Watch this video to learn all about Job Phases (previously called Site Visits). Learn what a Job Phase is in Fergus and how you can use Job Phases to better manage job costs. Learn more about the rename from Site Visit to Job Phase.
Transcript:
It'd be awesome to see all of you here for our daily training webinar. We're going to be covering a few parts of what makes a site visit what a site visit is and how you can utilize them.
So going have a few of the features just to explain them in a bit more detail on how they might be relevant to your business. So just going to jump across to the tab on our training site. So we can show you how that's going to work for us today. So I'm going to jump into a job. We have sitting in our scheduling column. So just to get in there. Take a look at one here. Clicking on the job number. So we can open up our site visit. So in yesterday's session, we talked about the job cut. And today we're going to be looking specifically at this part here.
Everything included in this section as well as down here. And what that means. So at the start off with just kind of wanted to explain what a site is it is within Fergus and what that means for you. So with us. We like to think of site visits more as like a jobs stage. So site visits allow you to essentially manage your costs within a job. So things like material labor or your actuals used on a job. Now site visits can be broken down into stages. So that means you could either break it down into time periods. For example, like a fortnight or a month, depending on how you wanting to track your costs and how you're wanting to invoice them out as well. So your site visits can correspond to your invoices and then this five tabs within each site visit that you can see here, which will cover off in just a moment. And each site visit can be created down here on the left.
So you can see we've just got one here. But if you wanted to create your next one, you can do it. And you can customize the description here in the heater. And each one that's created will just go down in the alphabet right. So it's going to go from a BCD. As many as you would like to create. So what I'd like to talk you through now is these different tabs. So in each site visit you're able to schedule your team down here. We do have another webinar on Thursday this week covering over scheduling in the calendar. So feel free to jump in on that one if that's going to be relevant for you. But as we can skew to your team to each stage of the job labor is where all the teams ours will be incidents. You can track that on each site visit. So you can see down here to the right hand side, it's where the labor hours would be entered. Supply documents is a place we are able to enter in any invoices to come any packing slips that you have here any received invoices, you can manually into these in. Otherwise, there would be interred up and supply documents which would be covered in a future station and you can also add credits as you can see here. So any invoices in credits from your suppliers.
Now purchase orders. This tab is where you can create a purchase order. You can either outline whether you want it to be delivered or picked up. So ahead of time. And you can also create them from a quote in the materials that you had listed in your quote. This is a charge up job. We're looking at today. But if you did have a quoted job you could bring those materials across you to select the supply and information. The last tab on each site visit is for stock on hand or other. So what that means is, obviously stock on hand here would be anything that you have maybe grabbed from your van or a truck or anything from the workshop that you already had purchased ahead of time just to make sure you are having accurate cost tracking right so that you can track every little cost that's been added to a job and make sure accounting for that.
The other pretty much means any other costs that are linked to the job that aren't from a supplier and art from stock on hand. So most commonly, these costs may already be sitting in your custom Price Book So it could be things like travel time. It may be equipment hire equipment charges all these sort of things. So again, just a place to make sure that you are accurately tracking every little bit of cost that goes into the job to make sure that your invoicing correctly. You can also see above here above these tabs we've got an option to add forms. So forms is a very new feature with Fergus you're able to add a full specific to a site present. You can also add it to the overall job but on a specific site visit that can also be added to make sure that it's relevant to just this stage. Likewise with checklists. You can add a checklist to a specific site visit or to the overall draw. Same sort of concept there and on each site visit. You can also edit the description and the header here. So you can see here, if you wanted to delete something change something use double click likewise with the description and just make it. It is there also on each site that you can add relevant notes.
So up to the spot here. If you had a note that you wanted the whole team to see as soon as they click into that site visit you could say whatever you wanted to write will be important. Note click Add. Now, if you were to just edit note it would show up saying that there is a note on that site visit but if you click back in here. And if you pin that note, you'll see now you don't need to actually click in to see the information that's in it is now just visible without double clicking in there. Above this. Here we have a progress bar, which will outline where our site is sitting in terms of activity. So you can see at this point, this site is ready to start, which means it says as you hope I'm recording some time or materials. So as soon as someone in the team either add some material costs or their labor time, then it's going to move across and progress. You can see as you hover over each of these little headings and the progress bar is going to give you a little outline as to where you need to go what stage that it is at. So it's really helpful to gauge where your site visit is sitting at the top. Above this section is a few different tools. So the most important one to look at here is as soon as a site visit is finished.
