Service Screen

Within the Aspire system, a service defines the work that a landscape company performs on behalf of its customers. It is not unusual for any given landscape company to offer a hundred or more services. Examples of services include; Weekly Maintenance, Irrigation Repairs, Plant Installation, Steel Edging Installation, etc. The Services screen is displayed from the Services Search List screen when the user clicks the New Service icon or clicks an existing service from the list to view or edit.

Service Schedules – Aspire enables you to define standard service schedules for contract services that will be performed at standard intervals over the life of the contract as described for the Service Occurrence Schedule screen. Later when you schedule the visits associated with these recurring services, Aspire can use the service schedule to assist them in mass-scheduling future visits. You can create multiple standard schedules for a single service based on the number of annual occurrences. For example, if for a service, some customers commonly request the service every week while other customers commonly request the service every other week, you might create two service schedules – one for 26 occurrences (every other week) and one for 52 occurrences (every week).

The screen elements on the Service screen are described in the following table.

Screen Element	Description
Screen Title	When you are creating a new service, the screen title displays New. If they are editing an existing service, the name of the service is displayed in the title.
Service Name	Required. The Service Name field allows you to enter or update the name of the service. As you enter the service name, Aspire simultaneously updates the Display Name field providing the basis for adjustments that you deem appropriate. Later, when adding a service to an opportunity during estimating, the selection list displays the service name.
Display Name	Required. The Display Name field allows you to enter a name that displays on the estimate once the service is selected. The display name is also available on the Work Tickets Search List screen.
Abbreviation	Required. The Abbreviation field enables you to specify a short name that can be selected from the Work Tickets Search List screen.
Service Type	Provides drop-down to select the service type. The Service Type drop-down displays both the division and the service type (i.e. Enhancements | Flowers) and is sorted alphabetically by division, then by service type. When creating a new service, Aspire automatically fills the field with the first service type in the list, so make sure to change the value appropriately for the service being created.
Branch	Specifies the branch or branches for which the service can be applied to estimates. If not specified, the default is that the service is available for all branches. Branch Administrators using a system where the Enhance Branch Admin Security option is checked, are only allowed to assign branches for which they have access.
Taxable Items	The Taxable Items field lets you specify which item types (i.e. material, labor, equipment, sub, or other) are considered taxable for the service in the service area. If the company does business in multiple states that have different taxation requirements, you can define exceptions to the primary taxable item rule by individual state or province by clicking the Service Tax Override icon to display the Service Tax Override screen. If the company is not required to collect taxes in any of the service areas, they do not need to populate the Taxable Items field. Additional information is available in the section, Sales Tax Setup.
Minimum Charge	Aspire will automatically calculate the customer price for each service in an estimate for an opportunity based on multiple factors including takeoffs, price of items, defined markups, and net profit. In this field, you can specify the minimum charge Aspire can recommend for the service – regardless of what the other parameters might determine.
Sort Order	The sort order field is commonly left at its default value of zero. However, when you specify the sort order on the services, it affects two things: The order in which services are added to the Services tab is displayed. When services whose sort order is set are added to a contract opportunity, when the estimate is saved, the services will be reordered on the estimate according to their sort order. They might consider using sort order for snow services that have a logical order they wish to maintain (i.e. Snow Plow 1-3”, Snow Plow 4-6”, Snow Plow > 6”)
Form	Enables you to select a Complete Ticket form to be used on a crew leader’s mobile device when they complete a work ticket associated with the service. The drop-down list will only show Complete Ticket forms that have been published.
Active	Checkbox. Here you can set the Active flag. A checkmark in the box indicates that the service will be available for selection in an estimate on an opportunity. Once they create a service, they cannot delete it. Marking unwanted services as inactive allows you to hide them from the user when they are creating estimates. To change the Active flag, click the checkbox.
Contract Service	The Contract Service checkbox allows you to specify whether the service will be available when estimating a contract. Services are available for work orders regardless of whether this checkbox is checked.
Requires Approval	Any ticket completed for the service must be approved before it can be invoiced. Aspire recommends that you check for any maintenance service because the staff will likely be overwhelmed with approvals.
Multi-Visit	Multi-visit services are commonly used for Seasonal Snow Contracts wherein a single work ticket is established for the entire snow season, and time is allocated to those work tickets through multiple visits as needed. This attribute is available on services allowing them to be flagged as multi-visit services. This provides the following benefits for managing work tickets that are used repeatedly for multiple visits throughout a snow season: Allow crew leaders to complete work on these work tickets by completing relevant forms without putting the work ticket into complete status. Allow auto expenses for subcontractors to be purchased per time period rather than requiring that the work ticket be complete. When visits for events are mass-scheduled from the Schedule an Event option in the Actions menu of the Scheduling Board screen, visits created from multi-visit work tickets are established with a visit time of zero since the work-ticket time (the default) is known to be an incorrect visit duration for multi-visit work tickets.
Service Schedule	Hovering over the Service Schedule icon displays a pop-up menu allowing you to create a new service schedule, or edit an existing service schedule. In either case, the Service Occurrence Schedule screen will be displayed. All maintenance contract services should have a service schedule so that Aspire will properly distribute the anticipated start date of work tickets that it generates to support the forecasting of hours, cost, and revenue.
Default Paycode	Aspire allows the pay code to be selected from a list that has been defined in the Admin List Pay Code screen. When this particular service is performed by an employee, Aspire will allocate the hours to this pay code overriding the employee’s standard pay code.
Workers Comp Code	Available for companies that integrate their external payroll systems with Aspire. Workers Comp Codes can be specified here at the service level if desired to be used when exporting employee time from Aspire to the external system. Workers' comp codes may alternately be provided for individual employees or for divisions. When the time export occurs, the workers' comp code exported is determined based on the following hierarchy: Use workers comp code assigned to the employee if provided. If not, use the worker comp code assigned to the service performed if provided. If not, use the worker comp code assigned to the division of the service.
Description	There is an unlabeled description area at the bottom of the Service screen into which you can place a description of the service. When a service is added to an opportunity on the Estimate screen, this note is copied to the Description field on the opportunity service which can then be further modified and made available on proposals.

Service Tax Override Screen

If the company does business in multiple states that have different requirements for taxation of items, you can define exceptions to the primary taxable item rule by individual state or province on the Service Tax Override screen. For example, most of the work might be in a state that taxes labor, but an adjacent state in which the company provides services might tax only materials and equipment.

Create overrides for additional states by clicking the plus icon. Upon doing so, a new line will be added to the list at the bottom. Select the state or province for which the override should be created and click the checkboxes for the types of items that are taxed in that state.

Service Occurrence Schedule Screen

The Service Occurrence Schedule screen allows you to define standard service schedules for contract services that will be performed at standard intervals over the life of the contract (see Service Schedules).

The screen elements on the Service Occurrence Schedule screen are described in the following table.