If managing your companies files has always been an issue there’s just a few steps needed to completely destroy your file cabinets once and for all:

1. Scan your paper files and customer documents into your computer
2. Attach each file to the appropriate customer in ESC
3. Take your file cabinent to the edge of a cliff
4. Push

Now that you have no file cabinent, continue to manage your company documents and paper work by attaching files to your customer’s records.

ESC gives users the ability to manage documents and images by attaching them to specific customers, dispatches, invoices, etc.

Rather thank bulky customer files ESC lets your office go paper free as well as have better access to documents, images, and files when you need them.

Imagine, when a customer calls, you pull up his record and all the files, photos, and documents associated with that customer’s account is at your finger tips immediately. You will not need to put your customer on hold while you dig through files.

This helps you to create a very professional image for your company. During each customer interaction, you and your dispatchers appear organized and prepared by having at hand all the documents and information you need to help your customers when they call.

The ESC document management also lets you create new document for your customers with the built in word processor. Its functions are similar to Microsoft Word giving it a very low learning curve.

This practice is also very secure. Regular on and off site back ups mean your data and documents are protected.

There are many examples of how this could be put into practice.

First you could have your technicians take before and after pictures of jobs or installations they complete. This is good documentation for handling any disputes. It also provides you with a good record and proof of the quality of work your technicians do.

Another example would be to attach warranty information to your customers’ equipment. Rather than having a bulky file cabinet filled with old warranty cards or instructions, you can have PDFs attached to the equipment in ESC that contains everything you need for that equipment. Then it’s there available for you when and where you need it.

You can also attach PDFs of signed invoices. If your technicians get signed work orders in the field, those can be scanned and attached to the dispatch in the service software, rather than being buried in a file cabinet.

Also, any email correspondence you have with customers can be attached to provide a permanent record of your communications.

By putting this into practice, your company can be incredibly organized, present a professional image, have secure on and off site backups of your company’s documents, and help the environment by going paperless.

It looks likes coupon use is up greatly this year. It’s probably because of the recession, and consumers are out to find cheaper ways to get their products

Coupon use is up 27% according to the nation's leading coupon processor, Inmar. Last year was the first year in the last 17 during which coupon redemption increased. Part of the increase may result from marketers' increased use of coupons as a promotional vehicle to drive sales during the downturn.

via Coupons: A Marketing Strategy that Works.

Does your service company use coupons to generate leads or work?

Combining coupons with your direct mail strategy may be a good way to leverage the effects of both.

Service Software for your HVAC Company

You wouldn’t sent out a technician to install a new air conditioner without the proper tools. Your technicians are properly equipped to handle the installations and repairs they encounter in the field.

HVAC companies also need the right tools in the office. Dispatchers and office managers need to efficiently recall service history when customers call. Accounts receivables managers need to know whet customers are up to date with their balances and who needs a reminder.

The right HVAC software program for your office personel is like the right sized wrench for your technicians. Sure, they may still be able to get the job done without all the right parts and tools, but it will take longer and will be more expensive.

Growing HVAC companies know that they need the right tools for all aspects of their business. With HVAC dispatch software your whole company can have the right tools to increase profits.

To learn how the right HVAC software program can benefit your business, register and try the free, 30-day trial of ESC. You can experiment with all the features and functions to determine for yourself the benefits.

ESC is a powerful HVAC dispatch Software. It is perfect for HVAC contractors who service, install or maintain heating, air conditioning, or refrigeration equipment. It is a service management solution that is powerful yet easy to use.

With it you can increase the number of customers your technicians can service in a day, while ensuring they know everything the customer wanted done which will reduce the need to return visits.  ESC will also eliminate missed revenue due to misplaced dispatches or invoices. It also allows your technicians to bill and collect payment in the field, reducing the messy and expensive collections process.

If you are looking for HVAC service software to better manage your company, try ESC today.

Intuit, the makers of QuickBooks announced in a recent press release that they believe small business employment is rebounding.

Small businesses are showing signs of an economic rebound. This is the main finding of the just-released Intuit Small Business Employment Index, a new, monthly report that provides unique, near real-time insight into employment trends of the smallest of small businesses.

via Intuit Press Release – Small Business Employment Showing Signs of Rebounding.

This is good news for many of the nations unemployed as they seek new jobs.

However, the Intuit index indicated hourly compensation has been mostly of the past several months and has actually declined recently.

About the Index

The Intuit Small Business Employment Index is based on online data from approximately 50,000 small business employers with fewer than 20 employees who use Intuit Online Payroll. Intuit reports data for three categories: small business employment, compensation and hours worked. Intuit will analyze and publish the data at the beginning of each month.

We’re curious. Is your company hiring again? Are employees working more hours? Leave your feed back in the comments.

It will be difficult to remember how you were able to run your business without it. ESC minimizes the amount of data entry needed by making sure you only need to enter it once.

ESC will let you get more done, faster. You’ll be able to dispatch service calls, schedule technicians, track inventory, record sales all with ease and precision.

With powerful, build in reports, you’ll be able to track profitability by technician or by customer to see who your best employees and best customers are. With the detailed customer information, you’ll be able to more effectively focus your company’s resources towards the most profitable projects and customers. The information that will be available at your finger tips will make you better equipped to make the best business decisions.

Price matters. So does functionality. With ESC small and medium sized business are able to afford the right solution at the right price. ESC is also scalable, built to grow with your company. And with a 30-day Money Back Guarantee, you’ll be sure to get what you pay for.

The intuitive functionality of ESC will make you feel familiar with the program from the beginning. The screens are designed to help you flow smoothly from one to the next in a way that makes sense for your business.

