Appointments in ServiceMinder

In ServiceMinder, an appointment is a schedule to perform a single service and optionally one or more parts or add ons.

Appointments should be created in the Proposal process, using a template (Control Panel>>Parts/AddOns, Template tab in top right).

Once you select a service via the template or service dropdown, you may add or delete the number of appointments from the list of dates, or the calendar. Generally in Mosquito Squad, we sell as season or series of appointments and have pro rata checked which allows the number of appointments to determine the price.

Once you have the price and number of appointments selected, you should adjust the other information such as En Route notices. Once done, you may create a proposal (which will not schedule the appointments) or go directly to Schedule. Following the Schedule option will produce an appointment or series in the Queued state.

Appointments are visible in the contact details, and on the calendar. They begin as queued and change to scheduled once they are routed (black in the calendar day view). When a technician clicks on the appointment in the field, they change to started (yellow), and when the technician completes them, they move to completed (green). Scheduled appointments that are past their scheduled start time turn red.

Neither Started nor completed appointments may be changed or moved to protect the records for audit. If an appointment is cancelled, it drops off the calendar view, but is visible in the contact details.

Appointment details, such as service type, En Route notices and such are set when the appointment is created. If a service is changed after an appointment is created, appointments with that service are not changed. Appointments must be edited to change their details.

Routing constraints for routing are set at the contact level and applied to appointments when they are created. Use them only when necessary as they can dramatically increase your service times.

Appointments may not be created in the past as a business rule.

Cancelling Appointments

If an customer cancels their service, first cancel their appointments. To cancel an appointment, go into the APPOINTMENT, then select the Cancel tab at the top.

 

From there, you can select the various options.

If the customer cancelled and you need to adjust any invoice(s), go to this article for help.

Conducting Complimentary Treatments / Retreatments

Moving Appointments in SM

Once appointments are created, they are generally in the queue for a given day. The routing process changes their status from Queue'd to Scheduled by adding the service agents and date/time to the appointment. Scheduled appointments show up for the service agent for which they are scheduled (based on some permissions in the settings) for a given number of future days: https://serviceminder.io/Organizations/Settings or here:

https://serviceminder.io/ControlPanel/SchedulingOptions

Dealing with Delays (Rain, Pets, Locked Gates, etc.)

A service agent (technician) may find that a scheduled appointment cannot be completed, often based on Dogs, Rain, Applicators (lawn or such), or Gates being locked. If allowed based on the user setting: https://serviceminder.io/Users After approaching the house, and calling the client, a technician will want to reque the appointment so the office can re-schedule it for another date/time.

It is recommended that technicians be allowed to reque an appointment, but not re-schedule it, so the settings would look like this:

From the desktop app, you can requeue non completed appointments as well. If you complete some appointments but not all, ServiceMinder will only requeue the appointments that have not been completed yet. To do this, on the calendar page, go to Actions > Requeue. 

 Once reque'd, an appointment will change from Scheduled, and appear in the desktop SM here:

From there, the office may contact the client to decide what to do next. Once decided, the Move button (above) may be clicked and the appointment selected and moved, sending an optional email to inform the client of the move, and the reason. After the move, the appointment will show in the queue for the new day, and be scheduled as a part of that on the appropriate date. Custom AdHoc emails are useful here.

From the day where you scheduled the route re-queue the stops you are not going to do.

 Then, pick Move 

Pick the Appointments you want to move to a common date on the left, select the date to move them to, pick the email and click save.

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Repeat with stops you want to move to another date. 

(Reviewed for updates 12/24/24)