Mastering the Miter-ServiceTitan Integration | Podcast Ep. 59 | Mastering ServiceTitan

So with Mitre, the timesheets come straight from Service Titan. So it's completely hands off. Now that gets sent over to Mitre automatically. And then all we do is just review the final payroll and make sure everything looks okay and then submit. It only takes a few hours to submit instead of several days.

Hello, and welcome to Mastering Service Titan, where we get expert advice from power users. I'm your host, Josh Liu, and today I'm joined by Paula Kennedy over at Logan Heating and Cooling, and we are diving into the Mitre and Service Titan integration. So, Paula, welcome to the show.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, thank you so much for joining us. So for people who don't know what Mitre is, how would you describe what it is that they do?

Mitre is a payroll company. It's fully integrated with Surface Titanium. It is built for the, for the trades for construction, and it's integrated. They have a lot of integrations going on. They're fully integrated with Checker, they have integrations coming up with 401k HSAs to make payroll. A more hands free, seamless process.

Gotcha. Very cool. So they do a lot of HR benefits, payroll. I'm curious, Paula, before Mitre, how are you all doing Payroll?

So. So our payroll was a very. It was a very long process. It was mainly spreadsheets, Excel spreadsheets. We would get timesheets from our texts and we would input that data into a timesheet, and then we would input that data into the payroll company. And so it was. It would take a lot of time to get that in.

Okay, so a lot of double entry, it sounds like. Okay, yes.

And then once that's done, then you have to take your journal entry and enter that into your accounting software.

Ah, okay. So it's like doing the same thing over and over again.

Yes. Multiple steps.

A lot of steps. Okay, gotcha. And then now with Mitre, how does it work?

So with Mitre, the timesheets come straight from Service Titan, so it's completely hands off. Now at the end of the pay cycle, all we do is just review the timesheets to make sure everything matches up, there are no errors, and we get the technician's approval and we get the manager's approval that gets sent over to Mitre automatically. All we do is just review the final payroll and make sure everything looks okay, and then submit.

Okay.

It only takes a few hours to submit instead of several days.

Oh, it used to take days.

Yes. It would be something we would work on every single day.

Oh. Oh. It'd be every day. It would never end because of all the entities here.

Yes. And now Mitre automatically does the journal entries for us.

Got it. Okay.

So the payroll entries don't even. I mean, all we do is just make sure that there were no errors.

We went literally from days to just a couple hours.

Yes.

With mitre. Okay, that is amazing.

Yeah. But, yeah, and I'm sorry, by errors, I mean sync errors. There are no errors in the journal entry itself. We just make sure that it is synced over.

Okay, and what accounting software do you guys use?

We use Intact for accounting.

Okay, got it. So it integrates with Service Tiny, and Service Tiny integrates with Intact, and you just want to make sure they're all on the same page.

Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

Makes sense. Now, if there's someone listening out there and they're interested in, maybe they're doing payroll, like on spreadsheets or on paper, and they want to integrate and make that more seamless. What advice would you have for learning Mitre and onboarding with the software? Like them.

First thing before anything else is get in touch with your CSM at Service Titan and make sure that they are there to help you every step of the way. We were very fortunate. Our CSM took us by the hand and walked us through the entire process, and he met with MITRE several occasions with us to help make sure that everything was flowing the way it should.

Okay, got it. So first tip, make sure to meet with your csm.

Yes.

Get them on board with your process.

Yes.

And then how about after that, any other advice or tips?

Just be ready for. For kinks in the system, because nothing is perfect. So you've got to work through all the kinks, make sure it's set up exactly the way you want it. And once you get it perfect, it is completely hands off for that work.

To, like, work out some of the kinks and to get it perfect. Are there any mistakes or, like, things you guys missed? Can you share some of those challenges with our.

I remember at the very beginning, we would reach out to MITRE support pretty frequently because we weren't sure what we were doing. We weren't sure if things were flowing the way they should. One time we reached out to support, and there was like, a button back there in the integrations area that says, you know, click here to sync employee data. So we did that, and it screwed up everything in our payroll. And all of a sudden, people were showing up into our accounting software that hadn't even onboarded yet. And it's like oh, no. What have we done? Don't touch that button.

So what. What was that button designed for and how did it go wrong?

Well, with the way we're set up, just because we, we have somebody that's being recruited doesn't mean that they will be hired. If they. We have to make sure they're going to show up for the first day.

Gotcha. Okay. So were they in Service Titan as. Like, they weren't actually hired, but they were.

They never showed up in Service Titan. They showed up in our accounting software.

Oh, that's so weird.

And it's like, oh, no. It was a learning curve for both of us.

Okay.

Because, you know, since we came on board with Mitre back at the beginning of the beginning of May, end of April, we were one of the first companies to start using Mitre. And I think we were, all of us were trying to get used to what we needed to make things flow correctly.

Any other challenges or mistakes that you could save some people from?

In Service Titan, we have minimized the number of activities that employees work under. And that way, when we run a report, there's not too much information in there. An activity is like a meeting. It's like you're doing job shop work or you're idle or you're driving. Don't put too much information in there. Or if you do want more information, think about it before you add in. Because you. It's easier to add than it is to take away.

Oh, that makes so much sense. And the activity, is that under the technician's timesheet and is that like an activity type?

Yes.

Okay, got it.

So some things that we learned is idle time. Service Titan is great with managing idle time. We let MITRE manage our PTO because they have a lot more detail for overtime rules than Service Titan does. And we let MITRE manage our holidays and our overtime. Our overtime rules as well. So those three are. We let MITRE take care of that, and then we let Service Titan handle the idle time and the activities. We know where the strengths are. So MITRE strengths are with all that paid time off and overtime, but we know service height and strengths are with the activities and the idle time. Time.

