Getting Started Guide
Summary​
This video walks you through how JobStaq was designed to be used in a business where office staff manage the schedule of several engineers.
Transcript​
Introduction​
Welcome to JobStaq. This video will run you through the basics of how JobStaq can be used for businesses with office staff managing engineers on the road, walking you through from a request from a customer to job completion. If you’re a sole-trader who plans to manage everything from your phone, we’d advise you to check out our sole-trader introduction guide instead. Our library of training materials includes more in-depth explanations of individual features for when you’re ready to go into more depth on certain parts of JobStaq.
We’ll begin this tutorial in the web interface - the primary way your office staff will interact with JobStaq.
When a customer reaches out to request some work to be carried out at their property, you’ll first need to create a record for the customer, or locate the existing customer’s record.
The search input in the navigation bar can be used to search through a number of record types in your account, such as customers, addresses, and notes. If you are unable to locate an existing customer, or know this customer is new, you can use the plus icon next to the search bar in order to create a new record.
Here you can enter the contact details you've been provided by the customer. We'll check your database and alert you if these details match an existing record when saving, to avoid duplicate records being created.
Customer & property database​
We're now on the customer details page. At the top of the page, you'll see all contact details for the customer, and can make changes if required. Below this section, there are a number of tabs to view data associated with the customer.
The notes tab lets you store additional details which there aren't any dedicated fields for.
The tasks tab lets you create checklist items which need to be carried out in the future.
The jobs tab gives you an overview of all work you've carried our for the customer, with details of the type of work, address, and status of the job.
The communications tab lets you see a history of all communications that you've sent to the customer through JobStaq via email, SMS, or letter. You can see the status of all communications to track if the customer has received or opened a message.
The quotes and invoices tab lists all financial documents that are associated with this customer. At the top right, you'll see a summary of the total paid and unpaid balance across all invoices belonging to the customer.
Finally, the properties tab shows you a list of all addresses associated with the customer, how the customer is related to this address - for example, being the landlord - with a star icon indicating the customer's primary address. From here, we'll link a new property to the customer to create a new job against.
JobStaq provides address search functionality so you can quickly fill out all parts of the address.
The layout of the property page is similar to the customer page, with details of the address at the top, and tabs to view associated data below. The property's location is indicated on a map, with a link to view the property on Google Street View.
We'll navigate to the jobs tab, and then click the create job button to create a job against this property. You alternatively have the option to create the job from the properties tab on the customer page we were previously on.
Creating a job​
You can provide any details here to explain the type of work to be carried out, and can update customer and property details if needed, for example, if a tenant should be the contact customer for the work, and the landlord should be the point of contact for quotes and invoices.
We'll now go ahead and raise a quote for this job - although for smaller pieces of work, the verbal quote field can be used to quickly store the agreed price, and you can skip ahead to scheduling an event for the job on the calendar.
When creating a quote or invoice, JobStaq gives you the options to copy data from another quote on the job, or from a quote template you can configure in your settings, to speed up the process of raising quotes for common types of work.
You can also create templates for individual items to add to quotes and invoices - for example, parts that you frequently install. We'll modify this quote to add an additional item from a template before sending it off to the customer.
You can preview the PDF version of the quote before you send it to the customer, or download it if you want to print it out or send it to the customer outside of JobStaq. The quote will automatically be branded with your company details and logo.
We'll issue this quote through JobStaq by email, and use a communication template, which you can customise in your account settings, to quickly fill the email subject and body. This will automatically mark the quote as issued, and update the job status to indicate a quote has been sent, to help you track any quotes in your account that still need to be finalised and issued to the customer.
Customer Quote Portal​
In the email we sent to this customer, a link was included to view the invoice online. If you choose to use this feature, this is what the customer will see on the webpage. They will be able to view all quote details, download the PDF version, as well as accept or reject the quote online.
In this case, the customer is accepting the quote. Once they've accepted it, the quote creator will receive a notification that the customer has done this via the customer portal, and the job and quote status will have updated to quote accepted, indicating the job is waiting on your office staff to schedule an event to complete the work.
Scheduling an event​
We'll navigate to the events tab on the job details page, and click the Create Event button. There are a number of ways you can use JobStaq to assign events to your engineers, but when getting started, we recommend using the Open calendar option, which will take you to the calendar page.
