11/13/2024 - Webinar - Open Mike Night

(0:04 - 0:13)So good afternoon, everyone. We're going to do this one in the open mic night format. We did this a little over a year ago.(0:14 - 0:43)I know a couple of you that are on the call were participants in that last one, but it seemed to be a good format and gave everyone an opportunity just to ask questions, voice comments. And I think that just having an open mic and having my clients share their thoughts is a good thing. So I would like to take that into consideration again today and really encourage everyone to just speak up and ask whatever questions you may or may not have.(0:45 - 0:53)So introduction, we're not going to do the mute all or anything. Feel free to talk. Let's put this all out there.(0:54 - 1:09)Any questions, I would like to make sure that we have a good conversation this afternoon. Just a couple other notes here. The latest version of Business Management HomeWatch IT will go out tonight.(1:10 - 1:28)This has quite a few significant changes. If you're using the customer portal, pay attention to the notes that are on there because those are going to be important. Paul, I know that the incoming email routine that you had requested, that is part of this as well.(1:29 - 1:36)Consider that kind of a beta mode. I mean, I've tested it thoroughly. But of course, testing it with one of you all is better.(1:38 - 1:53)But I would love to get your feedback on that after you've had a chance to try that. And let me know if that meets the requirements that you had. Those of you that are on the call that are on the starter kit, there is going to be some changes coming out.(1:53 - 2:21)There are going to be some changes coming out probably beginning of December that will update the way that invoicing is managed. Right now, basically, any time you do a report, it creates a HomeWatch visit item for your invoice. Going forward, it's also going to allow you to change what goes on the invoice based on the template you use to do the report.(2:21 - 2:40)So this came about with a lot of my clients that are in the hurricane zone about a month ago. And it was just charging home visits. And they said, we'd really like to make sure that it shows up on the invoice as a hurricane visit without actually going in and adjusting the invoice.(2:41 - 2:52)So those changes will be coming, and I think that'll make the starter kit that much better as well. So those are just a nutshell. Kind of be on the lookout for those changes and updates that will be coming out.(2:53 - 3:21)And then having said that, I just want to go into the open mic portion and just have a discussion about situations and so on. So just a moment ago, before we went on record, we were talking a little bit about the safety culture monitor QA changes. And John, I know you were making some comments that you felt that you had not necessarily had any issues with the program.(3:22 - 3:37)So that's good. I think on this call, you are the only one still running safety culture, actually. A couple of folks on the call are right in the middle of making the switch.(3:38 - 3:51)So you're in good company here. Paul, I don't know if you've had a chance to play with it at all yet and see how it works. I would be interested in your feedback when you have a chance.(3:53 - 3:58)It's on the list for this week. I haven't really done anything yet. But it's on the list.(3:58 - 4:05)I know everyone's busy. So I don't expect it to be an immediate thing. Just would love to get the feedback when you do have a chance.(4:05 - 4:18)I have one client that switched right at the same time you did. And they actually went live today with all three of their technicians. And initial feedback was very good from them.(4:18 - 4:43)So I know that I think I mentioned in the email that 90% of the clients that have made the switch were very happy. There were a few that still liked the format of safety culture and didn't necessarily have the offline issues that seem to be a big issue in more remote areas in Southwest Florida as well. So that's fine.(4:43 - 4:54)Software is a personal thing. Certain people like different features better. And so if monitoring QA is not for you, there's no problem putting it back on safety culture.(4:55 - 5:06)I'm going to continue to support both. That's not going to change. But having said that, I do think that it's a good move.(5:06 - 5:28)And I look forward to your feedback on that. Gary, are you able to, I mean, obviously, we'll see it tomorrow. But are you able to just give us maybe a two-minute preview of the email change? Or not really? I, eh.(5:28 - 5:34)Problem is I kind of have my HomeWatch IT email forwarding to it. Yeah, no worries. No worries.(5:34 - 5:41)So if I brought it up, I might bring up something that a client had sent me that shouldn't necessarily be shared on. I got it. No problem.(5:42 - 6:07)What I would suggest, though, is if you go out to the help system, under Admin will be another section that talks about incoming email routines. And on there is the demo slash tutorial video, as well as the instructions on how to set it up. Now, granted, it's not going to do you much good to set it up before it gets up tomorrow.(6:08 - 6:18)But you can at least take a look at the video, and it will show you how it works. Basically, you get a little inbox that'll have your emails in it. You click on it.(6:19 - 6:34)Based on how you set up the forwarding, it should know which customer it belongs to. And then you can pick if it belongs to an issue and or a work order, and just save it. And it'll save it in your activities and method, as well as linking it to the issue and or work order.(6:34 - 6:45)So it's pretty clean. Right now, you can get the emails into method from the Gmail gadget if you're using Google. I know that you're not.