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Ignition Encyclopedia – Basic Definitions

At-A-Glance

Every are in the System is organized similarly, with an area on the top with big blocks of numbers and information, this is the At-a-Glance section.  It regroups in simple buckets all the similar types of items which should be attended to, providing gracefully each of your staff members an Inbox and Outbox of work to be performed.  This includes

  • All the incoming Visit Reports (Field Slips) coming in from Techs in the field;
  • All the verified Visit Reports which need to be invoiced;
  • All the Draft Invoices which need to be finalized before being sent out;
  • All of the Service Issues in the Field which have not been closed out, where a Customer still has an outstanding problem;
  • All the Visits that need to be assigned or reassigned;
  • Any flagged Visits or Visit Reports, so your Techs can let you know quickly of an issue in the field.  

The Customer Profile is a fully-featured tool very usefully centralizing all the helpful information when you have a Customer on the Phone.

Customer Portal

Each Customer has access to a full-feature Customer Portal where they can have access to the following information and functionality::

  • Bill Pay capability, including a Wallet for them to store their Payment Methods;
  • Basic information including phone numbers, email addresses, service and billing address;
  • Invoice and Payment activity, including a full Billing History from the start of the relationship;
  • Full past visit details will service history;
  • Ability to contact you with service requests, questions or concerns.

The Customer Profile is a fully-featured tool very usefully centralizing all the helpful information when you have a Customer on the Phone.

Customer Profile

Each Customer has an extensive Customer Profile in Ignition.  By Clicking on the Customer row in your Customer table, you will have access to the following information and functionality:

  • Basic information including phone numbers, email addresses, service and billing address;
  • Invoice and Payment activity, including a full Billing History from the start of the relationship, and the ability to generate a Billing Statement PDF for late payers;
  • Customer Account Balances, including what they owe at this time and potential amount including unbilled work;
  • Invitation and registration to the Customer Portal;
  • Future and Past visit details will full service history;
  • Images and Videos associated with this Customer

The Customer Profile is a fully-featured tool very usefully centralizing all the helpful information when you have a Customer on the Phone.

Drag-and-Drop (Scheduling)

You can drag-and-drop any visit in the Scheduler (Today and Calendar view) in order to reassign it or change the day.  You can also reorder the visits in each Technicians daily schedule to reflect a desired order in which the Visits should be performed.  

Field Slips

Field Slips are Visit Reports listing the Services performed, Products used and Information (Statistics) collected during the visit.  They can be generated in three distinct ways:

  • Created by converting a Scheduled Visit, which will allow the Technician to use a pre-loaded checklist, usually from the Mobile App
  • Created from scratch in the App, usually by loading the Products, Services and Statistics grouped in a Visit Type
  • Created from the Web, similarly, as a backup to field operations.  This is usually done if a visit was not logged by a Tech in the field 

Converting Visits to Field Slips

Converting an existing Visit to Field Slip (Visit Report) is probably the most likely way that Technicians will report in their work in the field.  This usually means that:

  • A Visit has been schedule (usually from a master Visit Series) listing all the work to be done;
  • Technician upon arriving to the job will review the work details;
  • When the job is completed, they will convert the Visit to a Field Slip, checking off what was listed and adding/removing any details as needed before sending it in for review;
  • All this usually happens in the Mobile App, but can also be done in the Web Admin.

Global Search

You can use the MAGNIFYING GLASS Icon in the header to look for anything in Ignition.  When you type in a Customer name or amount, the system will return any matching item, including:

  • Past or future Visit;
  • Customer;
  • Invoice, Estimate or Payment;
  • Products, Services or Statistics.

