Locating a Job
There are a few ways to locate a job in Sera.
The first way to find a job is to navigate to the Jobs Report. To get there, navigate to Dispatch ---> Jobs.
Let's go to our navigation menu on the left, go down to dispatch, click on it, then click on Jobs.
This will open a report of all of your company's jobs in Sera.
A toggle at the top is available to view all jobs or filter through only jobs with accepted quotes.
Additionally, a filter for a specific opportunity status, (open, won, lost, and invalid) appears on the report. Anyone is able to check more than one at a time. Users can view a specific department or all departments. Users can filter by which technician is the opportunity owner (the technician that arrives on site first by default but can be manually edited to a different tech if needed). Again with this filter, users can view all or 1 at a time. In the date filter, users can click the x to clear to date to view all jobs, put in a date range, or select a single date by clicking on that date twice. In the search bar, users can search by Job number, Customer name, Address, Department, and Opportunity Owner and download this job report to Excel.
To open a job from this report, locate the job and click on the job number. This will load the job-specific page.
Another option to view a job is using the dispatch schedule board. To do this view your dispatch scheduled board. Click on the appointment, then click on View Appointment.
Doing this will bring you to the job-specific page.
Using the appointments report is another way to view a job in Sera. Using the navigation menu on the left click on Reports, then click on the Appointment List.
This report works much the same as the jobs report with the filters at the top, the search bar, and the download option. Locate the appointment that is tied to the job you are looking for and click on the job number. Most reports in Sera include a job number, which will open the job-specific page.
Aside from using the jobs report, the most common way to find a job is by going through the customer's account. Using the navigation menu on the left, click on customer service. Locate the customer by using the search bar and searching by customer name, address, primary email address, or primary phone number. Click on the customer's name or id number to open the customer account.
Scroll down towards the bottom to Service History, here you can type the appointment number in the search bar or filter by address, or just scroll down through the history of the job and click on the appointment number or job number, both of these will open the job.
Job Screen Overview
At the top of the job-specific screen is the customer's name and contact information. To the right of that you have opportunity information.
The owner of the job is automatically assigned to the first technician to arrive at the job. You can edit this if necessary by using the edit icon in this section. The opportunity status will be open, won, lost, or invalid. Open means that there are pending appointments on the job and that there are quotes that have been accepted but the work is not signed for. The opportunity would show lost when all appointments have been completed and there is no revenue on the invoice and no open or accepted quotes with revenue on the job. The opportunity would show won when there is an accepted quote with revenue on it, and the invoice work completed signature has been taken or manually accepted by the office.
If there is an accepted quote with revenue, but the task for that revenue has been marked as “does not count towards a win” in the pricebook, then this opportunity would show as a loss.
A user can manually change any loss to invalid if they do not want this to count as a loss for a technician even though there was no revenue collected. This is sometimes done for warranty work or prepaid maintenance (although you may choose to allow prepaid maintenance to count as a loss since a prepaid maintenance visit is an opportunity to sell).
The next section is commission. Your office staff can add commissions to a job by selecting the edit icon under commission, and selecting add commission. Then select the technician the commission is for, a description of the commission, if the commission will be a percentage of the total revenue or a flat dollar amount, and the percentage rate or flat dollar amount here. They can add additional commissions either for the same technician or other technicians. They can remove a commission by selecting the trash can. Once they have completed adding or removing commissions select save.
Appointments
On the appointments tab, any appointments scheduled on this job will appear along with the information for that appointment, the service category, appointment number, appointment status, when the appointment is scheduled for, the estimated duration of the appointment, whether or not the appointment was created by a staff member or the customer, and the date and time it was created. Below that you have the actual times section. Once a technician is assigned, their name will appear here. Once the technician runs through the job, the actual times will show up here and if they have a helper assigned to them mirroring their times, they will show up here as well. Once the job is completed, an admin can use the edit icon to edit the actual times and remove or add a crew member if needed. You can also select view or edit on schedule to get to the appointment editing modal to cancel, reschedule, or manually edit the technician's status on the appointment.
Above the view/edit section, is an add an appointment button. Any admin can use this to add an appointment to this job.
All of the appointments on the job that are added will be for the same invoice.
If a second invoice will be needed then a new job should be created by scheduling from the customer account and not on this job.
Below the appointments are the job notes. These notes can be added during scheduling. Users or technicians can add additional notes at any time on the job, and edit the notes made during scheduling. Technicians are able to add notes from the tech app. To make a new job note, click on add comment, enter the note, and select comment. The note will automatically be marked as not visible to the customer. If the company would like this note to be visible to the customer hover over the three dots to the right of the note, select it, and mark it visible to the customer. Doing this will add the notes to the invoice. If the eye has a slash through it, it is not visible to the customer, if there is no slash, it is visible to the customer.