Wow, that is such a good tip. So how does it work in Service Titan with Service Titan timesheets and when technicians are like, starting and ending activities.

So we are also integrated with Fleet Pro.

Okay.

Which has been phenomenal because it really gives visibility on where that tech is and how long they were at the job and how long they're sitting idle. As the tech goes through their day, Fleet Pro will show us that there's a discrepancy between when the tech completed a job and where that tech is. So if a tech left a job and they're still showing they're on the job, it's going to show a discrepancy on that gps. And so that's been a huge visibility for us that we didn't have before. It shows up in the payroll. You know, you can see that little. There's a little like yellow triangle that shows warning. You know, this is GPS discrepancy here.

Interesting.

And then there's also some payroll overlaps that will show up. I think we see that right now. We get. It's more visible to us in Mitre. Or it could just be that the accounting department is more looks out for that a little bit better. I'm not sure which way that is yet, but we can see anytime there's payroll overlaps and the tech thinks that they're getting double paid, but we catch it. Okay, it shows. It shows a warning there.

Okay, very cool. And so in Service nine, there's time tracking built in. And then there's also Fleet Pro that helps to just make sure all the time tracking is accurate when you're arriving, when you're leaving, jobs throughout the day. Throughout the day. And then in service time, you also set up activity types for each of those stages on a job and after a job.

Yes.

Okay. And then I just wanted to go back to the advice you shared. You want them to not have too many activity types.

Right?

Okay. Because then it over complicates the reporting or.

That's a piece of advice that I got.

Yeah.

Is that at the very beginning, our CSM said try not to overcomplicate things at the beginning because you can always add to it. But think through everything very detailed first and then build on it.

Okay. Do you remember which activity types you started with?

So the basic ones are your basic clock in and out, your drive time, working time, and idle time. Those are your basic ones. We also have paid time off, unpaid time off holiday. And then we have meeting time like a job shop time. For people who work in the shop, training is a big one because we want to keep track of our training hours.

Gotcha. And then are technicians paid different rates for each activity type?

No.

Okay. It's just more for tracking and reporting. Ah, okay, got it. And so once that's all tracked in service time, when does it move over to mitre?

At the end of each pay period. The manager goes in and reviews the timesheets and it's just a quick overview, you know, we make sure that everything looks clean day by day. We make sure that the technician clocked out at the end of each job. And once we see that that looks good, it only takes a couple minutes per tech and we click a button in Service Titan that sends it to the tech to approve and the tech signs off. There's a little statement there, you know, that the tech signs off that he approves this payroll. Or he can select to dispute the payroll and put a note in there as to what he is disputing.

Let's say he approves the payroll. Where does it go from there?

So after the tech has approved the payroll, then the manager gets a chance to approve the payroll one more time, which that is usually me because I do an approval. So first the manager approves it, then the technician approves it, and then I approve it. Once I approve it at 5:30 each morning, then it gets sent over to Mitre.

Okay. And then once it's in mitre, what happens next?

So once it's populated into mitre, we just review it, do a high level review just to make sure that it matches what's in Service Titan and that there were no sync issues. And then we're ready to submit the whole payroll.

Wow. Okay, so step one is see if there are any sync errors. Usually there aren't. And if not, you can do a manual one as a backup option.

Yeah.

Okay. And then you're on to the next payroll cycle from there.

Right.

Okay, cool.

Yeah.

With Mitre, I'm curious what's next for you all in terms of adopting more of MITRE and its integration with certificates Service day.

So we're waiting for the 401k integration to come out and the HSA FSA integrations. That way I don't have to worry about doing those myself anymore.

How do you do those?

Now it's manual. I go in and to the bank and I tell it who's HSA or FSA to fund and how much to fund each pay period.

Oh, every pay period you have to do.

And then for the 401k, I have to upload the file. So I just pull the the report from mitre.

Yeah.

And put it in the format that it needs to be in for our 401k company. And then I just upload it.

Got it. Okay.

And then do the funding.

Wow. Okay, so for every pay period for each technician, you need to go and manually do the HSA the fsa. And then you need to get a spreadsheet, it sounds like, and reformat it for the 401k.

Yes.

Okay. And they're working on right now integrating all that automatically into mitre. Wow, that's really exciting.

Yeah.

I heard you got to stop by the booth today.

Yes, I did.

Okay.

Yeah, that was nice. I got to see a lot of face, Familiar faces.

Yeah.

And it was nice walking up to them and they go, oh, yeah. Hi, Paula.

That's awesome. Yeah, yeah. We appreciate you being so early on it, like I said earlier. And it's cool that you've, like, mastered one element of the MITRE service integration, and now you get to. At. Look. Look forward to the next. So, last question. You're here at Pantheon. What are you looking forward to most at Pantheon overall?

Oh, my gosh. All the sessions, everything there is to do here. Yeah, yeah, we come here, we learn so much, and we. We continue to learn and all the new stuff that Service Titan is coming out with. And I talked with our csm. We had a meeting this afternoon.

Oh, cool.

He is my service titan. Me. He is service. Anyway, he told me, anything you find out new that's coming out, let me know and I will get you on it.

Wow, what a great csm. Actually, who is your csm? I love this.

Matthew Ofalos.

Matthew Ofalos.

Yes. And let me tell you, he is awesome.

Oh, my gosh. Matthew Ofalas, shout out to you. You're an awesome csm, taking care of Paula here. And, Paula, thank you so much for joining us today and talking about such a new, innovative integration that we have with Service Tin and sharing your advice with all of our listeners.

Thank you, Josh. Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, thank you.