sounder the leader client when you have master and sub properties this is how you would tie in those additional sub-properties into this so the final step here is we want to go under actions and add a contract item so I’m gonna go in and we had pool tile work obviously not exactly the pool maintenance what we use it for the example and we’re gonna go in and add another contract item for landscape maintenance now there’s some options here so pool work we’re gonna call pool tile work just for example sake but let’s say we’re only covering 15 visits or X amount of hours for the pool service so if I wanted to go in I could say it includes 15 pool cleanings and we would want to alert if it’s greater than or equal to 15 a person in the business so and now we know the accounting role hey we need to be aware that we’re over 15 visits or if it’s an hourly job you can go in and out the number of hours here and alert somebody that the hours are about to exceed that number and do we bill over that yes at the quantities over or if the hours are over so we can go in and set the additional billing up and above the installment contract landscape maintenance we’ll put that in there so the idea is we want both services or all the services included in the thousand dollars a month installment. I want to say what’s up to Scott Furman can I watch this later busy working in New York State where deemed essentials? Yeah Scott absolutely thish will be here for you … I want to say congratulations to everybody in the lawn care cleaning industry that had been deemed essential if not NALP is fighting for a lot of landscaping companies and I know Issa is also fighting for the cleaning industry depending on where you’re at so be safe out there and you can definitely watch this later so Scott congrats brother. So once we’ve got this contracting here we want to go in and add the job so this is the part Lindsay where most people drop the ball in my opinion but you’re gonna be following this video so you’ll be good we want to add that recurring job and if it’s a one-time job we can include a one-time job but the idea is we want to go in and select the contract and the schedule so I’m gonna go into custom schedule and let’s say we’re doing the pool cleaning every week on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday you can select that but what if we had a service that was a little funkier it didn’t fall into the master package options here of weekly or bi-weekly you can actually go in through custom schedule and say every three weeks or every two days or every so many months so that’s gonna give you that granularity there and once you figure out what you want I’m gonna say it’s every week on a Thursday getting ready for the weekend and I’m gonna end after 15 visits and I can show it on the calendar and see how far does that take us out well 15 visits probably isn’t going to cover that summer season but it gives you the idea so that’s gonna give you that granularity there but for examples sake that’ll work. We’re gonna put in our pool service now this is where it gets interesting we’re gonna go in and assign the resource so I’m gonna be the pool boy for the day here and the quantity is going to be one because we’re doing one pool cleaning every week we go out. Now where most people miss is they do not put the rate in budgeted hours this is essential for good data in good data out long as it’s connected to this contract up here it will not build that out so what we’re gonna do is put a rate of let’s say 50 dollars per cleaning and it’s a one-hour cleaning for one person so that is gonna give us the good data for the reporting and production rates that you need we’re going to put that in and then we’re gonna go in and hit save. Now we can join and add the additional job we’re going to add a recurring job and let’s say this commercial property wants the lawn and landscape maintained on Mondays that’s where it falls into our schedule so I’m going to select part of the pool and lawn contract and we’re to scheduleit weekly on Monday. Once again we’re gonna grab our landscape maintenance initial start date is going to be let’s just say April 5th and it’s gonna start recurring April 5th or 6th so that’s the start date when we start recurring every weekly Monday we’re gonna sign screw, once again we want a budgeted timeso one of the biggest questions Mike should the prices and budgeted time equal the total of the total contract? Yes after you added this stuff up time so many visits for landscape maintenance and all the pool services you should get a total rate budget of time that equals basically a hundred percent so fictitiously I’m just gonna throw it 75 bucks in here and 1.25 hours now we goin and we hit save. Now the next question you’re probably gonna have is okay if we’re working on the pool that includes maintenance and we’re working on the lawn and that’s called landscape maintenance what happens if the pool pump breaks and we need to make a service call or what if we have some crepe myrtles or something like that a southern state that need to be pruned up and outside of the the contract or even storm damaged with palm trees you can go in and add a one time or any type of job here but basically it would not be part of the contract and then you put your whatever that is so you would just put in here the service sign it to a resource and put your rate and budgeted time in here and you can build this at the end the end of the day end of the weekend of the month depending how the default buildings set up in your Service Autopilot to bill out up and above the contract. Right now they’re gonna come out as two separate invoices with v3 invoicing you can merge them together but QuickBooks if you’re using it SA recommendation from my understanding with new v3 formats we do not want to merge them that’s going to cause some serious issues so best practice to stay safe is keep your additional billing separate than your monthly installment billing. Any comments or questions while I am live I’m happy to answer them or on the recorded version the next 24 to 48 hours but if you’re looking to set up an installment setup we want to go under contracts add a contract set up the installment billing whether it’s billed the month in its in of the month in advance the day and we want to associate the service underneath that with any additional restraints on hours or trips then we going to build the one time -recurring service associated to the contract and we want to rate in budget hours for production and job costing, comments questions throughout below Callahan’s Corner you ask the questions we answer live right here on Facebook See you again tomorrow