So whether you are tracking your stages on a job by frames or for example, if you're tracking it by actual stages. So for example, maybe stage 1 is the first part of the job, you can be doing. Stage 2 would then be the next part. So going up here and marking it is ready to invoice. Once you've double checked all of your costs in these tabs you've gone over cheap labor cheap the invoices sheet. Any stock on hand. And then you just go up here and you market is ready to invoice. So what that does is if you click here, you're going to get two options, the most commonly used one is this here, Mark is ready. This option here is only used if you have invoiced it elsewhere. Well, you may have already invoiced out that site visit, but you forgot to market is really. So you just need to tell the Fergus system that actually all of these costs have been accounted for and invoiced out. But if you're at the first stage bootloader you've created any invoice market is really the system knows that the site visit is up to the stage here. And when that is updated, it would also show down here as well.
So anything that's on that progress bar will be reflected down here to this amount here. This dollar figure will be the cost to you. So far. These other totals up here wedding a site visit if it's no longer relevant here is adding a query he can see the schedule to the customer. Send a text. If you have AC enabled on your account. Printing out a paper worksheet. So some of our customers as they're transitioning from a pay to play system may still use this in the interim as a kind of moving across to getting timesheets on here. We do advise jumping straight in and kind of trying to get the team on board with timesheets but if you didn't need this option, it is here. And then the other option is moving items. So if you or a number of the team intend some costs into these tabs that were actually meant for another job, or maybe a separate stage within a site. Well start within a job card on a site visit. You can move these items set to help for reminders. You don't have to do any double entry. So I'm just going to show you how you would create a second site if you needed to. So we're just going to click down here and click Create site visit. So it's going to pre populate with the information from the original, but you could say what you wrote was right. So stage 2 doing xyz. Obviously, it in turn whatever was relevant to you and the stage of wanting to track if we click Save. You'll see now what we mentioned earlier.
So it's got a it's got to be and within each new site, it will stage. You can click in here and you get a whole new set of tabs and all of this information that we just went over. So you can see each site. It's kind of exclusive to tracking its own costs. You get your own cost figure on stage. This was setting out to schedule whereas our other ones setting it to start but it is all under that main job umbrella. It's important to remember. So still be a live in B and live in a footnote.
We're just going to pause there for a moment. I've seen some questions pop through. We're just going to go across and check to see what they are. So we've got one here from Noel. Can you go over uncharged items section and how to into the labor details, please. So just wondering if it is specifically relating to uncharged labor time. No So what that means is in each of the site visits there's an option to add your labor.
So I've got my name here. Depending on your use the type, you will all want to be able to see or charge out, right. But because I'm a master admin user, I can say this would be manually entering time. But I believe what now is mentioning is the uncharged reason. So what that means is as you're entering your labor hours and charged time is just time it's not charged to the customer. So it still can be paid or unpaid to the employee. Things like thinking of things like lunch breaks for example. That would be uncharged and unpaid, but then thinking of something like travel time or workshop hours office time that would still be uncharged to the customer but maybe pay to the employee. So that obviously, those cases are on a case by case basis. Her business. But hopefully that one sorted it out for you there. No we've got one from Vaughn. Can you mark is invoiced on a mobile device. So you can go through invoicing on the mobile. You can't do quoting or anything like that on the mobile. But you can do invoicing so if you did need to create an invoice on the go. That is definitely possible on the mobile app. I've got one here from Henry. Can you start a site visit without a date. I'm a builder.
We often have a few different jobs and don't always know which job. We'll be on day after day. So OK. So Henry you can have a site visit kind of created in setting, there. I think you might be just mentioning in terms of scheduling that might be what you're referring to there. So for example, here the site was it was created on the 20th of June. So you can see this one still sitting here and the to start section, we've scheduled in someone for quite far ahead of time. But you can see it's always been scheduled here. Dan's been scheduled. You don't have to do that scheduling. You can just keep that site visit waiting there if the whole job overall. If you're not too sure when is going to be. Start you can put that on hold, which can be done from up here in these ellipses at the top right. But if you're not too sure. I mean, it job's going to start. You don't need to schedule a specific time. You can actually just put someone's name against that job instead. So there's no specific time frame. Hopefully that one's helped you out there. Henry Noel just confirm the uncharged reasons found it hard to enter. Yeah So with entering uncharged time it is just a matter of making sure that you've got the full logs time.
