Snow coming up?

Here are some best practices and discussions on the features that might help you manage these services.

Zone Schedules were designed to give you, as a company owner, the control to start jobs for a group of customers based on location and not necessarily frequency( like an automatically scheduled job).

This type of schedule is especially useful for services like snow plowing or irrigation services, just as a few examples.

Let's use snow plowing as an illustration. Snow plowing obviously is not a job that is automatically scheduled since it is a weather related job. And you do not want your guys running from one side of the town to the other when there are other customers next door to be done. This is when zone schedules are very handy. If this sounds like something that would be useful to your company, please keep reading to see how to set this type of schedule up for you company.

The first thing you will have to do is set up zones for your customers. You can have as many zones as you like. But for this illustration, we will just use zip codes. To set up zones, click on the Customize tab at the top then Zone List.

Click on the "add" button and title the zone accordingly. As you can see, I just used zip codes but you can group your customers any way you would like (I.e. towns, developments or even job types).

Now all you have to do is assign your customers jobs to the correct zones. Here's how:

Go to the customer, then go to the job that you want to be set as a zone scheduled job.

Now, select Zone from the Schedule Type drop down menu.

After you select Zone as the Schedule Type, CLIPitc will then give you the option to select the Zone that you wish to assign this Job to.

Since zone jobs are not automatic, you will need to manually activate the zones. When a zone is activated, it will pull the jobs that it is assigned to into the work bank.

To activate zone jobs, click on the Daily tab, then Get Work.

Now, you can click on Activate Zone to activate them.

Once you Click to activate, you will be given three options to select from so you can narrow down the jobs you desire to activate.

Once you have set your parameters, just click Activate! Now those jobs can be sent out to your crews to be serviced.

After zone jobs have been serviced and recorded as done, you will also have to de-activate them so that they stop coming into the work bank to be done. The process is the same as activating zone jobs, only this time you click De-Activate.

Oftentimes, a snow event's route will be repeated until it stops snowing. The crew would finish the last job in the line, but the weather continues onward without reprieve. Under this circumstance, the crew would begin again. If you're utilizing paper route sheets this could be a shuffling of papers and cause extra work for the office to duplicate data. However, if you're using the mobile app the procedure becomes a cinch! The route can be finalized right there on the mobile app, the jobs can be reloaded, and the production crew can begin anew without requiring an action from an outside force.

This is accomplished from two key functions on the Settings tab of the CLIPitc Mobile Application: Finalize Jobs, and Reload Route.

Finalize Jobs - Allows the crew to perform a finalization action, posting the work that is marked as done and moving it out of the workbank and to the service History of the customer as a completed job. This allows the work to be rescheduled once more, since the job no longer exists in the workbank.

Reload Route - Allows the crew to call the list jobs that they have completed and re-enter them into the workbank as a new instance of the job. This will display a list of services that the crew has completed. The crew would then mark the jobs that they wish to perform again, then tap on Reload Checked Jobs. This reloads the route so that recording may happen on another pass. In order for a job to be eligible to be reloaded, it must needs be finalized, first. As a reminder, the Reload Route button will show a message that jobs may be waiting to be finalized if there are any pending.

Both of these are category permissions that would require review and allowance from the individual that manages permissions. The hierarchy for these are Mobile App > Settings > Finalize Jobs / Reload Route

Zone Scheduling and using the mobile app's Reload and Finalization functions are the basics for managing snow jobs in CLIPitc. We welcome further questions about the specifics your company may encounter and encourage you to inquire upon our support team about what may affect your unique operations by either sending an email to the team at (support at clip.com) or by using the chat icon here on the bottom right of the page!