Using the three dots to the right of the note, a user can select and mark it as important. This will keep this note at the top of the notes and have a red exclamation point to signify the note is important. You can also select edit and select the trash can to delete the note.
Just above all of the notes you have a standard and all toggle. Standard notes are the notes that were manually entered by either the customer or staff member. Changing the toggle to all will show the manually entered notes, as well as the system-generated notes, such as who created the appointment, who rescheduled an appointment, who took payment, and so on.
Quotes
Now let's take a look at the quotes section.
Quotes have five different statuses:
Accepted - this means that the quote has been approved by the customer and an invoice has been created for the work on the quote. This quote can now only be found on the job it was accepted on, and the customer account. It can no longer be viewed from another job.
Open - Once a quote has been proposed it is now open and is available to the customer for viewing in their customer portal, your staff can view quotes with this status on the customer account or from any job and are able to email the quote.
Draft - this status means the quote was just created or edited and is not available to the customer for viewing, your staff can view quotes with this status on the customer account or from any job.
Denied - this status means that the customer has declined moving forward with this quote at this time, your staff can view quotes with this status on the customer account or from any job.
Archived - This is the status assigned to a quote when the work is no longer needed at the home. For instance, if you present a customer with a quote to repair and a quote to replace and they replace, then you can archive the repair quote because this work is no longer needed. It will no longer show up on the customer account to be chosen for future repairs. However, if you choose to view all quotes you can still locate it and unarchive it in the future if necessary.
An Admin can add a quote to a job, so it will already be there for the technician when he arrives at the home or to assist the technician.
To add a quote to the job, make sure you have the job open and are on the jobs tab.
Select New Quote. Put in a name for the quote. Add a quote summary. The summary is an explanation of the quote. This information will be transferred to the invoice when the quote is signed. You can add any notes you want to appear on the invoice to the job notes and mark them as visible to the customer.
Just below the summary here you can see which pricing you are quoting. The default is set to always quote member pricing. This is the default because if you are selling memberships you should always quote member pricing and if they are not a member add the membership to the quote as well. When proposed to the customer the quote will show the member vs nonmember pricing and what they saved. If you would prefer to quote nonmember pricing just use these arrows to swap to nonmember that is the pricing that will be given for this quote and will compare against member pricing when proposed and show what the customer could have saved.
To add tasks to a quote, click on add line item, this will open your task picker. Each of these blue bubbles represents a section of tasks, you have your membership programs and each department you have in your Sera account. When you click on one it will narrow down the tasks to only view the tasks that are in that pricebook. You can also leave your view open to all and use the search to look for a specific task name. Click on the task you would like to add to the quote. If this task has upgrades or add-ons added to it in the pricebook you will see those options here. Either select add item or check the boxes for any add-ons you would like to include in this quote and select add item +(the number of additional items you checked). Now you can either search for and add more items to the quote or exit the task picker by clicking the x in the top right corner.
This will bring you back to your quote edit screen. You can edit the name of the item and/or the description of the item. The description does transfer to the invoice when the quote is accepted.
Down on the bottom right where you find your subtotal and total you can add, edit, or remove the late fee (this will show up if your company has selected to enable late fees in your company settings on the department). Add a promo code by clicking the blue add promo code and select which promo code you would like to add from the drop-down.
Only one promo code can be added per quote. Additional Promo Codes need additional quotes
Once you have added everything necessary to the quote select done.
The Quote Actions menu houses additional options. Clicking here will allow you to manually accept the quote. This will add the items on this quote to the invoice without the tech being on site and getting the customer's signature, when this is done you will be prompted to add a reason the quote was accepted manually.
Another option in the Quote Actions Menu is to clone a quote. This will create an exact duplicate of this quote and is perfect for allowing you to create the Good, Better, and Best options with ease.
Selecting clone quote will bring you back to your quotes section and you will see the quote you just created and just below that the cloned quote. Using the three dots on the right of the cloned quote, select edit. If the task you need to swap out is in expanded mode, go ahead and click the arrow icon to minimize it and this will show your task as a clickable link. This will open your task picker taking you straight to that task, if there is an upgrade option when you scroll down, click on it and select replace item. This will exchange the original item on the quote for this upgraded task. Select Done once you have upgraded all of the necessary tasks.
The next option is to propose the quote. Once a quote is proposed it moves into open status, the customer can now view this quote through the customer portal, and the company or tech can email it, and download it in PDF form. Once the quote has been proposed you can also still manually accept it, place it back into draft status where it cannot be viewed by the customer, decline the quote, and archive the quote.
Invoices
Once a quote has been accepted, an invoice will be created. All accepted quotes on the job will be added to the invoice. You can have as many accepted quotes on one invoice as you need to.
