Release #61 | ServiceTitan Release Notes Overview

What's going on, everybody? It's Richard Coburger here, the blue collar nerd. The time has come once again. We've got some release notes to go over. I've got the y' all hats ready. Let's jump in. So first, under the highlight section of these notes, we have a note related to purchasing an inventory. So the functionality of returns has been expanded. Previously, the returns page looked like this. Functional, but a little bare bones. You could create a return and you could mark a return canceled and and as soon as a return was created, it automatically showed up on the accounting page to be batched and exported. But now the returns page looks like this. So first of all, returns now have statuses other than just created or canceled. They can now also be pending returns or marked as credit received. You'll also notice we have these quick filters here at the top as well as this button to get the full list of filters, as well as a search bar. So when a return is initially created, it will be created in the pending status file. Then once those items actually get returned to the vendor, you move them over into the returns tab. And then once you've confirmed that you've received the vendor credit, they move over into the credit received tab. Returns won't show up on the accounting page to be exported until they are in the credit received state. Now, there are also now return types. So if you go into your settings and search for return types, you'll see this page where there are three pre made return types. Requisition, Return to Vendor, and Auto Receive Vendor credit. You can also add your own return types here. Now, Auto Receive Vendor credit is a setting on return types. Obviously this pre made return type called AutoReceive vendor credit has that on by default. So with that setting on, any returns you make with that return type will be automatically moved into the credit received status, meaning they will instantly show up on the accounting tab to be batched and exported, which is basically the way that it worked before this update. So if you were happy with the way that it worked before this update, then that's the setting that you would want to use and you select which return type you want to use while creating a return. Additionally, once a return is created, you can move it through the different statuses from the actions dropdown. Okay, Next in the highlight section under CRM we have a y'.

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I'm gonna call this one a baby y' all though. It's an improved customer and location merge experience. So we have some expanded functionality in the customer and location Merge tool, you get there the same way that you always did from the Settings under Tools. The verbiage on these pages has been expanded and made more clear. But the biggest changes are there is now an audit trail so that you can see who merged what and when. And we now have the option to undo a merge. So from the audit trail, if you click the name under the deactivated entry column, that will take you to the deactivated entity and you can see that we have this Undo merge button. Now, I do want to note real quick that merges show up in the audit trail, but undoing a merge currently does not. And these new tools, the audit trail and the ability to undo the these are hugely useful. But the reason I'm calling it a baby y', all is that I know that there is still one pain point that hasn't been solved yet, which is that when you're merging customers with the same name, there's no way to differentiate between the two entities. Just right there in the merge tool, you would have to go and rename one of the customers so that you can tell which is which. If it matters to you which one gets kept and which one gets deactivated. I know that a lot of you have brought up that pain point in the past and that one is still here. So from for that reason, I'm calling it a baby y'.

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But still a really great update. Alright, next, under memberships, we have a new recurring tag on incoming customer SMS texts. So if you weren't already aware, you can now set up recurring SMS campaigns to remind customers when their maintenance is due. And with this update, when a customer replies to one of those texts, that thread will be given a tag so that you know that's where that text is coming from. All right, next, under forms and media, we, we've got a big one, conditional logic in forms. Now, this one, not technically labeled as a y', all, but I asked for it. I asked for it back in 2019 in my Christmas Wishlist video. So I'm gonna put the hat on. Anyway, so with conditional logic in forms, you can show or hide particular sections or questions on a form, depending on the answers to other questions on the form. For example, if you had like an H VAC inspection form, you could have a question that says, is this a gas system, an electric system or a dual fuel system? And, and if the technician chooses gas, then a whole bunch of questions related to furnaces will appear. But if they choose electric, then only questions related to electric systems and air handlers will appear, or if they choose dual fuel, then both sections will appear. This allows you to consolidate forms, this allows you to make more complex forms without making them look cluttered. And it allows you to collect only the information that is relevant to a particular situation. It's a really great feature and I've got a whole separate video showing you exactly how to use it, and I'll put a link to that in the description down below. By the way, myself and other members of the team have gone ahead and pre built some forms with conditional logic for you to use. Those can be found by going to Settings and Titan Exchange and under the Service Titan Best Practices Network, search for conditional logic. All right, next. And this one is a real y', all, so I'm leaving the hat on. It is now easier to identify attachments when emailing out of Service Titan. So previously if you were emailing a customer an invoice or an estimate and and you wanted to attach some pictures or videos or PDF files, you got this just a list of the file names and you would check off what you wanted to send, but you didn't really have a good way of knowing what was what. Maybe if you were lucky, the technician renamed the files to make it a little bit more clear. But there were no thumbnails or anything to help you out. But now we have a very different situation. So in place of all those messy checkboxes, we now have this one Attach files button. And that brings up this beauty. So as you can see now, not only do we have thumbnails, but we also have filters. So we can filter by the person who uploaded the file, the upload date or the type of file. We also have this handy select all and deselect all button. If you hover over any particular file, we've got this handy quick link to download it if you needed to download it for whatever reason. And if you click on the file thumbnail itself, you will get this pop out expanded view. And from that view you can just navigate back and forth if you wanted to keep looking at files in this bigger view. And you're able to select files from this view as well. So you just check everything off that you want to attach and you're good to go. And that is a significantly improved experience. This idea had 130 votes in the Service Titan community. So for everybody who voted on that idea, howdy y'.