(6:45 - 7:05)I know a lot of my clients are also using Outlook or other services. So this will get around that, in that you'll be able to pull any emails into method, as far as having it be an incoming activity. So anyway, for those of you that weren't necessarily familiar with what I had talked about, yep, there you go.(7:06 - 7:18)Thanks for sharing that, Paul. The link Paul just put into the chat will take you straight to it. And the whole idea here is to be able to get incoming emails into the system easier, so that you're able to store those.(7:23 - 7:36)So that's one of the big changes tomorrow. There's several others that have been asked for, that you'll see as well. We can talk about those changes if there's time between the questions that you want.(7:43 - 7:53)So let's go ahead. Any questions, please feel free to ask. Hey, Gary.(7:54 - 8:00)It's Christy with Nosy Neighbor Home Watch. How are you? Good, thanks. How are you? I'm still using safety culture, too.(8:02 - 8:07)Oh, OK. For some reason, I thought you were also a monarchy. Sorry about that.(8:07 - 8:13)I hadn't moved over. We talked about it, but it's right in the middle of my busy time. Yeah, and you don't want to do that.(8:13 - 8:39)I understand. So this is probably a really elementary question, but I know I had gone in in safety culture and had created some reports for pre-storm and post-storm assessments. So when I go into that, and then it looks like you had put them in there as an option.(8:40 - 9:04)When I go into the admin and method and I create a work order in the box area where it says report, it doesn't give me the option to select a report if I'm doing. So in other words, where you select your report template, you're not seeing the results. No.(9:05 - 9:20)Have you actually linked them? With safety culture, you have to manually go in and link it. So to do that, you go to your preferences screen. So you hit the three dots here on the admin, go to preferences.(9:21 - 9:32)Let me flip mine over to safety culture real quick, just so we're looking at the same screen. Then under safety culture, you'll click where it says click to manage templates. OK.(9:33 - 9:48)You'll go in there, and then you'll just say add a new template. Oh, OK. And then it'll actually bring up, it won't do it for me, but for you, when you say add a new template, it'll bring up a dropdown box right up in here.(9:48 - 10:00)And you should be able to just hit the dropdown, and it'll pull up all the templates you have in safety culture that are not yet connected. And just grab that and hit save. That should be all you do.(10:00 - 10:10)As long as you have the heading information correct. And by the heading information, I mean. Down there at the bottom.(10:10 - 10:21)Well, it's on the information page in safety culture. But the most important one is the work order number item. You have to have a line item on your templates as work order number.(10:23 - 10:26)I learned that. OK. You saved me with that one.(10:26 - 10:33)As long as you have that, and that's assigned here, then you're fine. Everything else will work fine. OK.(10:35 - 10:57)Because the way I've been, I did it with Helene and Milton is I just tell my clients to let me know who wants me to do a post storm. And then that way, it allows me, as they tell me they want me to do it, I can go in and put a work order in. But if I'm, if it's just, if it works out well, then I can get it in there.(10:57 - 11:06)And then I can get it to create the report ahead of time. That's kind of what I think. And that's the whole idea.(11:06 - 11:22)I don't know if you looked at the storm procedure document that I put out. But I know that several of my clients in Florida used that document. And you'll find that if you go to the help.(11:25 - 11:41)And actually, you can even just search on storm. Was that the template I asked you for? Because I read where you had talked about there was a template that was created. No, the regular templates you should have.(11:41 - 11:52)This is basically the procedure for if you have a storm event. Oh, gotcha. Basically, it's easy for you to notify your customers customer list screen.(11:52 - 12:07)You can then create an initial work order for pre-storm. Then what you can do is clone that, which is what it talks about here. So you basically create the work order one time.(12:08 - 12:19)And then using the clone option, you can create that same work order for all. For example, I have a client that he did 176 pre-storms. He created one work order.(12:20 - 12:30)Then he cloned it to all 176 customers. Then he started the reports. And he did all this before the storm was coming, while he still had electricity and Wi-Fi.(12:31 - 12:39)So he started all the reports. And again, you just do that automatically from the admin. Everything syncs to it still says safety culture here.(12:40 - 12:47)But it's fine if it's monitor QA, it'll work the same. I'll update this. And then that's it.(12:47 - 13:02)And then at that point, you've got all your templates, your reports are synced, you've got the work orders. Now it doesn't matter if you have electricity, connectivity, whatever, you can do your reports. And as soon as the inspections sync, they'll be able to be sent.(13:03 - 13:10)OK. Yeah, because we're kind of getting ready for a potential another one next week. I hadn't heard that that was coming that way.(13:10 - 13:15)I thought it was going toward Texas. That one's gone. Raphael's gone.(13:16 - 13:18)This is the new one. Oh, jeez. OK.(13:21 - 13:37)But just as the example, that particular client that had the 176, I think for him to create the work order, clone it, and then generate all 176 reports took him somewhere around 10 or 12 minutes. Nice. OK, that's awesome.(13:37 - 13:44)And then he was ready to go. And Gary, this is Jill Letty. If I can jump in a minute.(13:44 - 13:51)Well, Jill, you're kind of the one I was referring about. I didn't see you join. I was going to say that we did that, and it worked great.(13:51 - 13:53)Hi, Jill. Hi, there. Good to see you.(13:55 - 14:02)We had the cloning worked great, and it was slick. It was super easy. It was awesome.