SERVICE CALL TRACKING

Passport Service Advantage ^TM

Overview

Passport Software’s ServiceAdvantage is an exciting new solution to meet the needs of service industries. Sales, Service and Warranty Billing, and Inventory interface with Passport’s RW32 Accounting Software to provide the extensive detail and functionality required by service businesses.

Contact Management - Stores customer and prospect information in an easily accessible, user-friendly format. A provision for integrating with ACT and Goldmine is planned.

Order Processing - covers the complete cycle of processing orders for equipment or spare parts, from making quotations, estimates, entering customer orders, parts availability queries, invoicing, dispatch, collection of payments and returns via credit memos. Provides for partial delivery, back-ordering, reserved purchase orders for specific customer orders. The invoices and credit memos automatically link with the inventory processing.

Counter Sales - Offers somewhat simplified processing for over-the-counter sales of parts.

Contract Administration - Offers a variety of standard contract templates, makes quotes for service contracts, and service agreements. Provides for defined periodic scheduled maintenance and automatic printing of work orders, history of maintenance done and recommendations for covered equipment. The system tracks the profit and loss of every contract and sends out contract renewal letters based upon specified criteria such as profitability targets. The system is flexible and can handle different types of equipment, at multiple sites, while billing can be centralized.

Call Receiving, Dispatch and Service Billing - enables you to execute service contracts, warranty maintenance, to track deficient service delivery and deliver customer satisfaction. It gives visibility to the service workload, availability of technicians, parts and other resources - information vital to successful business management. Service Billing can be integrated with Passport’s RW32 Payroll module to process the technicians’ time logs, to Passport’s Inventory Control module for parts usage, return of warranty replacement part , cores and parts for exchange/loan. It accommodates a typical service cycle described as follows, or the package can be customized for your specific needs:

• Receiving the call - identifying the customer, site, equipment, and service contract coverage and logging the call in the database. This can be done locally or in a remote central call center.
• Checking availability of resources - qualified technicians, trucks, tools, parts etc.
• Assigning the tasks to service technicians
• Preparing work orders including scheduling and dispatching
• Delivering service - diagnosis of problem, repair or replacement of parts and equipment
• Monitoring the call’s progress
• Ordering parts, drop shipments, etc. as required
• Collecting the returnable parts/cores
• Preparing a service invoice
• Collecting/tracking payment
• Costing the call or work order

Inventory Management - can support multiple warehouses, serial inventory, alternate parts, stock accounting, stock transfers, physical stock taking, inventory levels, core and warranty/return items accounting. Maintaining optimum stock levels at a variety of possible locations. Service trunk inventory, if kept by technicians in their repair vans, can be treated as a warehouse.

Inventory is integrated with the service billing, order processing and counter sales.

Parts can be re-ordered periodically by inventory levels, or for urgent customer requirements.

Item costing is based upon average cost, LIFO or replenishment cost. A sophisticated parts pricing system stores up to 8 different base selling prices. The markups can be selected based upon customer type, item category, price code, or on the cost for an item.

High value parts or items having serial numbers can be tracked with a serialized inventory.

Cores can be tracked from the customer all the way back to your vendor. Can eliminate lost vendor core deposits without negative impact on customer service.

Procurement - covers placing of purchase orders with the vendors and equipment manufacturers. Links are provided for easy referencing of customer orders to their purchase orders. Vendor-Item information is stored giving the vendor’s part reference #, payment terms, batch sizes, units of measure, conversion factors, delivery and packaging terms.

Tracking the supply and return of cores and warranty parts to the manufacturer is built in as noted above.

XML and web-based integration with the manufacturer supply chain is planned.

Accounting - ServiceAdvantage interfaces with Passport's Accounting and Business software modules:

General Ledger - Categorizes and summarizes accounting data. Provides comprehensive information for financial analysis and control. Custom-designed financial statements show profit or loss, assets, liabilities, and equity.

Accounts Receivable - Tracks money owed by customers. Identifies delinquent bills and helps improve cash flow. Creates quotes, standard bills, and detailed invoices with unlimited notes to communicate products delivered and services rendered in detail.

Accounts Payable - Provides tight control over vendor, supplier, and standard costs