Booking a mobile job by phone

Summary

Not every mobile job comes through the website. Someone rings, and you book the van from the scheduler like any other job. There are three extra things to get right: where the job happens, where the van is going, and what the callout is going to cost.

The last one matters more than it looks. The callout charge is fixed the moment you book. It is what the customer agreed on the phone, so it does not move afterwards, even if the address gets corrected later.

Prerequisites

• At least one bay set up as a mobile unit, with coverage bands. See Coverage bands and callout charges.
• Callout charging switched on, if you want the job to carry a charge. The same switch governs phone bookings and online ones.

Steps

Say where the job happens

1. Start a booking on a slot that belongs to a mobile unit.
2. Where is this job done? appears. Choose Customer comes to us or We go to the customer.
3. Choosing “We go to the customer” records the address, reserves the van’s travel either side, and lets the job carry a callout charge.

A slot on a fixed bay does not ask, because a fixed bay cannot go anywhere.

Give the van somewhere to go

1. Customer postcode is required. It is what the coverage check runs on.
2. Customer address is required too, but if there genuinely is not one, tick to say so and the driver uses the postcode. A layby on a B road is a real job.
3. what3words is optional. Worth filling in for anywhere a street address will not find.

Check coverage

Select Check coverage once you have the postcode. You get one of five answers.

1. Covered by a band. The callout charge for that area is shown, and the van’s travel time is known.
2. Outside your coverage areas. You can still book it. Enter the travel time and any charge by hand.
3. Your coverage areas have not been set up yet. Nothing is charged for the journey. If you want to charge for callouts, someone with settings access has to set the areas up first.
4. Your vans go anywhere. The address is covered, but there is no band, so no callout and no travel time come from one.
5. Postcode not recognised. Check what you typed, or book it anyway and enter the travel time by hand.

Answers 2 and 3 look similar and mean very different things. “Outside your areas” means you have areas and this is not one of them. “Not set up yet” means there are no areas at all, so nothing can be charged.

There is a sixth answer worth knowing: covered, but not by this van. Another van serves that area, so this one has no travel time to fall back on. Either move the booking to the van that covers it, or type the travel time in yourself.

Set the callout charge

1. Leave Callout charge blank to use the charge for that area.
2. Type an amount to quote something different. Enter it excluding tax.
3. Type 0 to waive it. The dialog tells you plainly that you are waiving the area’s charge and the customer will not be charged for the callout.

Whichever you do, the dialog says what will happen before you commit, and the wording changes with it: Book and quote it, Book and waive it, or Book with no charge.

Set the travel time

Travel time each way reserves the van either side of the job.

1. If coverage found a travel time for the area, the field is filled in with it. Leave it as it is to use that figure.
2. Type a different figure to use your own. Only a figure you type is saved as the job’s own travel time. A figure filled in from coverage is not.
3. Type 0 when there is no journey to reserve.
4. If coverage found no travel time, leave the field blank for no journey, or type the figure.

Clearing a figure that coverage filled in does not remove the journey. The area’s travel time is still reserved. Type 0 instead.

Book an existing job onto a van

Choose Existing Work Order on a van slot and pick a job the van goes out to. The travel field works differently here, because the job may already carry a travel time of its own.

1. Travel time each way shows the job’s own travel time, if it has one. If the job has none, the field is empty and reads “Uses this van’s area figure”.
2. The hint under the field names the figures: what is reserved as the field stands, and this van’s travel time for the job’s area.
3. Leave the field alone to keep the job’s figure.
4. Clear the field to drop the job’s own figure and use this van’s travel time for the area instead. Clearing does not mean no journey.
5. Type 0 for no journey at all.
6. If you change or clear a figure the job already had, a confirm step appears: “Change this job’s travel time?” It names the old figure and what replaces it. Select Change it and book to go ahead. You cannot put the old figure back from this dialog.

If the van has no travel time for the job’s area, the hint says so, and an empty field reserves nothing. If the area cannot be matched at all, the dialog says the travel time could not be worked out. A job that already has a travel time recorded from an earlier booking keeps using that figure.

Check for clashes

The clash warning counts the van’s travel either side of the job, not just the job itself. A slot the dialog shows as clear is one the van can actually take, journey included.

On an existing job the dialog first works out this van’s travel time for the job’s area. Until it has, the hint reads “The clash check is not finished yet”. If it cannot work it out, the hint says the slot has not been fully checked for clashes. Select Check again to retry.

Confirm

The confirm step restates the charge and warns you that the quote cannot be changed afterwards, and that the customer will be invoiced no more than it. Read it back to the customer before you press it.

Expected Outcome

• A mobile job on the van’s diary, with the customer’s address on it.
• Travel reserved either side, so the diary tells the truth about the day.
• A callout charge the customer has agreed, fixed, and carried onto the invoice. Read the note below first if you typed a figure higher than the area’s own charge.

Notes

• Charging more than the area’s own charge does not currently reach the invoice. You can type a higher figure and the confirmation will show it back to you, but the invoice uses the lower of the two: the area’s charge. If a job genuinely needs a bigger callout than the area is set up for, change the band under Coverage bands and callout charges rather than typing over the figure here. Charging less, including waiving it entirely with 0, works exactly as it says.
• The phone path takes no payment. No deposit, no callout-charge deposit. Those are online-booking behaviours only. If you need money up front, take it separately.
• A workshop job cannot be turned into a mobile job later. If the customer changes their mind, raise a separate job. The dialog says so when you open an existing workshop job on a van slot.
• A mobile job cannot be moved to a workshop bay once a callout has been agreed, because the customer agreed a price for you going to them. Move it to another van, or raise a separate workshop job.
• Technicians cannot claim a mobile job on a fixed bay for the same reason.
• Work orders for these jobs carry a We go to them badge so nobody has to guess.
• Every bay list shows which entries are vans. A mobile unit has a van icon and a workshop bay has a building icon, each in the bay’s own colour. A bay with no colour set still shows its icon. That includes the bay list when you move an appointment, schedule or edit one from a work order, or claim a job as a technician, so you can see a van before you pick it rather than finding out when the booking is refused.

Troubleshooting

Problem: The Book button will not enable. Cause: Something required is missing. Usually the postcode, the address, or a coverage check that has not been run since the postcode changed. Fix: The dialog names the specific blocker at the bottom. Deal with that one thing.

Problem: I moved a mobile job onto a different van and the travel time did not change. Cause: A known issue. The travel reserved either side is regenerated using the original van’s figure for that area, not the new van’s, so a van with a shorter run to the same area still shows the longer one. Fix: Check the travel time after any move between vans and correct it by hand. It errs towards reserving too much rather than too little, so the risk is a van looking busier than it is, never a double-booking.

Problem: The travel time I had on a job disappeared when I booked it onto a van. Cause: The travel field on an existing job was cleared before booking. Clearing it removes the job’s own figure and uses the van’s travel time for the area instead. Fix: Open the appointment and use Adjust under Van travel to put the right figure back on the journey. Next time, leave the field alone to keep the job’s figure. The confirm step names the figure before it goes.

Problem: “The callout charge has moved.” Cause: Someone changed the pricing while you had the dialog open. Fix: Reload and book again. It exists so a customer is never invoiced a figure nobody quoted them.

Problem: The customer booked online and paid a deposit, but my phone booking did not ask for one. Cause: Working as designed. Deposits and the callout deposit floor belong to online booking. Fix: Take payment separately if you need it up front.

Problem: Coverage says a charge applies but nothing is being charged. Cause: Callout pricing is not switched on. The dialog says so. Fix: An owner switches it on under Coverage bands and callout charges.

Problem: We could not check this postcode just now. Cause: The coverage check could not run. Fix: Try again, or book it anyway and enter the travel time and charge by hand.