(14:02 - 14:14)And then we did switch from safety culture to monitor QA right around the conference time. Gary, you might, I don't remember even when it was exactly. I think it was right after the conference or kind of right in there.(14:14 - 14:21)And kind of right at the start of busy season. And it was really slick. It was super easy to convert.(14:22 - 14:32)I'd highly recommend it for anybody who hasn't done it. And I don't know who's all on or who has or who hasn't. But we have about 300 clients, and we do have the three.(14:33 - 14:45)There's three of us that use it, and it works really well. I'm slick, and we've hardly had any issues. And it's really our issues have mostly been our people issues because we didn't do something correctly.(14:47 - 14:59)So it's really, it's a great system, and Gary's got it working really well. It's really nice. Yeah, I think you did it, Jill, during, it was right before the conference because you and I were talking about it.(15:00 - 15:07)OK, yeah, that's right. The monitor QA. And then I remember when I talked to Gary, and he was like, well, wait until you get out of busy.(15:08 - 15:24)So maybe in like the next month, I'll be pestering you. No worries. And naturally, monitor QA is very excited to try to get users away from safety culture and take advantage of their platform.(15:24 - 15:36)That's why they are more than happy to convert all the templates, give you that month of free service. And they're very excited to be working with HomeWatch IT and my clients. And so that's a great thing.(15:37 - 15:54)It's a little disheartening when you work with a particular company for many years and bring them almost 400 clients, and then it's almost like you're a bother to them. They don't want to work with you. So it's a breath of fresh air to work with monitor QA.(15:54 - 16:07)Again, I'm going to continue supporting both. So it's not mandatory that anybody switch. But it's great to get feedback, like Jill just said, where it worked better for her being offline in the case of the hurricane.(16:07 - 16:26)And that's really hurricanes and events like that are really the times when we want to shine as HomeWatch companies with respect to servicing our clients. That's what they're paying you for. It's great that you go out and visit their house once a week.(16:26 - 16:40)But man, when there is a disaster like that, that's really when the value shows. So it's important to be able to stay on top of that. And that's why I've tried to put these procedures in place, to make it easier.(16:42 - 16:46)Perfect. Gary, I have a quick question, if I can jump in. Jill Leddy still.(16:48 - 17:04)So there's some things that, even though we have a lot of clients and we've switched everything over, there's a couple of probably the simpler things that we haven't done through Method. And one of them was, I just started to send agreements through Method. I did my first one, I think two days ago.(17:05 - 17:12)And I must've done something wrong, but I couldn't get the agreement to send with it. And I only tried it once. I didn't do the test thing.(17:12 - 17:30)I just thought, oh, it'll go through. And I re-sent it later on through my email. But do you have any idea what I might've done, Gary? Using the HomeWatch IT contract or were you using SignMail? I was using the HomeWatch IT just through the email.(17:35 - 17:46)So when you went in to send the contract, it didn't send it all? No, it didn't send the contract. So I went just to send it as a regular email. I can't tell you, I wasn't there.(17:47 - 17:59)It was in the email. Where is it that says about sending an email? Oh, the send email? Yeah, send email. That's where I did it from, so.(18:00 - 18:10)Oh, okay. That should have worked. If you're doing the regular send email, you do need to attach it.(18:10 - 18:32)Yeah, I did go down to the bottom and I thought I had attached it, but it didn't send. And I did it pretty quickly, so I probably missed something. If they're in as a customer, it's actually very easy to come into, let's say, HomeWatch IT, because if you use the email right here, this does let you drag the attachments right in.(18:33 - 18:40)Okay. The method email, I think it requires you to have a template. Okay, yeah, and I didn't have a template.(18:40 - 18:55)I just thought, well, I should be able to just throw it in there. And without, I didn't read any of the instructions or anything, I just was like, I'm gonna throw it in. The problem here is this assumes it's in there as a customer and if you're sending them an initial contract, that may or may not be a customer, that may just be a contact.(18:57 - 19:03)I did, I think I did have them as a customer. Yeah, then you can use this one quite easy. You don't have to use a template.(19:03 - 19:10)You can just type the email subject and for the attachment, just attach your document here. Okay. And then hit send and that would go.(19:11 - 19:28)Great, thank you. And for those of you unfamiliar, this is on the customer list screen on the bottom. And this is really what I was referring to in the previous, when we're talking about the storms, a simple way for you to send out those bulk emails to your customers.(19:28 - 19:50)So for example, if the storm is on its way, come here, select all customers, come down here and put in your message. We're going to be doing shutters, whatever message you want. And then if you hit send, that's gonna send that email out to all your customers right away.(19:51 - 20:05)So it makes it very easy to maintain that level of communication. Now there's also, if your customers are in residence, this is a new option you'll see tomorrow with the update, but you can actually check the box. And if any of these customers are in residence, it will not email them.(20:06 - 20:15)So you let them fend for themselves if they're here for the storm. But otherwise the default is it's gonna email everybody that you check up above. And here you go.