Frank Blau
Contributing Writer
In my last article I described the intent of the “boilerplate” language that appears on all Blau Plumbing job tickets. A number of other features to use with important day-to-day business are as follows:
Cost Breakdowns: On our job tickets you will see the various charges that go into compiling the final bill. (No time and material charges, however; we are a strictly flat rate company.) One change from our previous job tickets is the inclusion of a “diagnostic fee.”
Like most progressive contractors, for a long time we have used a “travel fee” or trip charge to cover costs associated merely with driving the truck to the door. However, we have found that with heating equipment getting so sophisticated nowadays it’s taking a longer time to diagnose the problem. So we have lowered our trip charge and added the diagnostic fee to reflect this.
We also have a section titled Proposal #1 and a second line to add a proposal. This is for those situations where a service tech goes on a call and the customer says, “While you’re here, take a look at something else too.” So he does this and it becomes Proposal #2 – or 3, or 4, depending on how many other problems the customer wants him to check out.
Further back in the form is a section containing space for the service tech to write up as many as five separate proposals for additional work.
If the customer opts for an additional repair, the service tech includes the price in final billing. If the customer takes a pass on the second proposal, a record of the job quote is still recorded on the copy brought back to the shop. So we have a record at all times if something goes wrong with this customer’s PHC systems. If he or she calls back later, we have all the information we need to quote and go into action quickly.
Materials List: Another feature of our new form is that the customer’s pink copy on the inside is perforated at the break between the materials list and the customer and billing information section. The customer gets only the latter.
Before, the customer was getting the whole sheet, including the materials. This opened a can of worms that brought us back to the bad old days of time and material pricing. Yet we need to record material usage for the purpose of restocking truck inventory. So this form enables us to have that information, but keep it from the customer, to whom it is irrelevant.
At the bottom of the material list is a line for the service tech’s signature, attesting to receipt of the materials. This avoids a lot of misunderstandings.
Warranties: It is also important to make sure your client knows what type of warranty their product or service comes with. On our job ticket we include: Material we supply is warranted according to manufacturer terms and conditions unless otherwise specified. Workmanship is warranted for 30 days unless otherwise specified.
The reason why we only warrant workmanship for 30 days is to give us the option to market extended warranty policies lasting years or even a lifetime.
One final feature of our job ticket is a customer information card that occupies that final page. This card will be covered in next month’s issue.