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Subcontractor management enhancements for the upcoming snow season
Aspire business management software is excited to announce significant new subcontractor management functionality included in its upcoming release. Version 5.2 is scheduled for deployment on August 30. The new functionality will help snow & ice contractors improve how they work with subcontractors in responding quickly and effectively to unpredictable weather events. Additional enhancements beyond subcontractor management will also be included in the release.
Subcontractor Management
Subcontractor Approvals
If you use a lot of subcontractors, ensuring the accuracy of the time and materials they submit is an important step. To cut down on incorrect entries or abuse from subcontractors, we’ve implemented an approval step. When a subcontractor submits time and materials via the subcontractor portal, your back-office team can now approve or reject the submitted items. This approval step is indicated by icons that appear in the scheduling board as well as the time entry screen. This will ensure subcontractors are being held accountable for their work and are paid accurately based on the services they rendered.
Auto Expenses Wizard
The Auto Expenses Wizard will also see increased functionality. Back-office users will be able to configure specific billing amounts for subcontractor companies. This is incredibly powerful for anyone who uses numerous subcontractors that have variable rates. Those who use subcontractors often know how painful it can be managing their prices per season. Back-office users will be able to setup specific service prices offered by each subcontractor company. To help our users to stay on top of their seasonal prep, this new wizard makes finding opportunities easy — allowing for per-opportunity prices for the same or different subcontractor companies.
Multi-Route Event Scheduling
Scheduling events that last hours and take multiple crews can be time consuming. To make scheduling easier and improve the feature, we’ve enhanced the Default Route setup. Users can now have more than one default route that schedules a visit by using the “Schedule an Event” from the scheduling board. Like before, users can select the sequence number by route, but now when scheduling an event, multiple visits will be created depending on how many default routes are assigned to the service.
Partial Service Occurrence
Subcontractors are the best indicator of how much of a work ticket has been complete. Perhaps to time, or other unforeseen events less than the expected amount of work was performed. With our new update, subcontractors can indicate (by percent) the amount of work performed. This KPI is shown on the work ticket for back-office users to leverage and adjust to the proper billing rate. This will help cut down on the back and forth from back-office users to field workers and assure the subcontractor is paid the proper amount for services rendered.
Block Subcontractors from Creating Work Tickets
When a subcontractor creates a work ticket, operations can get mixed up and prioritized work tickets may get pushed. With this new release, admin users can restrict subcontractors from creating new tickets through either the Crew Mobile application or the Subcontractor Portal. This change will help keep the subcontractors focused on tasks set up by back-office users and cut down on erroneous tickets created by subcontractors.
Other Enhancements
Equipment Service Request from Aspire Desktop
Back-office users will be able to request service for specific pieces of equipment. The interaction is the same, but now when a “Request Service” type is selected from the services section, a request will be made in the “services due” log. The ability for back-office users to request such service will cut down the time spent by field workers logging new service tickets.
Move Cost on Tickets
Brought on by a request from current users, there will now be the ability to move specific type costs from ticket to ticket. This enhances the current “all or nothing” model and grants the user the option to move just material, labor, or equipment costs from one ticket to another. This is a small enhancement but saves time on data re-entry and improves the creation of tickets.
What This Means for You
If you’re a snow & ice contractor, these enhancements strengthen your ability to work with your subcontractor partners to successfully deal with the unpredictable nature of the snow season. These and other enhancements aim to improve your overall user experience. As for what’s next, we’ll continue to innovate Aspire Landscape to help you provide better services, improve margins, and increase productivity, keeping the system the best business management software in the industry.
To learn more about the latest enhancements in this release and see them in action, register for the upcoming snow webinars with Maggie Wymore as she covers best practices during the snow & ice season.
