Creating and Managing Recurring Services

The ability to create Recurring Services is a powerful feature of ServiceTrade. This article will walk users through creating and managing recurring services.

Creating a Recurring Service on a Location

1. Navigate to the Location page that the recurring service will be for.
2. Click the green Add a New Service button to the right.
3. You will be taken to the Service creation form under the Services accordion on the Location page.
4. Now you will enter information* about the new recurring service:
   • Asset to Service - assign this service to a particular asset at a location.
   • Service Line - select the type of service.
   • Contract - The contract you want to be associated with this service.
   • Description - enter a clear description of the work to be completed.
   • Preferred Techs - select which tech(s) to auto-assign when creating a job for this service on the location page or creating a job for a service using Service Opportunities.
   • Estimated Price - an estimate of the price of the service.
   • Estimated Duration - the estimated time it will take to complete the service.
   • Scheduling Window - the size of the window in which to schedule the service
     *Fields marked with an asterisk are mandatory.
5. Next, you will need to set the frequency of the service. You can set a recurring service to repeat on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis.
   
6. Finally, clicking the Save button will create the service and display it on the Location page.

Example, Quarterly Service: if you are looking to schedule preventative maintenance to repeat every quarter, you will set a monthly frequency. Selecting "Monthly" will allow you to choose how many months should pass between service appointments. 

Understanding the Scheduling Window

If you select a single-day scheduling window, you will have the option to specify a preferred start time as shown above.  This is not available if choosing any other service delivery window.

Creating Jobs from a Recurring Service

Once you have Recurring Services set up, there are two primary ways that they may become Jobs:

1. The Service Opportunities Page. This page allows you to review your recurring services that are coming due for a given time period and to act on each.  All service opportunities should be acted on, and there should be no service opportunities for any given time range that you are preparing to schedule.
2. The Add Job buttons on the location page and the scheduler will suggest upcoming service opportunities.  If you add jobs this way (one at a time), be careful to use the correct service opportunity.  Be equally careful not to use a service opportunity / recurring service if you did not intend to (Example: a one-off repair, rather than a quarterly PM job).

FAQs

• The next due date of a recurring service seems incorrect.
• I completed a job and my recurring service did not advance the due date.
• How do I schedule 3 quarterly inspections/services and an annual?
• How do I move a recurring service from one location to another?
• Can techs see estimated prices on services?

The next due date of a recurring service seems incorrect.

• The first start date, repeat frequency, and interval are all found by editing the recurring service from the location page.
• We never change the service cycle automatically.
• Only a person editing the recurring service itself can change the cycle.
• Imagine a semi-annual service is due Jan 1, then July 1.  You created a job from the recurring service but did not do the work until Feb.  The next due date remains July 1.  Again, we do not change the recurring service cycle. 

I completed a job and my recurring service did not advance the due date.

• This is only possible if the service on your job did not come from a recurring service, or was an earlier instance of a recurring service.
• Proper use of the Service Opportunities Report will ensure this problem does not occur.

How do I schedule 3 quarterly inspections/services and an annual?

We recommend in these cases that you create a quarterly service (which will occur 4 times per year) and a separate annual service.  The Annual Job will contain both a quarterly and an annual service.  It should be understood that the annual is a superset of the quarterly, and both services should be marked complete during the job.

How do I move a recurring service from one location to another?

• There is no way to do this.  Instead, you will need to delete the recurring service from location 1 and create it again on location 2.
• To make commonly used service creation much faster, consider using service templates.

Can techs see estimated prices on services?

No, they cannot. They are for office use only.