Coverage bands and callout charges

Summary

A coverage band is a named group of your serviceable areas, for example “Local” and “Remote”. You assign bands to each van, and set what that van charges to travel to that band and how long the driving takes.

Both figures are per van on purpose. Two vans with different home bases have different running costs and different drive times to the same place.

Prerequisites

• Serviceable areas added. See Serviceable areas for mobile units.
• At least one bay marked as a mobile unit, with a home base.

Steps

Build a band

1. Go to Settings > Coverage bands.
2. Type a name under New band name, for example Local, Mid or Remote. Select Add band.
3. Select Manage areas on the band.
4. Tick which of your serviceable areas belong to it. Select Save areas.

A band with no areas cannot be matched to a customer, and the page says so.

Assign a band to a van and price it

1. Under Mobile unit coverage, find the van.
2. Select Assign band and pick the band.
3. Enter the callout surcharge. Enter it excluding tax. The page shows what the customer will see including tax underneath.
4. Enter the travel time in minutes: how long that van takes to get to that band.
5. Select Save.

Enter 0 as the surcharge if you do not charge a callout for that band.

Answer “Where do your mobile units go?”

This sits on a mobile unit’s own settings and applies to the whole garage. Until you answer it, mobile visits are not offered on your online booking page at all.

1. Only the areas I list. Torqueflow checks the customer’s postcode against your bands. Anyone outside is offered the workshop or a callback.
2. Anywhere, do not check coverage. Every customer can book a mobile visit. Their postcode and address are still captured.

Choose “Only the areas I list” if you want callout charging, coverage checks or travel reservations. None of those work under “Anywhere”.

Give some of the driving day back

Travel time reserves the van either side of every mobile booking, so a van in a 50-minute band offers fewer start times than one in a 20-minute band. Travel outside opening hours gives some of that back.

1. Travel before opening is how long before you open the van may already be on the road. 0 means it does not set off before opening time.
2. Travel after closing is how long after you close it may still be driving back. 0 means it must be home by closing.
3. The two are independent, so an honest answer is often lopsided: happy for the van to drive home after hours, but not to set off early, is after-close 60 and before-open 0.
4. Allow travel during breaks. Off means no slot is offered whose travel would cross a break, which removes a wide band of slots around lunch when travel times are long.

These settings only give back time that travel took. The appointment itself always stays inside your opening hours, so setting an allowance longer than the van’s own travel time does nothing more.

Switch callout charging on

Setting a surcharge does not start charging for it. That is a separate, deliberate step.

1. Go to the callout charges panel. It lists every amount you have set, the range, and what the customer would see including tax.
2. Check the list. If anything is wrong, change it first. The list refreshes when you save.
3. Select Start charging for callouts and confirm.

You are asked once. After that, any surcharge you set or change takes effect straight away, including on new bands. Turning charging off and on again asks you once more.

The switch governs every way a job gets booked, not just the website. Phone and counter bookings taken from the scheduler are quoted the same charge, and the switch also gates an advisor typing an amount by hand. See Booking a mobile job by phone.

Turning it off stops new bookings being quoted a callout. Jobs already booked keep the price the customer agreed and are still invoiced for it.

Expected Outcome

• Named bands grouping the areas you cover.
• A callout surcharge and a travel time on each van, for each band it serves.
• Customers quoted the callout before they book, and invoiced for it after.
• A bookable day that reflects the driving, not just the spanner time.

Notes

• The customer is told the service window, not the van’s. The van’s reservation includes the travel either side and is only visible to staff. A two-hour job in a 40-minute band occupies the van for over three hours, but the customer is told two.
• Where vans disagree, the highest is quoted and the actual van’s figure is billed. If two vans could take the job at different rates, the customer is quoted the higher of the two so the price never goes up on them.
• Running two nearby jobs as one trip is how you win the driving time back. Travel blocks can be shortened, deleted and re-added. Doing that does not change what either customer pays.
• Under “Anywhere” there is no band, so there is no travel reservation and no callout. That is the trade for not checking coverage.
• You cannot delete a garage site while a mobile unit is parented to it. Reassign or remove the van first.

Troubleshooting

Problem: Mobile visits are not offered on my booking page. Cause: Most often “Where do your mobile units go?” has not been answered. It can also be a van with no bands assigned, or a band with no areas. Fix: Answer the coverage question first, then check the van has at least one band and the band has areas. The Coverage bands page warns about both.

Problem: I set a callout surcharge but customers are not being charged. Cause: Callout charging has not been switched on, or your coverage policy is not “Only the areas I list”. Fix: Use Start charging for callouts. If the panel says the policy is blocking it, change the policy first.

Problem: A customer cannot book 4pm and the diary looks empty. Cause: Travel is reserved either side of the appointment, so the last bookable start is earlier than closing time. Fix: This is working as intended. If the van really can drive back after hours, raise Travel after closing.

Problem: The amounts on the Serviceable areas page do not match what customers pay. Cause: Those are templates. They only pre-fill a new van assignment. Fix: The figures that get quoted and invoiced are the per-van ones under Mobile unit coverage.

Problem: A service advisor followed the “set your coverage areas up” link from the scheduler and landed on the dashboard. Cause: Working as intended, if abruptly. Setting up coverage areas needs settings access, which advisors do not have. The message tells them what needs doing so they can pass it on; the page itself is for an owner or a manager. Fix: An owner or manager sets the areas up. The advisor can carry on booking in the meantime, entering travel time and any charge by hand.

Problem: I typed a callout higher than the band’s charge on a booking and the invoice came out lower. Cause: A known issue. Where a booking quotes more than the area’s own charge, the invoice uses the lower of the two. Fix: Raise the band’s charge here rather than typing over it on the booking. See Booking a mobile job by phone.

Problem: Deleting a band warned me it would delete pricing. Cause: The per-van surcharge and travel time live on the van-and-band pairing, so deleting the band deletes them. Fix: If you only want the band off one van, remove it from that van instead of deleting the band.