(20:17 - 20:31)Gary, this is on business management? Yes. That's a nice feature that you added, Gary. With that, do not email a hidden residence.(20:31 - 20:37)I like that. Thank you. I don't recall if that was your suggestion.(20:38 - 20:40)It wasn't. Okay. But I like it.(20:43 - 20:51)Well, and this came up also during Milton. You know, I had some clients who I, I've got customers in residence. I don't want to email them.(20:52 - 21:04)You know, and unfortunately at that time, you'd have to manually go through and pick them out. Now it's one button push and the system will know and leave those out. Okay.(21:05 - 21:23)So that, anyway, that's, you know, the customer email that makes it very, very easy to send out those bulk messages to your clients. And it emails each customer individually. So you don't have to worry about anybody seeing the, you know, a CC list or anything like that.(21:24 - 21:36)So a hundred percent confidentiality. If you have a hundred clients, it will send a hundred emails. Right.(21:36 - 21:43)Good question so far. Let's keep it up. Gary, with contracts.(21:45 - 21:59)Yeah. I never actually sent any contracts this way, but I played with it. And when I played with it, it would bring up the detail.(22:00 - 22:32)Whatever QuickBooks has as a detail, what in the detail line as the description of the contract. Is that still true? In other words, let's just call, I mean, it's not a home watch, but let's just call it golf cart, golf cart service in the item. But description is we're going to check the water level, switch to charging and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.(22:32 - 22:50)And there's two or three lines. Are you confusing it perhaps with the proposal method app? Cause it works that way. Mine works basically this way where you have a heading of the contract and then you have your details of the contract.(22:51 - 23:04)It can substitute certain fields for you, but it doesn't pull in any line items. Everything is just a flat format contract template that you can email. Oh, I'm sorry.(23:04 - 23:08)I misspoke. Yes, it was a proposal. Yeah.(23:09 - 23:11)I'm sorry. That's all right. That's all right.(23:11 - 23:33)Just when you described it, it sounded like it was their proposals app, which I think it's a decent app, but I don't think it is the right app for a home watch business. It's more for, let's say an accountancy firm or a legal firm that's going to have retainers and so on. I think it'd work well for those types of business.(23:33 - 23:39)I don't think it works for home watch, but yeah. The standard contract is very simple. It's just heading and body.(23:40 - 23:56)And then, like I said, you can do the substitutions and email that out and get electronic signature upon completion. And then you can always go in and look at the signature when it's done by going to a signed contract. And you can see here, this was signed.(23:57 - 24:29)So you can easily click on that and this will then bring up for you the final contract with signature on it. And did you kind of split your method and the SignNow method? Or I guess that when you have a live account with SignNow, right? If you have a live account with SignNow, you can connect that account. And you'll see up here on the upper right, it says integrations.(24:30 - 24:35)Yep. And you'll just come in with SignNow. The instructions are all listed.(24:35 - 24:53)If you don't have a SignNow account, you can create one right here with a link for HomeWatch IT. And it'll walk you through how to get this ugly token, as it's called, out of your SignNow account, put it in here, and then you just say sync. And this will then sync your templates.(24:53 - 25:06)And then you can just use your SignNow templates right in here and email them off to your customer. So you can, and you can mix and match. You can have some templates with SignNow and some that are in HomeWatch IT and be able to send all those out.(25:10 - 25:51)And you have to, let's say you, if you're starting beginning in a year and you're going to have a price increase, you still need to do individual rate for that particular person, right? With regard to the contract? Yeah. If you do new contracts every year with different rates on them every year, then yes. The planning module, if you have a more perpetual type of contract, which is like an auto renew and it just says, hey, price changes may occur.(25:52 - 26:14)You don't necessarily need to put those in. When you're using the price management, the price planning in here, this will allow you to change the prices in bulk, for each customer, like for example, let's see if we do a HomeWatch weekly. Yes.(26:18 - 26:24)That's condo, that's why I didn't get anybody. HomeWatch house, there we go. So this brings up all my customers that are weekly home visits.(26:24 - 26:33)And this would allow me now to put in new rates for them. And I can do it individually here. And then make it effective whatever date you want.(26:33 - 26:55)So if I want that effective January 1st, I'll do that, hit the button and then hit the update to update all the clients. And then you can easily, at that point, it's not on the screen. So once you do the update, it'll say, do you wanna email them? And you can just send them all and it'll send out individual emails to each person saying, hey, your old rate was 70 and now it's gonna be 80.(26:56 - 27:06)Now, does that have a description in that process? This uses your item codes out of QuickBooks, yes. Just the item code. Right.(27:06 - 27:29)So it would be, okay, all right. Now, I ran into something, I did this very process last year and it worked great. But where it's something that kind of threw me for a loop is that last year, most of my people were on no end date.(27:30 - 27:57)Mm-hmm. Now, if I remember correctly and I tried this to update and I'm kind of lucky or lazy, whichever way you wanna look at it, I only have about six or seven different types of home watch rates. You're either weekly or biweekly, you're either a condo or a 1500 square foot to 2500 square foot.