The heart of Dispatch Manager
Pro and your business is the dispatch board. Some of you may be using a
computer system to accomplish this and some of you may be using a cork board
and 3 by 5 index cards. Regardless of the method your dispatch board should
be displaying all of your business for the day. It should show you were your
technicians are scheduled to be and the time that they are supposed to be
there. For the dispatch board displayed here the service contractor has
decided to show the technicians across the top of the board (the columns) and
the number of the call going down the
board (the rows). The colors of the various cells represent the type of
service call being made. Please click the next button to learn more about the
dispatch board
Each of your employees that are involved in scheduling your technicians can define how the dispatch board will look. In this screen we have the technicians going down the page (the rows) and the time slots going across the page (the columns). In the previous screen this order was reversed. The colors of the cells are also defined by the user. In this particular case the color green is a simple service call, yellow designates warranty work, blue for estimates and the light purple means maintenance under contract. Not only can the user determine how the board is arrange they can also determine what data is displayed in the dispatch cell. On this screen the user is displaying the customers phone number, address and who called. In the next screen you will see more of the dispatch boards capabilities.
The date scroll object located
in the top left corner of this screen allows your operators to change the
date that they are looking at. You can go forward or backward in time in order
to review past activity or to schedule future jobs. In addition to the date
scroller, on the right side of this screen you can see a partial list of this
contractors customer list. The operator can use this list to assign service
calls for any customers that maybe calling in today. There are lookup keys on
this screen that will allow you to find a particular customer quickly. The
ability to move calls around on the dispatch board is very important. In
Dispatch Manager Pro this task is easily accomplished with only the mouse.
The operator simply clicks on the cell to move with the left mouse button and
while holding that button down moves the contents of that cell to its new
destination. To see how you can edit on change a dispatch call please click the
next button.
When you use the right mouse
button on an occupied cell on the dispatch board you gain access to this edit
window. Most of the dispatch information on this window can be changed. The buttons
across the top of the window define the various functions that Dispatch
Manager Pro supports. You can SCAN paper documents and attach them to this
dispatch. You can VIEW those scanned documents. You can TEXT message your
field technicians with their next call and of course you can BILL your
customers. Currently Dispatch Manager Pro supports two different accounting
packages, Bcc, Inc. and Foundation Software.
This screen is called the billing window and it allows you to record all related costs for the selected dispatch. The three buttons in the upper left corner of this window are LABOR, MATERIAL and OTHER. Each will present a different screen that allows for entry of labor cost, material used and any other items that you need to account for. The VIEW ALL button is a review only screen that will show all three types of costs on one screen with totals. The actually billing process is accomplished with two windows. This one and the payments window shown below. The billing window records the costs for a single dispatch and the payment window completes the process by taking those costs and posting them to your receivables program.
The payments window is very easy
to use. Using the type of payment drop down field you can indicated what kind
of payment has been made such as check, cash or credit card. Enter the date
of the payment and the amount. If the payment is a check you will also need
to enter a check number. You can record multiple transactions as deposits or
payments before you actually post the full transaction as an invoice to your
receivables. Prior to using the CREATE AR INVOICE button all postings up to
this point have only affected your dispatching system database. After using
the CREATE AR INVOICE button the entire transaction is posted to your
accounting system and the dispatch has been marked as billed.