So you need to have with this two hours eight hours five hours just need to make sure that you've got that time frame and the uncharged time is not longer than your logs time. So usually uncharged would be less than the overall logs that you've got. That might be the issue. You know, just making sure that if it's five hours that the uncharged time whatever it was is still within that time frame got a question here from Greg. Is it possible to put materials under supply docs from mobile. Example if extra was bought and not used. So from the mobile and able to allocate an invoice to come.
So usually the most common scenario would be your teams out on the go. They go and collect the materials that you need, and then they loved it as an invoice to come on the job. And then once you actually receive that invoice that's when you reconcile it against what's been logged into the job. And that's when the relevant amounts will kind of show. So obviously what has been purchased compared to what was used. But Fergus isn't a stock management program. So that is limitations obviously to the extent that that goes. But you do get to see the amount that wasn't used. Yes Hopefully get one story out your question there, Greg. We've got one from Mike then you add a cost in stock on hand like travel to be in a recent visit when you sit at the job. Good question, Mike. But you can't actually have something pre created in each job.
So when you think of a new job being created in Ferguson a site isn't automatically created alongside it. It's pretty much a blank canvas each time. So if you did want travel time added into each new job you do that would just be something I would recommend to add into your workflow. So in stock on hand or other check here and you'd go for travel time. If we have it saved in our test site you'd search for travelers on the go. We do. So you'd have to manually edit in each time. And whatever the quantity was whether it was OK or whether it was a one off cost. You would have to just build it into the workflow to ensure that it was tracked each time. Now, we've got one from Vaughn. I've had jobs that have been completed, but because the staff member doesn't like is invoiced they stay alive in the system and therefore don't get invoice.
Can he complete the job from his phone or cable and so that is a relatively common scenario for our customers. So jobs have been completed, but because they're not marked maybe I mean marked as ready to invoice. So the key there is to ensure that they are being marked as ready to invoice what we talked about earlier was this button up here. So what it sounds like is happening is he's completing his work. But then he's not doing that final step. So it is really important to make sure that you are your marking is ready to invoice. We will be doing a mobile app training as well. Some stage in the future.
So we can talk about the limitations and abilities on the app and kind of with it all ties in to the desktop and web browser version. But just making sure the key there. Sounds like it is just marking is ready to and we see you know it's actually at this stage. And then it does mean that the jobs are getting invoiced and not just sitting in the system. Yeah We've got one here from Stefon. If you invoice a job from a mobile version does it automatically go to the payments area on the desktop version. Yes So it will. So if a job is invoiced via mobile. It's still essentially as following along in that process right. So if you created an invoice it would be sitting in the payment scrapes on your dashboard. That final column it would be showing there. And it would also be in your invoice report and Fergus. We've got one from Matthew. Can cite but it's been merged. Ours have been logs to the wrong Stage et cetera so good question Matthew. So they can't be merged but it does tie into that moving items part that we talked about earlier.
So say, for example, you've got to site that's it's open or five or however many you have depending on the type of work you're doing. But if you two sites open in labour he'd be into then on site does be, for example. But you wanted it to be all consolidated to a watch. We would recommend doing as you go to moving items here, he'd click on that button and you'd. We don't have any cost associated, but if you imagine you'd click here, you choose the associated costs or from b, whatever one and then you'd move it across to whichever one you wanted to combine them together on. So that wouldn't get rid of site visit B or C you would need to then void the irrelevant one, but it would mean all the cost would be moved across to one and you just void the one that you no longer needed.
And we've got one more from Melinda. What's the best way to push a job along to a different status. So some jobs are purely for a subcontractor supplier to provide and leave heavy labour as such. A so rather than sitting and to start they really could be sitting in progress with the supply document to come. OK So that seems so that's quite a specific example, there for you Melinda. But in that sort of case, if you are aware that it's not going to kind of follow the standard format in Ferguson. It's not going to be following through all these steps necessarily. Knowing that kind of making sure that you're viewing the dashboard in a way that's relevant to you.
