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Introduction

The process of “entering a service agreement” is the recording of a service agreement in Total Office Manager.  This is typically done directly after the service agreement is sold to the customer.  After completing a sales form which includes a service agreement, the user is reminded that the “paperwork” should be completed.  If a new service agreement is opted for instead of editing an existing agreement, the “Add Service Agreement” form appears and is used to enter the agreement into the program.

Occasionally a service agreement may need to be entered (recorded) in the program on its own, without recording the actual sale of the agreement.  This is especially true of new users of the program who may want to enter all of their customer’s existing service agreements, while not concerned with entering the sale on which the agreement was sold.  When this is the case, open the “Add Service Agreement” form from the main menu by clicking Customers > New Service Agreement. (or use the Ctrl+M keyboard shortcut).

Regardless of how one arrives at the “Add Service Agreement” form, it is used as follows.

Entering a Service Agreement

The “Add Service Agreement” form is used to enter (record) a customer’s service agreement in Total Office Manager.  If the form appears as a result of selling an agreement, the data fields will be pre-populated with information brought forward from the sale itself.  If the form was opened straight from the main menu in order to directly enter a customer’s service agreement into the system, the data fields will have to be completed by the user as follows:

Field and Button Definitions – Add Service Agreement Form

  • Service Agreement # – Proposes the next available service agreement serial number.  This number may be edited as necessary.
  • Customer – Select from the drop-down list the customer who owns the service agreement.
  • Type – Select from the drop-down list the type of service agreement the customer owns.
  • Description – The description field will automatically populate, based on what type of service agreement was selected.  This data may be edited as necessary.
  • Bill To Address – Tick this radio button to display the billing address of the customer.
  • Work Address – Tick this radio button to display the address where work is to be performed.
  • Term Begins – Proposes the term beginning date, which may be adjusted as necessary.
  • Term Ends – Displays the ending date of the service agreement, as calculated from other term information data.  This date may be overridden if necessary by using the “Override” checkbox.
  • Override – When ticked, allows the user to modify the “Term Ends” date for the service agreement.
  • Planned Visits – Displays the number of planned maintenance visits which come with the service agreement.
  • Term (Months) – Displays the length of the service agreement in months.
  • Completed – Displays the number of Planned Visits (see above) which may already be complete.
  • Not Completed – Displays the number of Planned Visits (see above) which are not yet complete.
  • Other – Displays the number of additional work orders covered under the service agreement plan which are not original planned maintenance visits.  
    • For example, say that a service agreement customer has two planned work orders; one for May 1st and one for October 1st.  If a work order is created on June 25th for a problem with covered equipment, it would be an “Other” work order.  The customer would still receive the benefits from owning the service agreement (like a discount, or priority scheduling), but the work order is not part of the original planned work orders, so it is reported in the “Other” field.  When manually created work orders are associated to an existing service agreement (by using the “Serv Agmt” drop-down list) they will appear in the service agreement’s “Other” field.
  • Inactivate – Tick this checkbox to make the service agreement inactive.  This is the recommended option instead of deleting a service agreement altogether.
  • Save & Close – Saves and exits the form.
  • Save & New – Saves the form and opens a new one.
  • Cancel – Exits the form without saving.
  • Menu | Save – Manually saves the form.
  • Menu | Revert – Dismisses any recent changes and returns the information contained when last saved.  It is the same as canceling the record without saving changes, then re-opening the record.
  • Menu | Delete – Permanently deletes the record from the system.  This function may not always be available because of historical transactions in which it may be involved.  Inactivation is the recommended alternative.
  • Menu | Select Equipment – Opens a customer equipment list filtered to display only that customer’s equipment.  Choose the equipment covered under the service agreement by ticking its checkbox.  Equipment appearing in the list comes from the master Customer Equipment List (see related topics below, for more information).
  • Menu | Copy – Creates a copy of the original service agreement, except with a currently Service Agreement #.  This copy can then be modified as necessary, rather that creating a brand new record from scratch.
  • Menu | Notes – Opens the notepad for that service agreement.  A virtually unlimited amount of notes can be entered here.  See related topics below, for more information.
  • Menu | Create | Work Order – Used to create one planned maintenance work order, instead of using the “Planned Maintenance” form to create multiple work orders at once as described below.
  • Menu | Create | Planned Maintenance – Opens the “Planned Maintenance” form, which is easily used to create all of the planned maintenance work orders for a particular service agreement at once.  See the section “Creating Planned Work Orders” below for detailed usage of the form.
  • Menu | Create | Invoice (or Sale, Credit, Estimate) – Provides direct access from this form to create a new invoice, sale, credit memo, or estimate.  Service Agreement information along with customer data will pre-populate whatever form is created from this particular point.
  • Menu | Customer | Customer History – Provides convenient access to the customer’s History form.
  • Menu | Customer | Edit Customer – Provides convenient access to the customer’s Customer:Job Form.
  • Menu | Customer | Contact Log –  Provides convenient access to the customer’s Contact Log.

