March 2022 Release Notes

Fuel Surcharge and Bulk Invoice Line Items

The fuel surcharge feature allows adding a fuel surcharge to invoices.  This feature applies to all invoice types except for Fixed Price Open Billing.

On the Invoice screen, a new option called Fuel Surcharge has been added in the Add Invoice Line Item menu.  When you select this option, a new line is added to the invoice providing two fields that allow you to specify either the percentage or the amount. If you enter a percent, Aspire calculates the percentage of the total invoice excluding additional line items and fills in the amount field. If you enter the amount value, that value is used, and the percentage value is set to 0. The fuel surcharge line provides a tax percent field to specify the tax that should be applied to the fuel surcharge.

Additionally, fuel surcharges can be added in bulk for multiple invoices within an invoice batch. The Invoice Batch screen provides a Bulk Actions menu with a new option, Add Invoice Line Item, to add fuel surcharge or other line item types (i.e., Bounced Check, Convenience Fee, Late Fees, etc.) for all selected invoices.

Customer Notification Changes

On the Notification screen used to define customer notifications, a new Test button has been added allowing you to send an email to themselves to view the notification currently defined by the screen. When you clicks the Test button, a dialog is displayed allowing you to specify an email address to which the message should be sent. This allows testing of notification layout before the notification is sent to customers.

The Notification screen provides three sections that contain the body of the email. The middle section supported repeating fields to display information about items estimated on the work ticket. The drop-down options for those labels are now prefixed with "Estimated_" because the ability to include actual items allocated has been added. A new token has been added that will be replaced by a table containing a list of items actually allocated to the work ticket as shown below.

Contact Bulk Notification Change

On the Properties screen, a new bulk action was recently added to bulk add email notification contacts to selected properties.  This option has been further enhanced to provide selections for Primary Contact, Email Contact, and Billing Contact allowingyou to add those contacts as email notification contacts. This significantly improves the flexibility of the bulk email notification contact feature.

Added Email Invoice fields to the Properties Search List

Email Invoice Full Name field and Email Invoice Email Address field have been added as columns in the Properties Search List for search, display, sort and group.

Added Email Notification fields to the Properties Search List

Email Notification Full Name field and Email Notification Email Address field have been added as columns in the Properties Search List for search, display, sort and group.

Percent Complete and Earned Revenue Calculations for T&M on Work Ticket Screen

For the Work Ticket Search Lists, the calculation of Percent Complete for T&M work tickets has been updated for increased consistency with the rest of Aspire.  Additionally, the calculation of Earned Revenue for T&M work tickets has been updated to be consistent with the T&M Calc value on the Work Ticket screen.

Add Properties Permissions

This release adds new security permissions to control access to property information. This allows companies to control property records that employees can see. 

Two new permissions have been added:

1. View Properties
2. View Only My Properties

If a user has either one of these two permissions, they will be able to see the Property Icon in the Aspire Navigation Bar. If a user has both permissions assigned within a single role or is assigned two roles, one with “View Only My Properties” enabled and one without, then the least restrictive permission will override -- you will be able to view all properties. Additionally, if a user does not have permission to view a property, they are also not allowed to view any opportunity associated with that property.

Since the new “view properties” permission represents the current system default (allows all users to view all properties), all users will have this permission enabled automatically upon release.

Customer Notifications (Beta Only)

Customer notification is a new feature that allows Aspire to automatically send email notifications to customer contacts when events take place for a property.  For this release, only notifications for completion of work tickets are available. To manage notifications, a user must have one of the following permissions:

• Manage Notifications Settings (System) - Allows you to create or edit notifications for any branch. 
• Manage Notifications Settings (Branch) - Allows you to create or edit notifications for any branch to which they have branch access.

Notification Setup

Customer notifications are set up by clicking the Evolution Administration icon available in the Aspire Navigation Bar after clicking the Settings icon.  Two options are provided:

• Notification Settings - Allows you to enable notifications at the branch or system level. Also, allows you to specify at the system or branch level an email address to be used if the customer replies to a notification email.
• Manage Notifications- Selecting this option displays a search list of the notifications that have been defined and allows you to create new notifications. When creating or modifying a notification on the Notification screen, the following fields are available: 
  • Notification Name
  • Notification Method (currently, only "Email" is available)
  • Branch - List of branches for which the notification applies
  • Division - List of divisions for which the notification applies
  • Service Type - List of service types for which the notification applies
  • Service - List of services for which the notification applies
  • Notification Type (currently only "Work Ticket Complete" is available)
  • Trigger Type (immediate, daily digest, or weekly digest)
  • Delivery time 
    • For daily digest notifications, specifies the time at which notifications will be sent
    • For weekly digest notifications, specifies the week day and time at which notifications will be sent
  • Email Subject - Subject of notification email sent to customers. Tokens are available.
  • Email Header - Header of the email body that could include greeting and introductory paragraph. Expandable tokens  are available.
  • Email Body - Repeating section for each service. This section would commonly contain service-related tokens and service item related tokens (up to three items per service) to explain what work was completed.
  • Email Footer - Footer of the email body that could include closing paragraph and signature area.  Expandable tokens are available.

