Richard Kohberger shows technicians how to use iPad text expansion to fill invoices and forms instantly. Create shortcodes like "inv" that auto-expand into full invoice summaries, saving time on repetitive typing. He walks through setting it up in iPad Settings under Keyboard and Text Replacement.
What's going on, everybody? It's Richard Kohberger here, the blue collar nerd. And you know what sucks? Typing the same thing over and over forever. It's just a poor use of time. If you're a technician, chances are you're filling out invoice summaries and forms all day, every day, typing mostly the same few things. So let me show you how to save yourself a lot of time, make that process go a whole lot faster, make sure we're providing the office all the information they need and just generally making a tedious process a whole lot easier. Now, what I recommend to do this is text expansion. The basic concept of this is you have a code, a short code that you type and then that expands out into longer text. So let me take you down to the iPad. Let me show you what I'm talking about. So here we are on the iPad. Now, I'm assuming you're using ipados or iOS for this. If you've got an Android device, there are ways to do this. It's just a little bit different. But on an iPad, what we're gonna do is we're gonna go into the settings and then we're gonna go to the keyboard section. And then once we're there, we're tap text replacement. So you tap that little plus in the upper right hand corner and what you'll see is something that looks like this phrase and shortcut. So the shortcut is the code that you want to use. You can develop your own system. But let me explain what I've come up with here. I always start mine with an X just to make it clear that I'm starting a short code so I don't accidentally trigger them. And then I'll type something quick but clear. So on this one I have m maint that means I'm doing a maintenance. And the m in front of it means multiple systems. So that means that this shortcut is going to have everything pluralized. So it makes sense with multiple systems. Systems. So whenever I text m maint it's going to turn into perform seasonal cooling maintenance. Chemically cleaned out door coil changed, all 1 inch filters blew out and treated all drain lines, cleared out blower electrical compartments. Inspect all electrical components and check your printer charge. That way I don't have to type all that out every time because on the maintenance, I'm pretty much doing the exact same thing. But if I'm filling out an invoice summary, I might want to say more than.