(27:57 - 28:23)And there's maybe like five of them all together. So it makes it pretty simple for me to update. But where it got confusing is, I think I had all these folks on no end date, but I think it used the default setting in preferences about how far out to go, six months, eight months, 12 months.(28:25 - 28:53)Well, yeah, it'll only go out that far, but it will use whatever the effect of date is here as the start of your price increase. It started correctly, but I think I ended up with another three months of visits that didn't get updated because they were beyond that time limit. It should be everything going forward.(28:53 - 28:57)Okay, everything to the end, no matter how long. Correct. Okay.(28:58 - 29:07)Yeah, because essentially it updates your series. Yeah. You may or may not be familiar, and then those of you that, this is probably good info for everybody.(29:07 - 29:23)If you ever pop into a series that is dated ahead, like let's just say I'll pick up Swanson for today. If I go into that occurrence, you'll notice there's no lines here. And that's by design.(29:23 - 29:47)The system doesn't pull the lines from the series into the occurrence until you actually use this work order. So in other words, if you generate a report for it, or if you're in your route tech app and you open it up there, then it pulls forward those lines from the series. When you hear as the admin, it doesn't pull them forward unless you hit the copy button, but normally that's not necessary.(29:48 - 30:13)So in your case, John, what you were describing is the system would have changed the series to whatever your new rate is. So therefore all of those future occurrences that don't have line items, when it did come time to do that, should have pulled forward that new rate. So it really shouldn't have made any difference at all.(30:13 - 30:26)You had no end date. If you are, because you kind of said you had like four or five items and so it makes it real easy. If you change the price, just say in QuickBooks, that isn't necessarily going to update that price on these work orders.(30:27 - 30:38)No, I know that. Yeah, yeah. That's where you would use this to all prices to same amount, right? And here, if you put in 80, it's going to change everybody to 80.(30:39 - 30:50)So if you have flat rates based on what the item codes are, then it's easy to do it this way. And just pick your different items. Most of my clients do it by customer because each customer is going to be a little bit different.(30:51 - 31:04)But if each code is always going to be the same rate, you can do it this way also. And that should, you should not have had that issue. I'll look at it again this year, but I'm going to do a rate increase at first of the year.(31:05 - 31:19)And I'll play with that again. Okay. But this year I decided to put everybody on their series ends on December 31st.(31:19 - 31:35)So all 250 of mine end on December 31st. I liked the new end date. It just something struck me as, oh, that doesn't look right.(31:36 - 31:42)And so I kind of worked around that. Yeah. Should have let me know.(31:42 - 31:52)I'm sure we could have worked through that. Yeah. Now you do know that if you have an end date in there for a bunch of clients and you need to extend them, that that's easy to do as well.(31:52 - 31:55)Yes. Okay. Yeah.(31:55 - 32:16)And for those of you that don't know, under your admin, you have this multiple series extend option. And this will allow you to go out and grab all of those series that have a particular end date and just tell it you want to continue until, let's say in John's case, he wanted to extend until April 30th. So he could easily go in, pick the series, extend to April 30th, hit okay.(32:17 - 32:26)And he'd be done in a matter of a couple of minutes. So you don't have to manually go through every series and change the date. Yeah.(32:26 - 32:49)I knew that was going to be coming up doing that here shortly to extend all of these folks. For highly seasonal businesses, I think that actually makes the most sense to do it this way. From a previous webinar, I think for Florida people, it might be a good idea to use that no end date method.(32:53 - 32:56)Yeah. It's a matter of preference. Yeah.(32:59 - 33:08)Okay. If you have no end date, then you just have to manage all the in-residences, which either you're managing series or you're managing in-residences. It's just whatever you prefer.(33:11 - 33:14)Either way works fine. Now explain that again. I'm sorry.(33:16 - 34:06)What did you just said? If you're using no end date, then it's important for you to manage the in-residence so that when they come back in on November 1st, that you put in November 1st and then keep up to date their leave date as they tell you they're going to leave in April or May. So you have to either manage the in-residence dates or you have to manage the series dates, but you have to manage those seasonal dates one way or the other in your case. Yeah, now this year, they all end on December 31st, but I use in-residence and I use in-residence even though I had everybody on a no end date last year, I used it both times.(34:08 - 34:41)But a lot of my folks either don't know or don't care to tell me when they're, well, I'm here on December 1st, but I don't know when I'm leaving or they don't bother telling me when they're leaving. And so I just, in my case, I just put it in-residence for the rest of the period until they tell me differently. And it's actually the reason why the in-residence has a no end date on it as well.(34:41 - 34:55)If they say they're coming in on a particular date, but they don't know when they're leaving, just put a from date and put a no end date. And then when they do tell you they're leaving, take the no end date off and put the to date in. Ah, okay.