Set up recurring service
How a plan on a property becomes visits on the week board, what each field means, and what happens when you pause or retire it.
A plan belongs to a property
Nothing repeats on the board until a property has a plan. A plan says which service, how often and who usually does it, and the board is filled in from it. A plan belongs to the property, not to the customer: a customer with three properties has three places to set one up.
- Open the property and stay on its Overview tab.Find the property under Properties, or from the customer it belongs to. The Recurring work card is on the Overview tab.
- Press New recurring service.If it tells you to add a service first, add one on Crews and services. A plan needs a service to point at.
- Fill in the plan and press Add recurring service.The plan appears in the list on that card with its interval, its start date and its crew.
What each field means
These are the form’s fields, in the order it asks for them.
- Service — what is being done, from the services you set up on Crews and services.
- Every (days) — how many days between one visit and the next. Seven is a weekly visit.
- Give or take (days) — how far a visit may move either way, for weather or a sick crew, without breaking what you promised the client. It has to be smaller than the interval; the form refuses it otherwise.
- Usually done by — the crew whose route these visits land on. Left on Decide each time, the visits arrive unassigned and you hand them out from the board.
- First visit — the date the count starts from. Visits fall every interval after it.
- Price (optional) — left blank, the plan uses the service’s own price.
- Billing, Monthly amount and Day of the month — Per visit is the default. Flat monthly bills the same amount on the same day each month, and the visits under it are not charged one by one, so it asks for both the amount and the day.
When the visits show up
Saving a plan does not put visits on the board by itself. A daily run reads every active plan and lays out the visits about three weeks ahead, so a plan you add today is on the board after the next run. A plan whose first visit is further out appears once that date comes inside the window.
The same run puts each new visit on the crew named under Usually done by. A visit you have already moved, or already given to a crew, is left as you set it.
Pausing, seasons and retiring
Pause, on a plan’s row, stops new visits being laid out for it, and the row says paused. Visits already on the board stay where they are, so a week you have built is still there. Resume starts the plan again from the next run forward; the days it was paused are not filled in afterwards.
For a client who is away the same months every year, add a seasonal pause instead. On the property’s Conditions tab, or on the customer’s Conditions card to cover every property they own, add a condition and choose Seasonal pause as its type. Tick Repeats every year and give From and Until as a month and day, which may run across New Year, or leave it unticked for a one-off pause that stays in force until you remove it. No visits are laid out inside a pause, and the board refuses to assign one to a paused date. Visits already on the board are left where they are, and removing the pause brings the rest back on the next run.
Retiring a customer or a property stops its plans too, and skips the visits after today that have not been started. Invoices are left alone. Bringing the customer or property back does not restart anything: it lists the plans the retire stopped, and Restart puts them back in one press; you can also resume them one at a time on the property. Until then a stopped plan cannot be resumed, and its row says to restore the customer or the property first.