The Notifications Search List screen supports bulk activation or deactivation of selected notifications.

Copying Notifications

While displaying a notification on the Notification screen, you can copy the Notification to use it as the basis for a new notification. This could be used for example, for a system administrator to create a template notification. Individual branch managers could then copy the template, and use it as the basis for creating branch-specific notifications.

Specifying Notification Recipients

Notification contacts are specified in the Contacts section of the Property Overview screen. A new Notifications column has been added to this section.. 

Upon editting a contact, you can select that you should receive email notifications...

Contact Screen Show Properties for Notifications

The Properties section of the Contact screen has been updated to add a Notifications column to identify properties for which the contact receives notifications.

Property Screen Bulk Update

A new bulk action, Change Email Notification Contact,  has been added to the Property screen allowing you to select multiple properties, and then add one or more contacts to the property as email contacts.

Work Ticket Search List Improvements to Bulk Delete

Prior to this release when you bulk deleted work tickets from the Work Tickets Search List, the deletion behavior has been clear when work tickets were selected that for some reason were not allowed to be deleted.  Going forward, when a user bulk deletes work ticket from the Work Tickets Search List screen, and one or more of those work tickets cannot be deleted, Aspire will:

1. Delete the eligible work tickets
2. Not delete the ineligible work tickets
3. Display a message to indicate which actions were successful and which were not

Contacts Search List screen - New Bulk Options

Several new bulk options have been added to the Bulk Actions menu on the Contacts screen: 

1. Change Status - allows you to change the Active status for all selected contacts.
2. Change Branch - allows you to change the assigned branch for all selected contacts.
3. Change Owner - allows you to change the owner for all selected contacts. 
4. Change Contact Type - allows you to change the contact type for all selected contacts.
5. Change Pay Schedule - allows you to change the pay schedule for all selected contacts.  

Properties Search List screen - New Bulk Options

Several new bulk options have been added to the Bulk Actions menu on the Properties screen: 

1. Change Status - allows you to change the Active status for all selected properties.
2. Change Payment Terms - allows you to change the payment terms for all selected properties.
3. Change Property Status - allows you to change the property status for all selected properties.
4. Change Industry - allows you to change the industry for all selected properties. 

Admin Services Search List - New Bulk Option for Taxability of Item Types

A new bulk edit option has been added the Bulk Edit dialog that is displayed when the Bulk Edit option is selected on the Admin Services Search List screen. The option allows you to bulk change the taxability of item types (i.e. labor, material, equipment, sub, or other) for the selected service.

Important Note: Changes to service taxable items are only applied to services in the item catalog for new opportunities. Changes are not made retroactively to those services that are in estimates for existing opportunities.

The state overrides will still exist on each service as they did before the bulk update. The bulk action for service taxable items only defines the primary taxable item rule. There isn't a way to add or alter state overrides in bulk, you will have to manually add/edit state tax overrides.

Show Actual Hours for Opportunity on which Renewal is Based - Estimating Screen

When a user creates a renewal opportunity for an existing contract, the estimate for the renewed opportunity provides a new column to show the Actual Hours (column header is "AH") on the original contract from which the renewal was created. This value will guide the estimator's understanding of time spent for services in the prior contract year.

The value is displayed as a hyperlink allowing you to drill into a work ticket list that shows the work tickets comprising the Actual Hourvalue.

Change Navigation Bar Color for Sandbox Environment

To make the Sandbox Aspire distinguishable from Production Aspire when users are working in both environments, the color of the Aspire Navigation Bar for Sandbox is changing to tan.

Schedule Board - Limitations on Route Optimization Reduced

When performing route optimization by day of week or by route, the optimization was previously prevented if the total number of visits exceeded 25. This limitation has been loosened so that the optimization will only be prevented if the total number of visits for any route/day (cells) during the selected period exceeds 25.

User Settings

Individual users may now manage their own settings only through the Evolution interface, as the save button on the User Settings Screen of Legacy (accessed by clicking on avatar in top right corner of legacy, then “user settings”) has been disabled.

To update user settings in Evolution, click on the avatar in the bottom of the left navigation bar, and then click it again. Here, on you screen, users can update their PIN, Password, Email Signature, Email and Calendar sync selections, and home screen customizations. you’s assigned role is displayed as a read-only field.