Here, you can see a week view of the schedule for each of your engineers. You're able to use the options in the calendar sidebar to change the active view between month, week, and day - and can click on the date headers on the calendar to navigate to the day view.
On the day view of the calendar, you can optionally show a map which indicates the locations of each of the currently scheduled jobs, with a plus icon showing the location of the property you are scheduling work for. Once you've identified a suitable slot to place the work into, move your mouse cursor to the start time on the row of the engineer you want to assign the event to, and hold down and drag until your cursor reaches the end time. A popup will open allowing you to finalise details of the event and add any notes.
From here, we can send out a confirmation message to the customer to let them know their job has been scheduled, and we'll make use of a communication template to automatically complete the message body again.
That's all the work required from the office side until an engineer has attended the customer's property to complete the work, so we'll now switch over to the JobStaq mobile app - available on iOS and Android - to demonstrate how an engineer interacts with JobStaq.
Mobile app for engineers​
Once logged in to an account, the app home screen presents a list of options available.
You're able to control what data users in your account have access to, so the options available here will vary based on the employee's role.
Our app is designed to work offline-first, so that no matter whether your engineers have signal, they are able to view details of their schedule, and make any required changes. This is referred to as "syncing". Syncing automatically happens in the background, but you're also able to manually run a sync if you know data is available which needs downloading or uploading to the cloud.
To view a list of events assigned to the engineer, we'll select the "job schedule" option from the home screen. This will take us to a list of the engineer's upcoming events, with an option to view historic events if the engineer needs to go back to a previous event to add any missing data.
We'll click into the event for the job we created earlier, and the engineer will be able to see all details provided by office staff to inform them of the work required to complete the job.
When the engineer is ready to attend this property, they click the "depart" button. This will launch their preferred maps app to provide directions to the site. We'll now click the "arrive" button to indicate that the engineer is ready to carry out the job.
Through the actions tab, engineers can create new records associated with the job. We'll firstly upload a photo of the job, which can be used to provide proof of work, or to capture any useful information required for further callouts.
Next, we'll create a form. JobStaq provides a range of industry-standard forms for you to complete digitally, and you're able to create custom forms to capture any data specific to your needs.
When appliances are referenced on forms, their details are stored against the job's property, so that details don't need to be re-entered on subsequent visits to the site.
For types of work which require renewals for compliance reasons, you're able to set renewal dates on certificates, and JobStaq can send automatic reminders on your behalf to customers, to save you time and generate repeat business.
Before completing this event, we'll leave a note to indicate any issues encountered on site which can be used to inform office staff if another event requires scheduling in order to complete the agreed work. Everything required for this event has now been performed, so the engineer can click the "complete" button, which will move the event to their completed list, and update the job status to indicate that all events have been completed, and the job is ready for invoicing.
Invoicing a job​
On the dashboard of the JobStaq web interface, we provide a link to jobs requiring attention from office staff. We'll use this to identify jobs that are ready to be invoiced.
Clicking into this view, we'll see the job our engineer just attended has a status of callout completed. We can enter the job to view the details that the engineer has provided, and use these to raise an invoice for the work.
For any forms created, you'll be able to preview the generated documents here - which are branded with your company logo and colour scheme.
We can navigate to the quotes and invoices tab, click the create button, and select the invoice document type. In the create invoice popup, you'll see the option to copy the invoice from the job's quote, in addition to the templates defined in your settings.
Any changes to the invoice can be made here, before issuing it to the customer. You have the option to attach any of the generated forms or saved files alongside the invoice.
JobStaq integrates with a number of accounting software packages, so if you're using one we support and have it connected to your account, at this stage we'll create a copy of the invoice there.
Invoice payments can either be manually recorded, synced from your accounting software during reconciliation, or automatically created when using an online payment provider supported by JobStaq on the customer portal.
Conclusion​
Thank you for taking the time to learn about the suggested flow for using JobStaq for businesses with office staff and engineers. We hope that this provides a good starting point to explore the software yourself during your free trial.
Our documentation site provides more in-depth tutorials of how to use each of the features showcased in this video to help you understand the more advanced features offered, and our support team is always on hand to assist with any questions you may have.