Hover (Whole System)

In many places throughout Ignition you can hover over items in order to get more contextual information.  This includes:

  • Hover over a Field Slips to see its value (in dollars);
  • Hover over a Visit to see all the Customer details and work to be performed;
  • Hover over Notes to expand from the summary visible in tables
  • Hover over an Invoice to see QuickBooks synchronization details

Invoice Items

Invoice Items are used to make important adjustment to Invoices.  They are usually synched in from QuickBooks if that’s your setup but can also be created to:

  • Create a Sales Tax to be applied on your invoice.

My Business and Settings

My Business and the Settings panel is where you can setup a lot of the general information you will use across the system.  These include:

  • Managing your Users, including setting their permissions and what they can see;
  • Setup your Bank account (Stripe) and Accounting integration;
  • Setup your Visit Types to save you from pretty much any retyping ever again;
  • All your payments received as well as Bank Account payouts (Stripe);
  • Upload your Logo, set your Invoice address and signature;
  • Manage your Tags (See Tags).

Visit Notification can be a very important part of keeping your Customer satisfied as it keeps them in the loop.  And, of course, for those Customers who don’t want to be bothered, this feature can be turned off an a per-Customer basis.

Quick Actions

In the header you will see a link to Quick Actions.  These include:

  • See your Customer with Open Invoices;
  • See today’s visit activity ;
  • See today’s invoicing activity;
  • Manage Customized pricing..

Reports

Reports are a powerful way to analyze your information as you collect it from using Ignition throughout your Company.  These include:

  • See your Top Customer with geographical breakdown, visit and revenue type breakdown;
  • See your best-selling Services and Products, including average price charged over all your billing;
  • Staff statistics including number of visits performed, by type;
  • All your payments received as well as Bank Account payouts (Stripe);
  • QuickBooks reconciliation, which is very important in keeping your accounting reconciled.

Visit Notification can be a very important part of keeping your Customer satisfied as it keeps them in the loop.  And, of course, for those Customers who don’t want to be bothered, this feature can be turned off an a per-Customer basis.

Tags

Tags are an extremely powerful tool in managing your Customer, Visits and Media (images, videos).  They allow you to create ways to recognize all the items which are similar or can be tagged with a specific type, problem, system, billing preference or any other way you want to track your customers and work.  Examples include

  • Tag Customer who want to be billed monthly;
  • Tag Customer who you visit weekly;
  • Tag Customer who have/have not signed a Contract, those who should be billed a la carte as opposed to seasonally.
  • Tag Customers who are due for a service price increase;
  • Tag difficult Customers, those who have dogs, those who want to be notified in advance
  • Tag Images of Heaters;
  • Tag Images of work you’ve done you’d like to use in your marketing materials.

Everyone in the Company will see these tags anytime they work with this Customer, from the Tech in the field to the Accountant preparing their billing to the person answering the main phone line.

Visit Notification

A Visit Notification email is generated when a Visit Report (Field Slip) is reviewed for accuracy (Reviewed Status).   This email will contain a number of useful pieces of information, including

  • Work Performed (Text description)
  • Services Performed, from your Service list.
  • Products deployed, from your Product list.
  • Information collected (Statistics)

Visit Notification can be a very important part of keeping your Customer satisfied as it keeps them in the loop.  And, of course, for those Customers who don’t want to be bothered, this feature can be turned off an a per-Customer basis.

Visit Types

A Visit Type allows you to define kinds of visits you perform for Customers where you generally perform the same work.  In Ignition that means that each Visit Type is defined by a group of:

  • Work to be Performed (Text description)
  • Services to be Performed, from your Service list.
  • Products used or deployed, from your Product list.
  • Information collected (Statistics)

You can create as many Visit Types as you wish. Each Visit type includes specific Notes, Services, Products and Statistics which are usually performed during a Visit of this Type.   Example:  A Spa Maintenance Visit Type will include a text description for the Tech of the work to be done and the Services likely to be billed out.  

Visit Types can save you a lot of time when scheduling Visits or creating Visit Reports (Field Slips) as they automatically load up all the items you are going to charge or list in your Customer invoice or report to your Customer in the Visit Notifications.

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