Reviewing Snow Work Tickets Pending Approval

During snow season, the company should establish a process for periodically (daily or weekly) reviewing work tickets that are pending approval for completion so selected users can approve the Per Service and T&M work tickets them allowing them to be invoiced. Approval will allow the recommendation to invoice to appear in the Purchasing Assistant. 

You can establish and save a search list on the Work Ticket Search List screen for reviewing pending approvals (filter with Status field in “Pending Approval”). 

The following displays the Work Ticket Search List screen filtered:

There are several things to check while reviewing these work tickets that are pending approval. Keep in mind during this review that the purpose is to ensure that the work

1. Check for Fixed Payment Work Tickets – During the snow season, if there are any work tickets in the list with an invoice type of Fixed Payment, this likely indicates that a work ticket for a seasonal snow contract was inappropriately completed before the end of the snow season. By design, seasonal snow contracts have a single service for each snow season to which all visits for that service are applied.  If you notice this situation, they will want to uncomplete the work ticket so that it can be scheduled for additional snow events later in the season. They can accomplish this by clicking on the work ticket entry in the list to display the Work Ticket screen, choosing the Approve option in the Actions menu, and then selecting the Uncomplete option in the Actions menu. 
2. Identify Work Tickets for a Snow Event – By defining the search list to group work tickets by date of completion, you can identify all the work tickets associated with a snow event that occurred during a specific period. Depending on the business practice, a single event may include tickets that were completed over two or three days.
3. Verify that Materials were Included – By including the material cost field for display in the search list, you can look down the list to determine if materials were properly allocated. In the example above, they would expect materials (i.e. salt or chemicals) to be allocated for deicing, whereas they would not expect materials to be allocated for plowing which is all labor.
4. Verify Snow Depth for Range Billing Work Tickets – This review provides an opportunity to verify that the snow depth range is correct for a recent snow event.   For example, you might have chosen the 2-4” push plow service based on the weather forecast, but when it was over, six inches of snow had fallen.  In this case, they can use the Swap As Needed Services option in the Actions menu to change from a 2-4” service to a 5-7” service as described in the section, Swapping As Needed Services (Example).
5. Identify Work Tickets for Partial Occurrence – As you review, they should look for the delivered services for which they only want to bill a partial occurrence as described in the section, Partial Billing. For example, if they have a Simple Per Occurrence Snow Contracts, and the snow halted earlier than forecast, they may want to only bill the customer for a portion of the service.
6. Individually Override T&M Amounts If Appropriate – Sometimes when you are reviewing work tickets for snow services, they may identify T&M work tickets for which they judge that more time was spent than is justifiable.  In these cases, Aspire allows you to override the calculated price for T&M work tickets with a specific price of the choice to be billed to the customer. 
7. Approving the Snow Work Tickets – When you have finished reviewing the T&M and Per Service work tickets and are satisfied that they are ready for invoicing the customer, they can select the Pending Approval work tickets on the Work Tickets Search List screen and select Approve from the More drop-down menu. At this point, the associated invoices will become available in the Invoicing Assistant screen, and associated subcontractor automatic expenses will become available in the Purchasing Assistant screen.

Route Snow Planner Report

The Route Snow Planner Report provides a hierarchical list of opportunity services associated in various ways with existing routes. It can be printed and provided to crew members as a summary of the work that they will be doing.

Report Hierarchy – The hierarchy of the report is comprised of the following levels:

1. Route – Route for which services are being displayed.
2. Property – Properties for which services may be provided for the route.
3. Opportunity – Opportunities containing services for the property.
4. Service – Specific services available on the opportunity.
5. Operations notes and items – First line show operations notes associated with the opportunity service. The second line shows labor per occurrence. Lines that follow show the material, equipment, or other items from the opportunity service in the estimate.

1. Services for visits are scheduled on the schedule board for the specified day and routes.
2. Services specified in the Schedule an Event option on the Scheduling Board screen match the default route and where the filter date is between the start and end dates of the contract.
3. Services for properties assigned to the route (from the Property tab of the Route screen) where the filter date is between the start and end dates of the contract. 

Report Filters – The information returned by the report is further filtered by the fields listed at the top of the report as described in the following table:

Aspire provides features that work together allowing you to efficiently schedule work tickets for snow events that cannot be precisely anticipated. Scheduling of events is best demonstrated by an example.

Imagine that users have already completed most of the snow season setup in preparation for using the Events Method of snow management. A storm is forecasted for this evening with an expected snowfall of 1 to 3 inches.  The company has established a range of billing contracts with four of the customers and wants to schedule for the plows to visit those properties.

Navigate to the Scheduling Board screen, and select Manager, Snow Manager North.  

Next, from the More drop-down menu select Schedule an Event to display the Schedule an Event screen. Configure the Schedule an Event search list to display only contracted services for handling of 1-3 inches of snow. Click the Filtericon and add Service to the Field Name, and filter to show records containing the string, “1-3”. 

Click the Groupicon and add the Service field so that the search list will be grouped by service as shown.

Because this is the first 1-3” snow-fall event of the season and route pre-configuration was not performed as described earlier in the section, Preconfigure as Needed Services for Events, notice that the default route and the default sequence number is not filled in for these services.  Before scheduling visits for these services, specify the route and sequence numbers as described in that section.

Schedule Visits – Scheduling the visits on the Scheduling Board is performed from the Schedule an Event screen as shown below.  Once the routes and sequence numbers have been properly established, place a checkmark in front of all the services for which you wish to schedule visits. Note that if everything is properly configured, they can schedule visits for multiple services (i.e. Snow Plowing and Snow Clearing Walkways) simultaneously. Choose the Create/Schedule Visits option from the Bulk Actions menu to display the Create/Schedule Visits screen.   Specify the date on which the visits should be scheduled. The Route field will only be used if a default route has not been established.  In the case of our example, the value in the Route (if needed) field will have no effect because a default route has been established for all the selected services. Click the Save icon to schedule the visits.

If the services are As Needed, Aspire will create new work tickets as the visits are being scheduled.

Once the visits have been scheduled in this manner, you will be able to see them displayed on the Scheduling Board as depicted below: