Best Practices for Implementing Field Invoicing from the ServiceTrade Mobile App

Empowering your Technicians to send Invoices from the field via the ServiceTrade mobile app improves your collection time for cash-on-delivery customers.

This article will walk you through best practices for a smart field invoicing implementation. They include ensuring that your Technicians know: 

• Which contract to use in various scenarios.
• Which level of Invoice detail is appropriate for the customer.
• Which sales tax rate is appropriate when they don't see an option available.
• Your company's standards related to job items.
• Your company's preferences or standards for including ad-hoc notes on Invoices.

Important: Invoices created by Technicians in the field will default to the "Needs Review" status. This functionality allows office staff to review Invoices before sending them to accounting.

Getting Started - User Roles

For your Technicians to Invoice from the field, an admin user in your ServiceTrade account must assign the "Account Tech + Invoice" User Role from the Tech's user profile page, as seen below. 

Implementation Recommendations 

Before granting the Technician permission to Invoice from the field, you'll want to take a few steps to ensure a smooth implementation. These steps are related to the decisions the Technician must make in the field (as shown in the screenshot below) when generating an Invoice from the mobile app.

Contracts

Why is this important

• Allows Technicians to either confirm or select an available contract.
• Having up-to-date contracts ensures that Technicians provide the most accurate pricing to your customers.

Note: If you have multiple contracts, make sure that Technicians know which one to use in which scenario. For more information on contracts in ServiceTrade, visit the Contracts Section in the Help Center. 

Invoice Detail for Customer

Why is this important

• Technicians can select from several templates that will define the structure and level of information provided within the Invoice. 

Note: These templates follow the same structure your team uses within our core web application. For more information on Invoice Detail, check out our article on Quote and Invoice Level Detail.

Sales Tax 

Why is this important

• Technicians can select from a predefined list of tax rates or input a custom tax rate.
• Ensuring that your company assigned tax groups appropriately to your locations is vital and will ensure that your Technicians do not have to guess which tax rate to apply. 

Note: Communicating a standard process on what to do when the Technician does not see a tax rate will ensure that you have a common approach to resolution and, of course, a smooth customer experience for your customers. 

Job Item Standards

Why is this important

• Technicians can view and modify available job items or add new items to the Invoice. 
• Modifying and adding job items is not a new concept for your Technicians since this functionality exists in other places within the mobile app. Take note that this behavior is just like the job item tile experience. 

Note: This is an excellent opportunity to revisit job item standards with your Technicians regarding how much information Invoices should contain. 

Notes

Why is this important

• Technicians can add a free text note which will appear on the Invoice. 

Note: If you have internal standards for ad-hoc comments, this would be the perfect opportunity to drive common communication standards with your Technicians. 

Questions? 

Contact ServiceTrade support at support@servicetrade.com.