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All right, next, my head stays cozy. We've got another y'.

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We now have alerts for Technician Forms. So recently we introduced Technician Forms. These are non job forms that you can use for things like van inspections or safety meeting attendance, just things that aren't specific to a particular job and you can trigger these based on non job events or a technician can fill them out anytime from the My Forms tab on mobile. But when they were initially released, Technician forms did not have alerts. But now they do. So when you go to settings and alerts and add a new alert, what was previously called the completed form on job alert is now just called completed forms and you will now have the option to select non job technician forms. Lots of people from lots of companies called out this drawback, but three that I could find are Greens Heating, All American Generator and Tioga Contractors. So to you and everybody else who needed those alerts for technician forms, howdy y'.

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Okay, next, Under Marketing Pro we have Marketing Pro Ads. This new addition to the Marketing Pro suite allows you to tie your Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts to Service Titan. It also lets you tie in dynamic number insertion to your website so that you can see exactly which PPC campaign people are calling in from. It's a pretty big deal, and it's going to lead to some even bigger deals down the road. But I'm not going to spend too much time on it here because I did make a completely separate video about it. And of course I'll be leaving a link to that video in the description down below. All right, now moving on to the improvement section of these notes under Accounting Export Transaction Updates is now on by default for QuickBooks desktop users. So for a while now, Service Titan has had a feature that works with QuickBooks Desktop that allows you to make changes to exported jobs and invoices and then sync those changes back to QuickBooks Desktop. And this simplifies things a lot and greatly reduces the need for things like adjustment invoices. But previously this was a gated feature, which means you might not know about it unless you're one of those very smart people who subscribe to the Service Titan YouTube channel and hit that bell icon so that YouTube notifies you anytime we upload a new video. Because I do have a video on this feature, I'll link to it as well in the description down below. But now this feature is no longer gated. If you're using QuickBooks Desktop, it will be on by default. It is still a permission though, and the permission is off by default because you know this is a dangerous thing. You don't want to let just anybody go and change exported invoices and jobs. But if this is something you'd like to use. Check out that other video I made. I go into all the details there. All right, next, under community, Titan Advisor points are now available for visiting the Service Titan community. If you haven't visited the new community yet, why not? It's a great place to ask questions, share your knowledge with fellow Service Titan users, find answers using the universal search and post and vote on that ideas page and maybe get something added to the YAW program. Plus, now you can get those sweet, sweet Titan Advisor points. All right, next, under equipment, you can now link services or materials to equipment on mobile estimates, not just invoices. So previously there was a way to mark equipment as serviced using a particular service out of the price book. And the purpose of that is to help you keep track of what work was done on what specific piece of equipment at a location, which is pretty handy. But there was one major drawback, which was that you couldn't create that link from an estimate. You had to create that link from an invoice, which kind of goes against the best practice, the recommended flow, which is to always create an estimate for first, which is why you can now create those links from a mobile estimate, and then those links will carry over to the invoice once it gets sold. So when creating an estimate, when a technician taps into a service or material, they will see this button at the bottom that says select equipment to service. And from there they can select a piece of existing equipment or they can use this add new button to enter in a new piece of equipment. And again, that just creates a link that follows through to the final invoice that lets us know which particular piece of equipment we serviced. All right, next, under estimates, I'm going to call this one a B baby, y'. All. You can now add materials to item groups. So just in case you're not familiar, Item Groups is a gated feature that allows you to nest sub items underneath one parent item, basically allowing you to roll multiple things into one single line item on an estimate or invoice. It's great for creating packages where you don't want to show the breakdown of price for every individual item that you're placing into that package. You just want to show it as one package, line item. But previously you could only add services and equipment into item groups, but now you can also add materials. And I know I've this limitation brought up a ton of times specifically in the Service Titan Masterminds group. But alas, the follies of Facebook search, I could only find this one post from Joni Panic of Healthy Home. I'm making this one a baby y', all because it is pretty niche. But to Joanie and everybody else who was waiting on this Next Under Jobs and Projects, we have improved Job record editing the old hat trick. So from a Jobs page, you can now edit service, location, bill to and job summary directly on the page without having to navigate away. And you do that by simply clicking this little edit pencil next to whatever it is that you're trying to edit. You also get handy built in formatting options when editing the job summary. So you can make things bold, italic, underline, make a numbered or bold list, things like that. Again, super handy and way more efficient than navigating away to a separate page. I couldn't dig up particular names to tie to this one, but I know for sure I've seen it asked for before. So to everyone out there who did ask for it, howdy y'.

