We are proud to launch our first Okappy Job Management Newsletter ‘What’s new in the Q‘ which provides quarterly updates on any new features, exciting news in the company and any tips which we believe could add value to your business.
Our mission is to provide companies with Real-time Visibility over their Field Workers and Jobs. Allowing you to streamline your operations whilst freeing up time and reducing your costs. How do we do this?
So…What’s new in the Q
New features
We’ve been busy listening to your comments and suggestions and looking at ways we can make your lives easier. New features this quarter include:
Useful tips
Do you know the Top 5 reasons our customers give for getting rid of paper job sheets?
1) Missing, late or incorrect invoices – the biggest drivers for our customers. Is it one of yours too? This is often a direct cost to the bottom line and can be eradicated by moving over to a paperless job sheet system.
2) Not enough time in the day – not only is it inefficient to manually fill in job sheets, you then spend time collating the info, inputting them in the system. Surely time can be better spent on business growth, training or even go home on time.
3) Forgotten information – rather than scribbling down on a bit of paper, it’s good practice to have all key information stored in ONE centralised system. Saving time searching and retrieving job information. It’s always good to have the information to hand when it comes to disputes with customers/ employees.
4) Create first class customer and employee relations – no more chasing phone calls, every party in the chain can see the job status in real-time. You can also send instant messages from your desktop, tablet or mobile to improve communication.
5) It’s environmentally friendly after all – let’s go green!
Find out more about AutoAlert’s job sheet software and how it could benefit your business.
Upcoming focus
If you would like to contribute to our newsletter, or have any suggestions of what you’d like to see covered, then get in touch.
Check out our Instant messaging demo to see how AutoAlert can help you improve communications with your engineers, sub-contactors and customers.
Check out our quick demo video which gives a brief introduction to our web and mobile based instant messaging application.
https://youtu.be/mjbYa4TN9pI&rel=0&w=560&h=400&showinfo=0&theme=light&enablejsapi=1
Find out more about AutoAlert Instant Messaging or Sign up to AutoAlert.
Check out Okappy’s job management demo to see how Okappy’s job sheet software can help your business you get rid of paper job sheets, see what’s going on with your jobs and make sure invoices are sent on time and with the correct information.
Check out our quick demo video which gives a brief introduction to our web and mobile based job management application.
https://youtu.be/Tle1pjhU9H0&rel=0&w=560&h=400&showinfo=0&theme=light&enablejsapi=1
Find out more about Okappy Job Sheet Software or Sign up to Okappy Job Management.
The Apple watch is coming, but will it make much of an impact? The jury is out, there’s already lots of speculation about whether it will have any real value. We decided to have a look at it from the perspective of a small businesses and whether it will make an impact on your working life.
The Apple Watch is the latest bit of technology that aims to encroach on the mythical personal device; a piece of equipment that integrates with your life to smooth over the bumps that get in the way of your day. Typically, the kind of bumps imagined are, to be honest, pretty peripheral obstacles. How to get the most out of your run. How to keep in contact with your better half. How to get that night out organised. But for the average Joe, working to make a living, bumps can be very real and, on occasion, extremely intrusive.
Take a small business owner as an example, an electrician perhaps, who runs a small outfit employing five guys. If he’s lucky and his marketing is up to scratch, he’ll have his men out on jobs eight hours a day, five days a week. He’ll have work coming on a steady basis and is able to plan a timetable for the day and week ahead. But then a call arrives that he needs to respond to. A long-standing customer has had all his circuits blow and his sales office is down. He’s already working on a job himself that’s thirty miles away so he has to send one of his employees to sort it out. But which one? Who’s nearest? Who’s almost finished the job? Who’s up a ladder sorting out a junction box and is unable to pick his phone. With certain limitations, this is the kind of situation that the Apple Watch is able to cope with.
So he’s received the emergency call, taken on his Apple Watch with the use of Blue Tooth mic and earpiece. Apple’s Siri, a voice activated ‘helper’, he starts running through his employees, checking how they’re doing and when they might be ready to move on to the emergency. The third call finds his man walking out to the van, ready to go to his next job. Satisfied that this is his best option, the boss sends over the contact information for the sales office, while the employee sends back the contact for the next job. Another phone call to say that there will be a slight delay for the scheduled job and the re-assignment is complete.
All well and good, but what if the third employee is actually fifty miles from the emergency and the second employee, who hasn’t quite finished his job, would be nearer. This is a solvable problem with GPS, but here is where the Apple Watch doesn’t quite meet the need because it doesn’t come with its own GPS positioner. It can work it out, but it needs to talk to an iPhone first. So in order for the boss to make a smart decision based on GPS, he needs to be carrying his phone along with his Apple Watch.
It’s this kind of scenario that exposes the limitations. This doesn’t mean to say that for the small firm of electricians it wouldn’t have its uses. Remember that employee who’s at the top of a ladder fixing the junction box. Well imagine he comes up with a problem that he can’t work out. He needs to phone his boss for a bit of advice but he doesn’t want to go hands free from the ladder. With an Apple Watch, he only has to lean towards his wrist and ask Siri to phone his boss. With his Blue Tooth mic and ear piece his boss is soon talking into his ear, taking him through the solution. He could even sketch out a wiring configuration that would pop up on the screen.
It’s up to companies like us to create apps for new devices such as the Apple Watch, but it takes the imagination of the average user to work out how it might be applicable for everyday situations. If a daily run is the only sensible use Apple’s device might be used for, it hardly makes it worth the price. But if it saves a valued customer from going to a competitor, then it surely pays for itself over the course of a year. Or you could use it to tell the time. It does that very accurately.