(34:55 - 35:08)And then that will reinstate any work orders that are after that, that may have been marked in-residence. Got it. Okay, but yeah, that's the whole reason that's there is because you're right.(35:08 - 35:22)Your folks are gonna come in and they're not gonna know when they wanna leave yet. They may not decide until spring break time that they're gonna leave the following week. So just put it as no end date and then you can always take that off and put the proper end date in there.(35:26 - 35:39)Okay. Okay. Can I've set no end date in the same process as extend? When you extend the work through the series? Yes.(35:40 - 36:03)Well, if you set it to no end date, it doesn't matter because no end date's perpetual. It's literally, it's the rest of time until you turn it off. Well, does that assume that each of my people is on already on no end date before I'd extend? No, no, they're mutually exclusive.(36:03 - 36:11)The no end date on in-residence doesn't matter what you have on the series. Oh, but it must be end date in-residence then. Yes.(36:12 - 36:26)If you want that to be an ongoing in-residence, yes. Okay, all right. All right, I hope that was clear for a lot of you on here.(36:26 - 36:39)If not, and it's something you're interested in, please speak up and I'd be more than happy to go into more details on that. Whatever I was doing, it worked beautifully. Right or wrong, it worked well.(36:40 - 36:46)Good. All right, thanks for those questions. I appreciate it.(36:52 - 37:24)I know we have a couple of fairly new folks on the call. I know that those of you on the starter kit, this is probably a lot of Greek, but I do think it's a good exposure as well so that as you're using the starter kit and your businesses grow and it's time for you to upgrade, you've got a little bit of background here and you know what you're upgrading to and you can see what extra things you can take advantage of and how it'll help you and improve your business processes. So that's key.(37:25 - 37:41)So I'm happy to have a mix of clients on tonight. Can I ask another question, Gary? Well, unless somebody else jumps in, go ahead. On planning, on the planning screen.(37:41 - 37:50)Yes. You have your monthly calendar of estimated revenue and visits. Correct.(37:51 - 38:26)Okay, now we're in November. Let's just say, and I do, I have about 30 or 40 work orders completed in October, but not yet invoiced. Does that influence November's numbers? So the numbers that are here are based entirely off of work orders that are in the system that are not, let's just say that are active.(38:26 - 38:40)Whether they're not started, whether they're completed, as long as they're not like canceled or in residence, they're included in these numbers. So that's the reason why it has this month and continues forward. So these are all the work orders in the system.(38:40 - 38:54)So it's irrelevant as to whether or not they have been invoiced. They're still going to be showing up in this amount. So let's just say there are some not yet invoiced in October.(38:54 - 39:02)Would they be under October's number or November's number? They would be in October's number. They're based off of the work order date. Got it, thank you.(39:03 - 39:20)Okay, and all of these numbers are based off of the work order date. So that is a good point though. Keep that in mind that, you know, if the September work orders were invoiced on October 1st, your QuickBooks is going to show you did $5,940 in sales in October.(39:20 - 39:36)When the reality is here, it's going to show in September because this is driven off of work order date. So, you know, if you're dating your items the first or the following month, your QuickBooks will probably have like a month lag between those numbers and these numbers. Yeah, okay.(39:38 - 39:48)Yep. Okay. As long as we're in here, a new feature that you can expect in tomorrow's release is this series analysis.(39:49 - 40:08)And I've been asked for this by, you know, a few clients debates where this will allow you to see how many series you have per customer, what services you utilize throughout all your series. And then as usual, you can drill into any of these numbers. So, you know, if you want to see who you're, you know, charging mail to, you can click on that.(40:08 - 40:21)And this will show you all the clients that you have mail processing charges for. If you want to see, you know, what the five series are for Russell, you can click on that. And this would bring up all five of the different series.(40:21 - 40:51)And then from here, you can click on that and it would take you directly into your series maintenance screen. So this has, I think a lot of flexibility in how you manage your series and that you'll have a nice graphical view and can really see, you know, what's being used where, which clients have, you know, how many series out there and be able to manage those with just a couple of clicks. So I think you'll get a lot of use out of this.(40:51 - 41:16)This has been requested a few times. So that's another one of the bigger enhancements that'll be as part of tomorrow's package. I could never see the details of what you just did.(41:17 - 41:48)If you don't mind going back to planning, well, I don't have series yet, but let's go back to customers, customer analysis, and then pick one. Okay, so then that shows me whatever time period you have here. So let's say I'll make it this year.(41:49 - 42:07)So now this will show me each month for whatever customer I have picked. So if I click on Goodwin, now I just see each month for Goodwin. And then if you need to see individual work orders, you can pick a particular month, like April, and this will show you the work orders that are included in that.(42:09 - 42:37)Okay, all right, I'll play with that, thank you. Right, there's a lot there in the planning, and it gives you some easy, quick ways to get numbers out of the system. Yeah.