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Next we have Task Management on Projects. So now from the Projects page you can add tasks to a project. You can do that either from the Actions dropdown and choosing Add Task from there, or you can click this Log Task button right above this new Task Management table that will open up this flyout where you can log a task and then that task shows up in the Task management table for that project. Next, you can now choose to sort your Schedule Assistant results by the first technician available. So if you want to prioritize which technician is going to be available first versus which technician would have the least additional drive time, you can now filter your results that way. And if you're confused and you don't know what Schedule Assistant is, then I know that you don't watch all my videos and the insult that I feel is immeasurable. I'll leave a link to my Schedule Assistant video in the description down below. It's a super handy feature for helping your CSRs and DSRs book efficiently. All right, next, under Payroll and Timesheets, we have Flexible Overtime. So Flexible Overtime is a payroll feature that allows you to create custom overtime rules so you can choose whether you want to pay overtime based on the number of hours worked in a day worked in a week after working a number of consecutive days, within a work week or for specific hours of the day, you can also choose to apply rules only on certain days of the week. It just gives you a ton of flexibility. This is a y' all because it was previously a gated feature and we are now making it available to everybody. And like I said in my last video Anywhere that we can find gated features that don't really need to be gated, we're going to make those publicly available and we're going to call that a yaw. So if you're somebody who's not paying your payroll through Service Titan and your reasoning for that is because you think it can't work with the way you pay overtime, then I would definitely check this feature out. And of course, with these sorts of things, always check the professional to ensure that you are following federal and state rules. Okay, next, under purchasing an inventory, we have the ability to consume items as part of a transfer. So materials now have this setting under their inventory settings for consuming an item upon transfer to truck. And this is especially helpful for consumable items. For example, if you give a technician a box of PVC elbows from the warehouse, you probably want to just go ahead and reorder another box versus waiting for the technician to use all of those elbows off of the truck. This one's been asked for by several companies that use inventory, including Morris Jenkins and the Wrench Group. All right, next, under support keeping the y' all hat on, we have updated error messages. So we've updated our more technical database and connection error messages to clarify why the error is taking place and what action needs to be taken to fix the error. Basically, those errors that would sometimes just throw some weird robot talk at you are now in more plain English. I don't have a particular name to tie to this one, but it affects pretty much everybody. Everybody's experienced one of these errors at some point and was like, what? What am I supposed to do about that? And so this one goes out to everybody. Howdy, y'.

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And finally, we have new Monday through Friday support hours. Effective July 25, support will now stay open until 6pm Pacific Time instead of 5pm Pacific Time. Saturday hours will remain 5am to 4pm Pacific Time. Anyways, that's all I got for today. Hey, remember, if you're liking the things that you're seeing coming out of the y' all program, be sure to tell somebody. Just mention it somewhere. We've got so many more items that we want to tackle, and I need your help to make sure that the program stays running full steam ahead. Be sure to hit, like, if you liked this video and found it valuable, be sure to subscribe to surface Titan's YouTube channel. If you haven't done that already, hit that bell icon so that YouTube notifies you. Anytime we upload a new video. And leave me a comment down below, let me know what you think about the update, what you think about the Yell program, and what you think I should make a video on Next. Please remember that your engagement through likes, comments and subscriber numbers are the ways in which my success is measured. Appreciate it. Peace.