Select the invoice tab to view the invoice. A user can view the invoice number, job number, and an invoice status next to the invoice number on the left-hand side of the screen.
Four statuses are available and present for invoices:
Finalized - this indicates that the invoice either contains a work completed signature from the Tech App or a manual override to the work completed signature from the office. Invoices with a Finalized status will be included in your revenue numbers in your Revenue report.
Pending - this indicates that the invoice does not have a work completed signature or a manual override to that work completed signature from the office. It is not included in your revenue numbers and instead is found in your Pending Revenue report. It is in a status where currently it is available for editing.
Voided - this indicates that the invoice has been zereoed out and is no longer available for use.
Cancelled - this was an invoice that was cancelled as part of a previous process which generated credit memos upon updating invoices. This status is not available for use any longer.
Below that is the customer's name and billing address, then the service address. Also included is the order summary which is all of the tasks that have been approved, and on the left is the quantity. You will also notice this wrench icon on the invoice. This indicates a section to add equipment and tie it to this task. If the wrench icon is blue this means that it is necessary to add equipment information when this task is used. If the wrench is grey it is optional to add equipment information for this task. To add the equipment to the task select the wrench icon, select the drop-down arrow, select add/replace, fill in the necessary information, and select save.
On the invoice, an invoice actions button is available. Here you can approve the invoice, which indicates that the work has been completed for this invoice and there is no further work that needs to take place for this job to be complete. Accepted invoices become revenue, before being accepted anything on the invoice is pending revenue.
Below that, a user can accept payment for this invoice. They can edit the payment amount to accept a smaller payment than the balance due but you cannot take a payment higher than the balance due. Select the payment type. If someone other than you collected this payment you can select which person took the payment using this drop-down. Fill in the required information and select pay. If you are taking an external payment you also have the option to check the box to not notify the customer, this will not automatically send them the email when payment is taken. All other payment types send out the invoice upon taking payment. Once a payment has been added to an invoice, you can refund a payment using this menu or download the invoice to a PDF.
You can also edit the Invoice Summary. This is, by default, an amalgamation of the accepted quote summaries. To edit the description on the invoice, select the Edit Summary button and edit the presented information. This will not edit the quote summaries. Editing the Invoice Summary is considered final; approving an additional quote will not override manual changes to the Invoice Summary.
If the invoice is already in a Finalized state, you can re-allocate the revenue back to the original time period it was earned or set the Invoice Date back to the original date by selecting Edit Date. Please keep in mind, that if this invoice has already been batched, you will want to make that update also in your accounting software.
Should you need to change line items, dollar amounts of line items, apply discounts, etc., select the Edit Invoice option. This will re-open the Invoice for editing and allow you to go back to the quotes to make those necessary changes.
If you need to remove this invoice entirely, select Void Invoice. This will zero out all line items and remove the invoice from any balance due that the customer might owe to you.
If a payment on the invoice originally failed and there is a payment method on file, you can resubmit for payment and email the invoice.
To add photos or documents or to view any photos and documents that have already been added to a job, click on the photos and documents. A user can select add photo or add document to select a file from their computer to add. The customer can also add photos when booking their appointment through the widget or portal and the technician can add photos from the tech app.
In the documents section, a PDF will be added when a quote is signed and when the invoice is signed. Even if someone edited the quote or invoice, anyone will always be able to access the original signed version of the document.
The next tab is purchase orders. In Sera, purchase orders are for viewing/documentation purposes only. Your purchase orders will still need to be entered into your accounting software. If you choose to add POs through Sera you do that here on the job. You can select, and add a purchase order. Enter the amount, the type such as materials or subcontractor, the vendor, and which employee requested the PO and select save. You can then access this information through the job or through the PO’s report. Po’s can also be edited or voided by clicking on the PO number and clicking on the void toggle, or by editing the pieces of information you would like to edit and then click Save.
The final tab on a Job screen is the Job Times screen. This page tells you your total time sold vs. actual time worked. This information is also available on the top right of the screen, under Job Efficiency. Every appointment and technician's individual times on this job are combined to create the actual time. Additional information can be found on the Job Times Report in the Reports list.
Building a Jobless Quote
An admin has the ability to create a jobless quote/invoice. This is sometimes done for membership purchases or an in-office sale of a part. To do this open the customer account, select Quotes on the customer account.
Follow the steps we went over above: select new quote, add the task, select done then on the quote actions, select create invoice. Selecting Create Invoice will create an automatically completed invoice. Since there is no work to be done the invoice does not need a work completed signature, the acceptance of the quote is the acknowledgment of acceptance of the invoice. To collect payment for this invoice you will then click on the invoice tab, and click on the invoice number. Select invoice actions and accept payment.