We’re continually looking at new ways to make our customers lives easier. Watch this space by following us on twitter @autoalert, for all our latest developments.
Job sheets are used in many in industries such as electrical contracting, plumbing and facilities management. They are used to send job details to workers out in the field and to get information back about the work done on each job.
In most cases, job sheets are printed off, handed to an engineer and they have to then fill out the job sheet by hand once the job is complete – or days later.
No one likes doing admin, it takes up time which you could be using to grow your business and if information is missing or hard to read then this can lead to delays or errors when invoicing.
Okappy has been championing electronic job sheets as a way to cut out paperwork, make life easier and above all cut the cost of admin or missing invoices.
An electronic job sheet is simply a way to get rid of paper, replacing it with a form on a computer, tablet or mobile phone which can be filled out by you and your engineers.
Typically a job sheet will have two parts,
1) Details of the job including the address, contact details and any pertinent information about what work is required.
2) A work sheet which your engineer can complete with the details of what has been done.
With Okappy’s Job Sheet software, customers typically populate the details of the job with the customer address and telephone number along with any job details. They then allocate the jobs to their engineers or subcontractors.
The engineer can see their list of jobs on their phone and can simply click on the job to get more details. They can get directions and easily ring or text the customer.
Once the job is complete, the engineer can enter details of the work done and click complete.
That’s it, no more duplicating information, no more chasing engineers to get your job sheets back and no more missing, incomplete or ineligible information.
No more copying information from one piece of paper to another
Using electronic job sheet can mean an end to copying data from one piece of paper to another.
With Okappy’s connected approach, you don’t even need to add the job details yourself. You can connect to your customer, then they can enter the job straight into the system rather than sending you a fax or email and you having to write out the job sheet.
As the main details are already included in the job sheet, your engineer doesn’t have to re-write the details. They can concentrate on getting the job done, only entering the details of the work carried out.
Instantaneous updates
As soon as you allocate your job to an engineer they can view the details on their phone, no more waiting around each morning to get their job sheets, and no need to come back to the office if a new job comes in.
They can also update the job sheet at the click of a button, which not only means less admin for them, you also get to see the status of the job as its updated.
No more missing information
Trying to decipher handwritten information is often near impossible. This can be compounded if your engineer is busy or working in a difficult or dirty location. Information also gets forgotten, especially if you’re job sheets are filled out at the end of the week or even later.
This can lead to disputes with your customers, it can delay the raising of invoices or mean that you cannot invoice for the full amount of work done.
Ongoing improvements
Putting your information into electronic form also means that you can better analysis what work has been done over time. This may be required by particular customers but could also help you streamline and improve your business allowing you to better allocate resources and concentrate on the jobs that add the most to your bottom line.
No more missed invoices
One of the biggest differences our customers talk about is improvements to invoicing.
If job sheets are delayed, or even worse, missed altogether then this can lead to delays or missing invoices.
By automating the process and putting job sheets on your phone, you can raise your invoices as soon as your jobs are complete and automatically include the information required by your customer.
This ensures that invoices are not missed, it helps ensure they are correct and can speed up the time it takes for you to get your invoices out.
Find out more about Okappy Job Sheet software and how it can help your business.
As electricians, plumbers and property developers do more and more jobs through job management software, its important that you software has filters so that you can see the latest 5 jobs, 50 jobs or 100.
With Okappys job sheet software, there are three new filters to help you more easily see the information that matters.
From within Okappy, simply click on the filter button from the jobs management page and then select Latest 5 jobs, Latest 50 jobs or Latest 100 jobs. Of course, the other filters are still there so you can concentrate on your jobs for today, outstanding jobs, future jobs etc.
Find out more about Okappy’s job management software.
With AutoAlert, your invoice is immediately available to your customer as soon as you raise it. No more invoices lost in the post, no more delayed payments and no more unhappy Finance Directors!
However, sometimes you may also need to send the invoice by email. This can also be done easily from your desktop.
Following is our quick start guide of how to email an invoice to your customer or another person.
To email an invoice, simply go to your invoices page by clicking on Invoices in the tab bar (if you have the option enabled) or click Jobs to go to your jobs page. Then click the Invoices button.
Select the invoice that you want to email and click the more icon (
).
A pop up box will be displayed.
They will get an email with a link to the invoice which they can click on. If they are logged into AutoAlert, then they can view their other invoices and pay the invoice straight away.
Find out more about AutoAlert Job Management.
With AutoAlert you can easily create a job template to determine what information is required for each job and what information is shared with your engineers and sub-contractors.
When you first set up your account and add a job, you will see the standard job template.
This has information such as the customer, job description and a job reference.
If you need more detailed information i.e., if you’re an electrician and need to know information such as the number of rooms affected, any health and safety issues and contact details at the site, then you can switch to one of our other job templates.
You can change to a different job template in one of the following ways:
From there, scroll down to the Default Job Type and select a template which works for your company.
If you have specific requirements for your jobs, and non of the standard job templates work for you, then you can create your own job templates.
To create your own job template, click Advanced Job Settings from the job screen and select Create new template.
From there, add a name for your template then enter details for each field that you need.
The default for each field is already shown, but this can be changed say from PolicyHolderFirstName to First name.
To check the format for each field, hover over the information icon ().
Once you are happy with the fields you want displayed in your job template, click Create job template.
Find out more about AutoAlert Job Management.
0207 099 5698