Creating Planned Work Orders

It is easy to generate the planned maintenance visits before closing the “Add Service Agreement” window.  To create the planned work orders use the menu button command Menu | Create | Planned Maintenance.  The “Planned Maintenance” window will appear.

The Planned Maintenance window is used to create all of the planned work orders for the service agreement using one simple form.  It proposes work orders based on information brought forward from the “Add Service Agreement” form.

Field and Button Definitions in the Planned Maintenance Window

  • Customer – Displays the customer for whom the planned maintenance work orders will be created.
  • Service Agreement # – Displays the “serial number” of the customer’s service agreement.
  • Planned Visits – Displays the number of planned maintenance visits which come with the service agreement.
  • Term (Months) – Displays the length of the service agreement in months.
  • Term Begins – Displays the starting date of the service agreement.
  • Term Ends – Displays the ending date of the service agreement.
  • Completed (display) – Displays the number of Planned Visits (see above) which may already be complete.
  • Not Completed – Displays the number of Planned Visits (see above) which are not yet complete.
  • Other – Displays the number of any additional work orders which are covered under the service agreement plan, but not part of the original planned maintenance visits.  For example, say that a service agreement customer has two planned work orders; one for May 1st and one for October 1st.  If for some reason a work order is created for a covered equipment problem on June 25th, this would be an “Other” work order and be reported here.  When creating a work order manually, it can be associated to an existing service agreement by selecting the service agreement from the “Serv Agmt” drop-down list.
  • Priority – Used to set a priority of Low, Medium, or High on the planned work orders.
  • Work Order Type – Used to select a work order type for the planned visits.  It is strongly recommended that this be left at “Planned Maintenance” unless a compelling reason to do otherwise exists.
  • Assigned To – Used to select the technician to whom the work orders will be assigned, if known.  This field is not mandatory.  Leave it blank if it is not known which technician will be assigned the work orders.
  • Add Service Agreement Notes to Work Order Notes – Tick this checkbox to have any service agreement notes added to pending work order notes.
  • Proposed Work Orders Grid – This area of the Planned Maintenance window displays the work orders proposed by the form.  Proposals may be edited as necessary.
  • Create Work Order – The Create Work Order column in not titled, but lies just left of the “MM/DD/YYYY” column in the proposed work orders grid.  When the OK button is clicked, a work order will be created for each ticked checkbox.  Any un-ticked proposals will be ignored when the planned maintenance visits are created.
  • MM/DD/YYYY – Displays the proposed date of each work order to be created.  The proposed dates may be edited as necessary.  The date of the first work order is always the current date, because the best chance of selling a service agreement to a customer is on-site through a well-trained technician using the service agreement discount as an enticement.  See the bullet point “Complete (grid)” below for more details.
  • Completed (grid) – When this checkbox is ticked, the proposed work order will not only be created, but also marked as completed in one step.  Well-trained technicians are adept at selling service agreements in the field because they can entice customers with, “a discount on today’s work if you’d like to invest in our ‘XYZ’ service agreement right now).  Thus, the customer gets to take immediate advantage of the service agreement discount, and you get a new participant in your service agreement program.  Of course the immediate work performed will count as the first planned maintenance visit.  This is why the first planned work order in the grid is always proposed with the current date.  The Completedcheckbox is then used as a time saver.  Simply tick the checkbox instead of manually locating the work order in the work order list and taking the steps to mark its status as completed in a separate action.
  • OK – Creates the planned maintenance work orders based on the form’s settings, then exits.
  • Auto – Resets the proposed work order grid area of the Planned Maintenance window to its originally proposed dates and conditions.
  • Exit – Closes the form without creating any planned maintenance work orders.

After setting up the Planned Maintenance form and clicking OK, a confirmation window will appear, reporting the successful creation of new work orders.  You will then be returned to the “Add Service Agreement” window, where the “Completed” and “Not Completed” fields will display updated information based on the work orders just created.  When finished reviewing and editing information, save & close the window.