Gone are the days of hundreds of job sheets saved on your hard drive, created in Excel or Word.
These days, we’re a lot savvier. We know if we produce good job sheets, the job will get done. The engineers will know what they’re doing, and it’ll make life easier for us in the long run.
What is a Job Sheet?
Job sheets are documents with information about a field service job. Job sheets can come in many formats and sizes. They are the glue that holds a job together. Engineers can find details about a job, including the site contact and address. They can also enter results as they complete the work, fulfil action lists and mark it as completed once it is all done.
You’re probably already well acquainted with job sheets by now. These were once just photocopied pieces of paper. But now can be turned into templates to make sure you don’t waste time creating brand-new ones from scratch. And that’s only one of the benefits of embracing technology.
Why are Job Sheets Important?
Okay, so we know what job sheets are, and you are most likely already using them on a daily basis. But why are they so important to the service industry?
Electronic job sheets have been the way forward for a while now. The digital format has plenty of benefits for an array of different businesses. Whether you’re a gas engineer or a manager of a catering equipment business, keeping track of jobs in the right way is important.
Here are five reasons why we love job sheets:
1. Makes your customers happy
Providing your engineers with everything they need to get to site and get the job done will make the whole process much smoother.
Giving them half an address, no customer name or the incorrect parts is going to stress them out. They might have forgotten a pen or spilt coffee on their paperwork. They’ll be having a bad day before they even start the job, resulting in unhappy customers and possible complaints.
With electronic job sheets, it is a different story; your engineer arrives on time with his job sheet app in hand. The customer signs off the paperwork electronically and the admin time on the job is reduced. This leaves a happy customer who recommends your business to their family and colleagues.
2. Stores history
Electronic job sheets are directly linked to the customer account, so you have everything you need for a project in one place. You’ll have a full history of previous jobs, as well as invoices, who your contact is, which sites you have worked on and so on. This means you’re not turning up to the job unprepared.
Anything and everything will be there.
Job sheets can then be found under a contact/company in the CRM. You can easily find any job sheets related to a customer, even if it is a couple of years old. You wouldn’t be able to do that so easily with paper-based job sheets, even if your filing system is flawless.
3. Keeps the sales process moving
Having each stage of the process linked together also helps keep the business organised.
Job sheets hold a record of all the work you’ve carried out, which means you won’t forget to create the invoice. As soon as the job is marked complete by an engineer, you can create an invoice and send it straight out to your customer.
If you use job management software, being able to link job sheets to other modules can also benefit your customers.
Perhaps your customers have their own remote access to jobs and important information. They can raise service incidents when an issue arises to quickly inform you of the problem. From there, you can create a job sheet, assign an engineer and get the work started in just a few clicks. Customers can view the progress of their incidents and related jobs, even outside of office hours.
With this ease of access for your customers, it means you can get started on the work as soon as possible. Fewer delays at each stage of the process give you and your team more time to focus on finishing the job to a high standard.
4. Helps plan ahead
Job sheets allow you to determine how much work is coming up so you can increase staff levels if necessary. You can view job sheets on an engineer schedule or diary to easily see how busy your workforce is going to be.
Keep a note of the start and end times on job sheets and assign engineers to prevent double booking. This way, you’re offering responsive services, keeping engineers busy and not letting your customers down.
Fulfilling planned maintenance is also an important process for engineers. Keeping a record of previous maintenance jobs prepares you and your workforce for future maintenance checks and annual work.
5. Logs everything you do
Your engineers have to log most of what they do. Everything from labour and travel times, work carried out and parts used.
You want to make this as easy as possible for them so can less time on admin and more on the real work. Now with a job sheet app on your engineers’ mobile, this has been made incredibly simple.
Job sheets are a focal point of your business. So, it is important they are done accurately. With job management apps, the engineers have everything they need to get the job done and get it sent back to you in the office.
Ready to take your job sheets digital and see first-hand how important they can be for your business? Job sheet software makes it easy. Try Clik Service for free and explore what you can do with streamlined job sheets.
This post was first published in June 2014 and has been edited with updated information.