(42:41 - 43:03)Okay, any other questions from anyone else? Well, I'm going to dominate here. I'm going to ask one more. On the admin screen, you got your work, let's just say you pick today's work orders to do.(43:05 - 43:26)And in my case, I have an older guy who does, he does the, I pre-send his work orders to his iPad, so he doesn't use RouteTech. Okay. Just I order, and then he'll do his report, and then it'll show up on the admin screen that now there's a report available.(43:27 - 43:43)And I always check his before I send them. Right. Until about a month ago, the options, the visible column options, one of the choices is date emailed.(43:45 - 44:02)It used to be sticky. All of them are sticky if you hit the save button and save them as a new view. There is a view out there by default that says reports emailed.(44:04 - 44:19)And if you pick that one, that one is basically set up to do exactly what you said. It's going to show the dates that they were emailed. Of course, I haven't emailed any today, but if I change this to last month, Yeah.(44:19 - 44:30)I might have a few that I emailed in a demo, but it doesn't look like a whole bunch. Yeah. Well, you got me again.(44:31 - 44:36)I didn't see that report. Thank you. Here we go.(44:36 - 44:46)I emailed one. But yeah, date emailed is under your views. And John, no worries.(44:47 - 45:00)There's so many little features in here that, trust me, there's a lot of times I have to go back and check my documentation to try to remember everything. So it's fine. That's what these calls are for.(45:02 - 45:32)There used to be a report that would give you a printed copy of the work orders for today. But that was, wasn't that designed for the folks who had no software, no phone, and they were doing something manually. Isn't that right? Yes. Print route list is probably what you're referring to. Right, exactly. So that would then take these items and put them on a paper or PDF list.(45:33 - 45:43)Yes. Don't install that on your system by default. It's only added on by request.(45:43 - 46:16)And the reason is because if you start printing this route list in paper format or PDF format, you've got things like alarm codes and passwords, well, not passwords, but alarm codes, key IDs that are now on a paper format or in a PDF format. And so it does put a little bit of a security risk if you're not careful. If you're leaving papers laying around or a clipboard laying around with that information on it, that's kind of dangerous.(46:16 - 46:39)So I only install this by request, but I'm happy to do so if you use it. I just want to make sure that everybody understands that if you use that feature, you are kind of opening up a potential security hole. Now I remember why that was not by default because it did have all that private information.(46:39 - 47:03)I'd forgotten that. Here, if I click on it just as an example for those that aren't familiar, see it'll bring this up so that you can actually print this out or send it to a technician by PDF. And this is good for if you have a technician that like you said might be a little more technology challenged and doing the report is all they need to do.(47:03 - 47:33)This will bring up all the details from the work order, what needs to be done, the notes, but you'll see it has those gate codes, the alarm codes are here, the key ID would be on there. So that's why you potentially have a security risk if this paper were to fall in the wrong hands. What was the purpose of the barcode? Some phones allow you to scan the barcode.(47:33 - 47:46)So if you don't want to type the work order in, you can just scan it. I had a request once and it looked good, so I added it. But that's basically just the work order number in barcode format.(47:46 - 48:15)So if you don't want to key in this, you can scan. So anyway, that option is there if anybody needs it, just you can make the request through the tickets in the help center to have that turned on. All right, anybody else with a question? Hey Gary, Jill Letty here again.(48:15 - 48:31)Say, can you show me, I tried to look on where you had, show me where to go to email that, email like an agreement or something, the best way to do it. Will you show me that again? Because I couldn't find it when I just went through my system. Contracts is right here off your customer's screen.(48:35 - 48:45)I'm sorry, you're talking about emailing a document that you have not doing the contract, right? Well, it would be a contract, yeah. But it's a separate PDF document. Yes, yes.(48:45 - 49:04)Okay, sorry, I went down the wrong path. Go into your HomeWatch customer screen. And it's really the same one that you use down below, like when you are going to email, you know, like the hurricane warning, to email selected customers, just select the one you want and then fill it in here.(49:05 - 49:16)Okay, perfect, thank you, thank you, thank you. No problem. I used that during Milton and Helena, worked out beautifully.(49:17 - 49:27)That was the original purpose of it. So good, glad to hear it. I had so many homeowners who said, thank you, thank you for telling us what's going on.(49:27 - 49:40)Yeah, it worked great. Yeah, that's really good to know because we use a different program and I'd like to move over to use this one, which would be much easier and it's all in one. That would be much better, I think.(49:43 - 49:49)Definitely make it easier and your list will always be up to date. You don't have to maintain it twice. Hey, Gary.(49:50 - 50:07)Yes. Quick question. We've, when I started the business a couple of years ago, we kind of use the, encourage our clients to use the customer portal or I don't know what you call it, but the, you know, customer interface.(50:08 - 50:35)I'm just curious, has much changed on that front and has anybody on this call used that or promote that and maybe share some stories of how that's helped their business? I don't think anybody on this call is using the communications. If you wanted to speak to somebody, Paul, I've got a couple that I know use it very heavily. Okay.