Squeegee Tips and tricks to try during your free trial
Hello again!
Hopefully since my last post, you've had time to get your global settings sorted so the bulk of any customers added will follow these, and you've had time to get your notification templates set and tested. If not, first take a look here as it'll be such a time saver in the long run:
https://squeeg.ee/welcome-from-your-account-manager
You might be itching to import your customers at this stage and start using Squeegee out in the field, but there's a couple more organisational features I'd urge you to look at first if you can devote some time to these? You'll thank me in the long run, I promise!
A CRUCIAL setting to get right before you start
The replan updates schedule setting is, in my opinion, something that is essential to get right before you start using Squeegee for your scheduling.
How does your business operate when it comes to overdue work?
If you have lots of recurring jobs on your schedule and you need to replan some appointments, would you want them to:
a. stay as they were?
or
b. update to retain the frequency set?
Here's an example:
A 4 weekly appointment that is normally on Mondays is completed on the Friday of that week, 4 days late.
If you don't update the schedule, the following appointment will stick to the original schedule like this:
Originally planned for Monday 13th March, completed on Friday 17th March,
Next appointment: Monday 10th April with a 3 week and 3 day gap between appointments, then returning back to the 4 weekly cycle after this next appointment on Mondays every 4 weeks.
If you do update the schedule, the following appointment will move to retain the frequency and be updated like this:
Originally planned for Monday 13th March, completed on Friday 17th March,
Next appointment: Friday 14th April retaining the 4 week frequency between appointments and continuing to keep this frequency then on Fridays every 4 weeks from there.
How to enable this setting
This setting is set globally in settings under jobs and scheduling and affects all replanned jobs that have the schedule set on the job rather than the round.
There are a few ways to replan jobs, one doesn't perform a check and automatically uses the global setting, the other allows a toggle to be switched away from the global setting.
When multi-selecting jobs from the work planner or 'my work' and then selecting a new date on the chart at the top, the check isn't performed and the jobs move using the global setting.
If instead the replan dialog is opened by selecting the jobs you wish to move and pressing on the 'replan' action to the top right, a toggle at the top of the dialog will allow you to switch between updating the schedules and only moving the selected appointments leaving the future schedules as they were.
If a job is scheduled as a part of a scheduled round, only the appointment can be replanned, the schedule can't be updated from the planners, only the round as a whole from the rounds view, which segues nicely to my next tip!
Using the ROUNDS feature to help with organisation
The rounds feature can change how you add new work and schedule completely., or it can just be used as a visual tool in combination wit the visual planner (only on ultimate)
Round Organisation with colours and the Visual Planner
Grouping jobs into rounds, generally according to location, isn't anything new for many mobile businesses. What is new is being able to set a unique colour for each so that when viewed on a map or on a planner, it is very easy to spot when one or two jobs are out of sync so we'll talk about this first.
In the rounds section > press into a round > three dots menu to the top right > pick round colour > save
One you have done this on all rounds, then you'll notice that the jobs show on the planners with these colours making it easy to see which rounds are scheduled on which days.
To further improve efficiency by location, use the visual planner on the ultimate plan to then see all rounds plotted on a map (like the image shown on the laptop view) where you can quickly draw round a selection and move them to a more logical round.
Scheduling by rounds
If you want to further optimise your planning and make it easier for job rounds to stay together, you may have noticed that I wrote that schedules can't e updated on replanned appointments that are scheduled in the section above. This is because a frequency is set on the round as a whole which individual appointments can be moved away from but then will always b back to the original schedule on he next date. This kind of scheduling works extremely well for businesses like wheelie bin cleaning services where generally there are only minor adjustments to the schedule when the bin cleaning lorries have had a delay, or the entire date is shifted for public holidays.
Adding a frequency to rounds is extremely helpful for companies who are continually growing as a location is set on the round and then once the address is verified on a new customer, the closest round to that location is suggested first in the list when adding the frequency under 'job group' like the image here.
To update the whole round frequency date, this can be done on the round, just update the start date from the same menu as above: rounds view > press into round > three dots menu to the top right > set frequency for round.
My next tips and tricks page will give you all he options for importing your data
Can't wait that long?
Send an email to support@squeeg.ee requesting information on how to do this and someone will get back to you ASAP with the options for data imports.