So you might know that if it's sitting in the stock column it is already kind of at a stage that might be past that. But if any sort of materials have been added or anything like that. It will still move to progress. So you can say as we hover here any materials or time. So in your case, it sounds like it would just be material. It's got to be working on the job, then it would move across to and progress and then you'd know kind of managing that from your own dashboard. Once that is all into then it doesn't even matter.
No labor's been done. You can override that by saying mark is ready to invoice. So if it's at the step you know the steps are not going to be complete because that's not relative to the way that your workflow works. You just jump in here and market is ready to invoice and then it would move across and progress to invoice section. So you're kind of forcibly moving it along. But you'd know that that is your workflow that you'd want to work from. So hopefully that sort of went out as well Melinda awesome. So this through all of our questions that we've got so far. And pretty much.
Also our site as it runs the risk. I do want to double check if any of you have any other questions at the moment that you wanted to run by. It's kind of popped up in relation to going over the site visits where any that are relevant to a business kind of feel free to check through those questions now before we wrap up what became to cover them off with you. Make sure that we get them sort of, well, we're all here on the station. Otherwise, if not OK, we've got another one that's just popped through from Amelia with the scheduling doesn't send an email to the customer no. So when you do schedule. It's small for internal purposes.
So for the team to be scheduled to a job. So when you schedule in your team, then that gives them a notification. So they'll get a notification on the app. But if you did want a scene that's due to the customer. There is the option up here as well. And if you did have easy enabled on your account. This assumption here it is an additional add on. So you get 100 texts for $15. So you can also seen that by text if you wanted to enable that. But those are the options. But just basic scheduling is for the internal team Cole we've got a couple more one from Viv is there any Edmond difference when entering invoices by supply docks or supplier dogs on the job. So I'm assuming you mean here just with the admin level on the web browser version. So you do get a lot more information when you are matching up those supplier invoices on the jobs you have the option to do the reconciliation. So Fergus is designed to kind of get the information basic at a basic level. And from the team when they're out working on the jobs by the app. But in terms of reconciliation doing that all via the desktop.
You can also get tablets if that's something you need to do on the go. But their web browser version does give you a lot more in terms of capabilities link and phone. Would it be better to create a new site visit for each visit reschedule an appointment on one site. That's a good question. One So each visit that you do depending on. I suppose time frames and that sort of thing. You could adjust the site visits to it if you're doing multiple visits and within a week and your knee. And we see on a per week basis, or maybe a fortnightly basis. And we would just recommend having one site visit open to track all of that time. And you can, for example, this might just be you could even call it week 1 and 2 we'll give it a literal date range. Yes and get some of our customers do that. And in the description, you could add a bit more information. So the team would see this, but then you could also add some extra information in terms of frames. So that's what we would recommend to do.
So each site visit you think of it more as a stage rather than having to wait. Literally for each visit that you do. So one site was it could be across four weeks a one week, whatever is relevant there. Can you email terms of trade to a customer on its own or attached to an invoice. So with terms of trade if it's a quoted job you can allocate it to it seems out with each quote that you send. If it's a charge-up job you would need to attach that at the invoicing stage if that would feel like there would be probably the most relevant for you there. So Yeah touching into the invoice would work from surely if you have an invoice material against the job. But at the end of the job some items are credited back. I can't seem to do a credit on the job.
How do you recommend dealing with this. So surely I'm dealing with credits are essentially managed in the same way as with invoices. You can do it all via supply documents if you train them and manually or in a CSV format. So just dragging and dropping it in there and assigning them to a specific site as it will then you can kind of match them against the invoice that was there as well. And in the end dollar figure in terms of cost will be adjusted. But we will be covering supply documents of that costing that sort of thing in the future station either next week or the following week. So we'll be able to go into a bit more depth on that one.
And I think there'll be a bit more help with. Usually one last one from a.j. He said, quote on mobile device one on site no. So quoting is not available on the app. But you can get a tablet. If you didn't need to do that kind of on the go. Some of our customers also get a small laptop. So that's the options there. All right, guys, we're going to wrap that one up for today. We've gone through all the questions, but it's been lovely to have all of you joining us for the session today. And we look forward to seeing you in the other two sessions that we have for the rest of this week. She's guys.