ESC is not going to change what you call things or the order you do things if they work. Most field names are customizable and there are places you can create custom fields to capture and act on the information that is most important to you. Also, you can customize the way you classify your customers so you are able to nurture and market effectively to your customer and lead base.  ESC gives you the flexibility you need for your business as well as the intuitive framework in which to act.

You can easily import and attach documents to customers, pieces of equipment, particular dispatches or any other record in the system. This will help you clean out and ultimately get rid of those filing cabinets that have been cluttering up your office for all those years.

ESC’s seamless QuickBooks integration will keep your customer and accounting data synchronized and up to date. The set-up wizard completes this process in a few easy steps, and eliminates the need for any double entry.

Mobile solutions get ESC into the hands of your technicians in the field, connecting them to the office and all the information they’ll need to complete their service calls. They’ll be able to see information about their customers, get directions, and find out what tools and parts they’ll need for the job. The mobile solution also keeps techs out of the office and in the field. They can start their day at a customer’s location, rather than with coffee and doughnuts in the office.  That means more service calls in a day and more profit.

When you call you talk to us. We all work out of the same office in Fort Myers, Florida. Our customer support is unmatched. Call us today or download the free trial.

Some businesses grow and other’s stay the same size. Computer service software is one of the keys to growing a service company because it takes the pressure off the owner to be knee deep in the day to day operations and gives him or her a better perspective of the problems and opportunities the company faces.

By having a stronger perspective of how this works, owner are able to use computer service software to automate many of their business functions.

Crew dispatching is a feature in ESC that is used to group technicians to simplify dispatching. This will allow you to add multiple technicians to the dispatch schedule at once rather than manually entering each one individually.

For example: an Install Crew may have multiple Techs assign to the same job over the course of a few days, weeks, or months, etc.
To create a new crew, go to Dispatch | Enter Technicians, and create or recall a Technician who will lead the crew. Manually enter the crew name in the Member of Crew field and hit the Save button. To assign more Techs, recall or enter another Technician to add to the crew on the same screen. In the Member of crew field, click on the combo box to display a list of existing crews. Select the desired crew and save. Repeat this procedure until your entire crew has been created.

Dispatching a Crew

Create a dispatch normally on the Dispatch Entry screen. Before saving it, go to the Schedule tab and click the Add New Techs to the Dispatch button, if you’re using ESC 9.1 or earlier, or Add Technician, if you’re using ESC 10.Crews will appear at the top of the list. Select the desired crew and click Add.

Set the date and time you want the crew to start work and click OK.
This will automatically place all the members of that crew on the dispatch with the same promised date and time.

From this point forward, any time you change the status of one crew member you will have the ability to change the status of all the members of that crew. Simply answer Yes when prompted to update the status of all technicians or No to track their times separately.

Changing Crew Members

At some point you will need to change the people who make up the crew. ESC makes this process easy. Simply recall the technician you want to work with on the Enter Technicians screen and change the contents of the Member of Crew field. Select another crew from the list, manually type in a new crew name or clear the field to remove the technician from all crews.

Note: This has no effect on dispatches that have already been assigned to a crew. It only changes the crew members that will be assigned to new dispatches created from this point forward.

Deleting a Crew

To delete a crew, make sure no technicians are currently assigned to it. You can quickly see which technicians belong to crews by double clicking the tech on the Enter Employees screen.

Select the technicians that are still assigned to the crew you wish to delete and either clear the Member of Crew field or assign them to another crew. Once the last crew member has been removed, the crew will disappear as well.

Note: This has no effect on dispatches that have already been assigned to a crew. It only prevents the crew from being used on new dispatches from this point forward.

By Enrico Chatman

Have you ever wanted to store vital information about a piece of equipment only to find that ESC does not have a field for it?  How about grouping equipment by a piece of information?  Or finding all customers that have equipment in poor condition?  If so, ESC has the perfect solution for this: custom fields.

Not only can custom fields help you do all these things it also gives you the following abilities:

• Custom fields can be easily viewed from the Qualification screen in ESC.
• Equipment reports can be filtered by custom fields.
• Custom fields can be configured to print on dispatch tickets.
• Custom fields can be seen on all mobile devices.

To set up a custom field go to the File pull-down menu and selectSetup Custom Fields followed by Equipment. You can then define up to eight custom equipment fields.  To create one, enter the name of the custom field in the Field Label column. Use the fields to the right to populate a drop down list that can be selected when this field is used.

In this example I have setup a custom field called Condition that we will use to track the shape of our customer’s equipment.  We have added 5 items to the pull-down menu: Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor and Bad.

Note that any setups and changes to these fields on this screen will affect all equipment for all customers.  The fields that are set up here, and the List Items that are defined for each of those Field Labels, will appear on ALL customers’ equipment screens.

The custom fields you define will now appear on the Enter/Modify Equipment screen.  To use custom fields, simply recall a piece of equipment and select the value from the drop down list in the field you created. If the value you want to use doesn’t exist in the list you can manually enter the information directly into this field instead. For ease of searching and consistency, we suggest using the defined list items whenever possible.

As noted earlier, custom fields can be viewed from the Customer Qualification screen.  This is extremely useful as the Customer Qualification screen is the crux of ESC and provides useful information for whatever Customer/Location you choose.  The Equipment section can be found starting halfway down the screen and has a series of columns that help you organize information about customer equipment.  Custom fields are located on the far right of this list, but can be moved to a more prominent location by dragging the title of the chosen Custom Equipment Field to wherever you would like it to be.  This change will be reflected on every screen where equipment is displayed.

By Justin Egan