A new feature in http://www.thecustomerfactor.com is a service plan pricing option for those users who have customers who are charged for a specific period and not per job. So let’s start with a screenshot of a scheduling area that shows the new option:

I circled the service plan pricing checkbox that is now available. Where this is used is let’s say you have a customer who you service once a week. For these services you perform throughout the month you charge $300 per month. There was never a way to handle this directly in The Customer Factor. Previously it was necessary to figure out each job’s price and try and it get it to equal $300 per month (using the above example). This was a challenge because there could be some months where there are 5 weeks and other months which had 4 weeks.

So now all you have to do is check the “service plan pricing” box. As soon as you do this, the each/price fields will close and the recurring information area will open (jobs which you charge “per period” are recurring jobs) where you can insert an amount and choose the period. So using the above example of charging $300/monthly for a weekly recurring job, here’s what it looks like:

Above you’ll see the service price field and the per period dropdown. I chose “Month” because that’ll be the most common period used, but there are other choices available for you.

So with the service plan price/period information filled in, it’s just a matter of clicking the Schedule button and you’ll end up with jobs that are “grouped” in the currently scheduled jobs area like this:

Sidebar: The reason why the first two recurring jobs in august don’t show above is because they are in job history. The “beginning date” that was used for this series of recurring jobs was August 1. Today as this blog post is being written is August 11, so when this series of recurring jobs was scheduled, the first two recurring jobs immediately fell into job history.

As you can see above, each “group” of jobs in the monthly period only has one checkbox showing in the “Invoice” column at far right. Again, service plan jobs are grouped jobs, so you’ll want them all on one invoice. Even if you are on the daily calendar for one of the jobs in the group and you’re printing invoices for the jobs that day, the invoice that prints for a job that’s part of a “group” will contain the other jobs in that group.

So what happens if you want to schedule recurring jobs together where different types of jobs with different recurring periods are all part of one group? You can handle it easily. You first schedule the first recurring job as shown in above screenshots. So above we have one job that is recurring every week and the pricing is $300 per month.

We’ll then schedule an “Entrance Way Cleaning”, but the customer needs this job done every tuesday and saturday and this job starts on the first tuesday in September. And it is included in the $300 per month price that you charge the customer, so we need to group it with the recurring jobs that you scheduled previously.

So here’s what we have:

All we’re doing is scheduling a new recurring job and grouping it with another recurring job (note the “group with this service plan” option above) that was previously created. The end result after scheduling this recurring job is you have both recurring jobs as part of a single group per month like this:

So if you look at the jobs in september, there are two recurring jobs scheduled and they are both part of the same group and all dates display. So you can easily create one invoice for all jobs in the group showing the $300 that is due.

Closing Notes:

1. You can edit any job in a group and insert its own individual price but if you do that, it’ll remove it from the group and be treated as a stand alone job, so it won’t be part of the group anymore.
2. This “service plan pricing” functionality is available in all scheduling areas in The Customer Factor (not just the customer profile as shown above)
3. Pricing for group jobs will display like this on various screens: $300/Month. This includes daily calendar, callback windows, exported csv files, etc.
4. If you need to change a recurring job from a service plan job to a recurring job where each job is charged a specific price, all you have to do is uncheck the service plan price option (shown below), insert the price per job (the “each” and “price” fields will open up) and update. Jobs will then be treated as individual jobs.

If you have any questions, pls let us know. Have a great day!

Regards,

Steve
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