(50:36 - 50:42)And I can connect you with them if you're interested. Yeah, I might be. I'm kind of wanting to take a look at it again.(50:42 - 50:56)And is there any, just in one minute, is there anything that's changed much in the last 18 months on that front or has that been pretty much the same? That's pretty much the same. Okay. Thank you.(50:56 - 51:08)Sure thing. I got five minutes left. Happy to take any other questions and I think we had some good conversation.(51:08 - 51:23)Hopefully everyone picked up something new, in which case that's a win for everybody. I thought at the beginning, Gary, you said there's some changes to the portal. You were going to talk about it.(51:24 - 51:45)Changes to the portal? Yeah, that's fully documented in the release notes you'll get tomorrow. Oh, okay. But let me just quickly, I'm glad you brought that up, just quickly so everybody knows, if you're using the portal, right now, any customer you have in the system and their associated contacts.(51:46 - 52:15)So for example, you might have a spouse, a son-in-law, the neighbor, all of those have the ability to actually log into that property's portal. It was originally designed that way, good or bad, that's just the way it was. It's become a little more of a thing now where my clients want to have more control over who actually gets in.(52:15 - 52:43)Even though most people aren't gonna necessarily go to the portal and log in if they don't have a house with you, it's just more of a security thing. So right now, the way the portal works as of tomorrow is the normal primary contact will have access. Anybody listed under additional contacts will not have access unless you opt them in.(52:44 - 53:06)So for example, here, the first one is the primary and it will be checked by default when you load the system tomorrow and get into the first time. If you need to give access to anyone else, you just have to check the box. If the box is not checked, that person will not be able to log in and access the portal on behalf of that customer.(53:08 - 53:47)So those of you that might have spouses or partners or whatever the case may be here that need access, you will have to go through and check those. So that will require a little bit of action on your part in order to make that consistent for your clients. Does those folks have separate logins? Yeah, because it would have different, this is probably not a great example because there's no email address, but yeah, they would have two different email addresses, let's just say these two, and those two different email addresses both log into the same property because one is the wife and one is the husband, for example.(53:48 - 54:09)Gary, is there also a limit as to the number of people that can log in on the client portal? Because we have clients who've got like personal assistants who then follow up with us on outstanding issues and things like that. Not a problem. You can have as many of these checked as you need.(54:10 - 54:33)Perfect, thank you. But that's the one update you will need to act on. As far as tomorrow's enhancement goes, okay? I believe that should cover it.(54:35 - 55:09)If you want to look at the release notes early, you can always go to help and type in release notes and that will bring up all the items that will be in tomorrow's update. For a couple of them, there are additional items like the process incoming emails and the portal login that we just discussed. But I think we've actually covered the important ones in today's call.(55:12 - 55:24)Is there a change in email that I need to be looking at then? A change in email. You just mentioned the email process. No, that's only if you're going to use the incoming emails process.(55:25 - 55:35)Nothing you have to do unless you want to use that. Within the portal? Well, it's within the CRM itself. Oh, all right, right, right, right, okay.(55:36 - 55:49)Jill, actually, since you're on here, I believe this was your request a very long time ago. To be able to put just the date without the time included? Yes. Like in your report headings and your emails? Yes, perfect.(55:49 - 55:53)There you go. Just use the word today in capital letters. Awesome.(55:53 - 56:07)Instead of what you used to use. Great, thank you. That one took a while to get in there, but it's in there now.(56:09 - 56:16)Okay. That's the top of the hour. So I do want to thank everyone that was able to attend.(56:16 - 56:26)I do thank you for the questions. I think these are very good and beneficial to everybody. So the recording will be available on the help system probably tomorrow.(56:27 - 56:39)And if there's anything you want to follow up on directly with us, you can do so. More than happy to answer anything on the side. Paul, I'll make that connection if you want me to.(56:40 - 56:48)On the communications. Just kind of peek, look at it again here. That's on our list for the next couple of weeks.(56:49 - 56:56)So before I waste time, let me just kind of get my head around it and then I'll follow up again. Okay, no problem. I'm sure that particular gentleman would love to talk to you.(56:56 - 57:10)He's got a business very similar to yours down South. So if nothing else, just from a... Yeah, why don't you shoot me a zip, that'd be awesome. Just from a connection standpoint, it might be helpful.(57:11 - 57:16)Totally, I appreciate it. And your folks may have a property down in his area. So who knows? Yep.(57:17 - 57:21)All right, thank you everyone. I appreciate it. Have a good rest of your week.(57:22 - 57:25)Thank you, Gary. Thank you, Gary. Thank you very much.(57:25 - 57:27)Sure thing. Bye-bye. Bye.

00:21:33 Paul Tschetter - Whidbey Island, WA: https://help.homewatchit.com/article/processing-incoming-emails-saving-to-crm01:09:19 Kristi Nadler, Nosey Neighbor: Thank you Gary!!! This was great as always 🙂01:09:43 Paul Tschetter - Whidbey Island, WA: Thank you everyone!01:11:35 Blue Harbor Home Watch: Thank you Gary