More flexibility applying charges
It is now easier to apply charges on orders and jobs on the Urbanise platform. There are 3 ways to manually add additional charges to a customer’s account.
Account charges – used for general charges, applied from the billing screen of the account account-charge
Order charges – when you need to charge extra for an order, whether it is a package order bought from the store, a callout or a work order. To add a charge to an order, operators can now apply them from the order itself and no longer have to go to the account’s billing screen to look up the correct order.
Job charges – when a job incurs additional charges, a field agent using the mobile workforce application or a call-centre operator can add job charges as needed. To add a charge to a job, operators do this from the job details screen in the same way they would do it for the order.
The platform allows an operator to apply new charges to either the owner or occupier of the location (property), irrespective of who is the package holder. So it is now possible to select which customer is to be charged. This specifically applies to orders and jobs for package orders and callouts.
This new behaviour requires explicit notification of outstanding charges due on orders and jobs. The platform highlights the charges outstanding for the order and job(s) labelled as “Amount Due”. The Amount Due is always related to the customer account attached to the order/job you are viewing.
As well as recording payment for the charges, it is now possible to apply refunds for the charges directly from the order and job screen.
When other charges are added to the order/job for a different account, the order and job will show the charges applied for these “other” accounts. This is for informational purposes so Operators are aware of all the charges.
Note: Outstanding charges shown in the above two images will sum up the total unpaid charges from the order and all its related jobs. Specifically for callouts, the outstanding charges shown will sum up the total unpaid charges for the callout, its related jobs and any unpaid charges against the original package order which the callouts are related to. This way field agents (and operators) can see if a callout’s original package charges have been paid or not, prior to commencing a callout.
Accepting onsite payments
The following has not changed and is existing behaviour but we thought it was appropriate to reiterate it here – the charges shown (as ‘Amount Due’) on the Mobile Workforce site are specifically charges for the customer account the job is for. Field agents can now select which charges are being paid when there are multiple charges outstanding on the job. The Amount Due can also include charges applicable to the order the job is for. The Amount Due shown on Mobile Workforce is the same Amount Due operators see using the Operations Centre.
Payments processed onsite are applied to the account for the job, consistent with the ‘Amount Due’ charges shown. That being said, we have included more visibility for field agents when processing the payment, confirming which account will receive the payment.
Applying credits
Applying credits to the account is now easier as well. There are 2 ways to manually add credits.
Account credit: used for general credits, applied from the billing screen of the account – OR – a charge refund: used to refund unpaid charges on the account.
Order credits – used when you need to credit a specific order, whether it is a package order bought from the store, a callout or a work order.
All credits are effectively added to the account and are available immediately for use when paying for charges.
Company logo available on emails
New orders, invoice for charges, payment receipts, charge refunds, quotations and the monthly statements now include your company’s logo giving a more professional look to your customer’s emails. You don’t need to do anything, we’ve taken care of it by using the “Logo” image uploaded to your Catalog Store’s Theme.
A new email is available with this update. When operators add charges to an order or job, an invoice is sent to the customer for the charges. A simple “Pay Now” button is provided to link the customer to pay for their charges.
Exporting a customer’s billing history
Operators can export a customer’s billing history to a CSV (Comma Separated Value) file for back-end office processing, customer statement reconciliation or other processing needs.
New reports
Detailed Orders report provides a detailed view of each order raised during a time period, including the total price, the components and their quantities, variation options selected and customer information provided. Useful for knowing who has ordered what package during a time period, with specific details of what was included in the order and the charged amount. Summarised Orders report provides a summarised view of Components ordered during a time period, including their price, the component quantity, variation options selected and customer information provided. It summarises matching orders where the same component, same variation and same customer information is provided and shows the total sum of the quantity ordered and charged amounts into a single row entry. Useful for knowing how many orders with the same order information were ordered during a time period, including the total sum of quantities and charges of the combined orders. The release of the two new Order reports mean’t the current “Orders placed” report has been renamed to Orders by package. This report deals with individual orders raised within a time period for a specific package, while showing exactly what was ordered by the customer.
Send your customers a job completion report
Agents could for some time now email order completion reports to their customers or anyone with an email address. The platform allows agents to email individual job completion reports to customers as well with today’s update. An email is sent to the recipients with a summary and a link to view the full job completion report.
To make your operations more efficient, you can have the Urbanise platform automatically send job completion reports to your customers on completion of the job. To enable this, simply select the option on the Job Template that says “Auto email summary report to customer on completion“. This will send the summary report to the customer’s email address on the job, whenever any job from the Job Template is completed.
Agent permission to expire subscriptions
The agent permission labelled “Cancel Order/Subscription” must be enabled for Agent’s to be able to expire active subscription packages.
Agents with this permission will be able to “Change” the expiration date of a subscription package.