An Introduction to the HWIT Starter Kit (V23)

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Hi. In this video, we're going to just do a brief introduction to the starter kit in version 23. HomeWatch IT has two systems.

We have our full business management system, which is meant to do basically everything that a HomeWatch company ever wants. And then we have our starter kit, which is set up to perform the functions that are needed while a company is small or just starting out. The idea being that you can start with the starter kit and grow into the full business management system.

Starting with version 23, we've taken the approach where we're setting up the system in the exact same format as the business management system, which makes it easier for you to migrate in the future as everything stays the same. So the way this is set up with the starter kit is you have three components. You may not have all three.

You may only have two. QuickBooks is optional within the starter kit. But you will have an application called Monitor QA, which is your reporting app.

This is the one that's going to allow you to have a checklist of items that you're going to perform at the property, will allow you to take pictures, notes, and then send a report off to your client after your visit. There's a second application called the Customer Information app. This application allows you to maintain all of the customer's property information.

So everything from contact details of the customer, phone numbers, emails, all the way down to the alarm code information, the alarm password, etc. So everything you need to know about a property would be in the Customer Information app. In version 23, these applications now synchronize on a limited basis currently, but that will improve as additional capabilities are being added by the Monitor QA people.

Currently, you would enter in all of your customer information into the Customer Info app, and that data will then synchronize to Monitor QA automatically. So put in the customers here, put in any changes in the future. If you have to change a phone number or whatever, do it all in the Customer Information app, and it will synchronize to Monitor QA.

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At some point in the future, that will be a bi-directional synchronization, but currently, it's only a one-way. Same thing with QuickBooks. If you have QuickBooks set up, your information goes into the Customer Information app, and then will sync automatically to QuickBooks with respect to the customer's name, address, email, phone number, etc.

And then all you have to do in QuickBooks is go in and set up the invoices and send them out. It makes it very simple for you. I'm now in the Customer Information app, and I have this open in a browser window here in my system.

You can do this all on your phone, or you can do it from a browser on your laptop or desktop. You're going to receive links to both, so it's up to you. I definitely recommend adding it to your phone because that's when it's going to be most advantageous when you're out and about.

However, you may want to also run this app on a laptop or in the office, especially when you first set things up. I'm not going to go into all the details of the properties and how to edit them, as that's part of a different video, but in this one, I wanted to show you a couple of the settings that are important. So over here, when you're on the first screen, the properties screen, you'll see there's three dashes on the left.

This brings up a menu that you can click, and with this application, there's currently only one actual settings option, and that's the email setup. So I'll click on that, and this is where you can set up whether the system should automatically email your clients or not. Currently, I am set up to automatically send out emails, and I have some other information, so let's go through what that information is.

I'm going to click on the edit button here, which will bring this same screen up in edit mode. So the very first one is auto email reports, yes or no. When you first get the system, it's going to be set to no.

If you would like for the reports to automatically be emailed out upon completion directly to your customer, set that to yes. The reply email you would set up as your business email, and that should already be defaulted. Note that when it comes to the customer, it's actually going to be coming from a homewatchit.report address, but it will have your email address as the reply to, so if they do reply to it, it goes to you, and it will also have your company name as the sender's name.

So even though the sender email address is going to be homewatchit, which it has to be due to email spam rules, the reply to will work as well as the send from will have your company's name on it. You can always set this up to BCC. In other words, when it sends out the report, it's sending it directly to your customer, but if you would also like it to copy your email address, you can put that information in here as well, and then when you send the report out, it will automatically copy you.

The email that gets sent has a subject line and a template line, and you can go in and edit this however you need to, you know, change the subject to whatever you want and the template to whatever you want. There is one variable available to you in the template, and you'll see this is called entity.firstname. If you use this in your email template, this will get replaced with the customer's first name as you've entered in the customer information app. And then the last one here is text message.

So the option of email or text message I'll cover in a moment, but if you do want to use texting of your report, this is where you can put the message. Keep in mind, text messages should be quite short like this one is, and when this text message goes out to your client, it will be this verbiage plus a link to the report. You can't send out a PDF in a text message, but it will have a link that your customer can click to open up the PDF.

Once this is the way you want it to be, just hit save, and the system will now automatically be emailing out the reports upon completion. Now I mentioned text messages. Let me show you how we set that up.

If we go back to our properties screen, and let's go into the huffs down here, I'll click on that. Down below the email address, you'll see there's an item that says send report via text. I'll click edit on this just to bring it up and make it a little bit bigger.

Send report via text, yes or no. Default will always be no, in which case the client will get their report via email. If however, they prefer to receive a text message, you can click this as a yes, and then whatever is in the owner phone one box will be the phone number that receives that text message based on the template we just looked at, and a link to the report.

So this is how you control whether the customer gets an email or a text. If you always want to use emails, then just don't worry about it. Leave this one always as no, and the system will always send out emails rather than text messages.

That's it for the introduction. It's a very simple system. If you have any questions, please reach out to us anytime.

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Thank you.