Release #64 | ServiceTitan Release Notes Overview

What's going on, everybody? It's Richard Kohberger here, the blue collar nerd. It is that time. Time for the first release notes of 2023. Let's jump in. So we are starting off strong with some y' all items. So under the highlight section and under job planning and management, you can now more easily cancel a job that has invoice items on it. So previously, let's say that you converted an estimate into a job and then you tried to cancel that job. You would have been told that you cannot cancel the job because the job invoice has item items on it from that estimate that you converted. So even though you haven't run the job yet, there's already items on the invoice. And so you would then have to go and manually remove all of the items off of the invoice in order to cancel the job. But now that's no longer the case. So now when you go to cancel a job that has invoice items on it already, you will get this dialogue asking you if the work is going to be done on another job or not. So you just make your selection and then the job is successfully canceled. Much easier, much more user friendly. Now this one was from my original list, so the list that started y'.

All.

But I did save one screenshot of somebody who did ask for this feature. That is Angela Lynn, whose post you can see right here. Plus this one was also asked for by Donaldson Heating and Air Conditioning ram, Mechanical and Dusty, Underwood Plumbing and Septic. Howdy y'.

All.

Alright, next, we have updated customer and location records. And this is definitely the biggest, most obvious change for this release. So once this release is live in your account, the first time you go to a location or customer page, you might notice things look a little bit different. Now, before we dive too far in, I do want to point out that the changes to the customer and location pages for this release are a phase one. So there are even more improvements coming in the near future anyway. So we have now this side navigation panel here and with that we can quickly jump to different sections without having to scroll down. So obviously when you first open up the page, you start at the top. But if I know that I'm looking for the photos and videos, then I can just click right here instead of scrolling all the way down. You've also got this handy scroll the top button to take you back to the top. So here at the very top we have the note section. You'll notice that now we have a search bar, very handy in order to search for specific notes that we might be looking for. And if you click here, you've also got additional filters. You can filter by the user who left the note or by a date range when the note was left. And we've got our handy add note button right here, which will bring this fly out where we can quickly leave a new note. And boom, there it is. Pinned notes are highlighted in yellow to make them more prominent. Then we have the jobs table here. Now, all of the tables are now more consistent with the tables that you see in the rest of Service Titan. Like in reporting, for example, which is good not just for consistency sake, but because those tables are much more powerful. So every column can now be sorted and filtered. So like for example, if I knew the job number that I was looking for, I could put that in there, say filter. Now I'm narrowed down to just that one job and I don't have to flip through a bunch of pages. Just clear that out here and the columns can be sorted as well. So you see this blue arrow here next to last appointment. That's telling us that we are currently sorted by that column in descending order, meaning jobs with the most recent appointments are showing up first. But maybe I want to go the other way and have the oldest appointment show up first. I would just click right here and then click one more time until I see the blue arrow pointing up. And now I'm going the other direction. So oldest appointments first. And we've got a handy button right here to go ahead and book a job that will take you to the job booking page. Under that is the appointments table. And you'll notice this purple bar here that indicates that this table supports grouping. So you see here by default the appointments are grouped by job number. So you see this job here has two appointments nested under it. But there are some other columns that support grouping as well. So maybe I wanted to group this by job type instead. So you just drag that header up to the purple bar, just like you do in reporting. And now it is grouped by job type. Of course, all of the tables are paginated, so you can flip through different pages and you can adjust how many items are shown per page. Overall, just more powerful, more capabilities than before and more efficient with how you navigate it. Now, you'll notice up here at the header, this pretty much looks the same as it did with the old design. But we will be making some updates to the way that this information is displayed in phase two. Phase two also includes a graphic in the header that makes it A lot easier to know whether or not you're on the location page or the customer page just at a glance. So look forward to those changes as well. I know I am. Now, I do want to point out that there is a way, okay, to switch back to the old design if you need to. But look, look here. Look, look, Papa Nerd in the eyes. Don't you do that just because this one's different and you don't want to get used to it. Okay, I understand. You have muscle memory. Like, you know how to get to everything that you need immediately with the old design. So for a few days, maybe a week, a new design might slow you down a little bit. I understand. I hear you. I feel you. But the new design is more powerful. And the switch to old design button, it's not going to be there forever. You have to learn to let go. Anyways, if you click the switch to the old design button, you'll get this dialog box that asks you why you're switching back. You don't have to fill it out, but please do, because the product team is going to see that feedback. So if there's some actual reason that you're having to switch back all the time, then you want them to know about that. That way the problem can be addressed. And if you leave it blank, I'm just going to assume that you were just avoiding change. And I won't be mad, but I will be disappointed. So this redesign is a y' all item. It kind of encompasses a lot of things, so I don't really have names to specifically tie to this, but I've definitely seen complaints around about the tables on those very prominent pages not matching the rest of the tables in service site. And I'm also positive that I've seen complaints about excessive scrolling on those pages. I've also seen a lot of requests for some clear differentiation between the customer and location pages at a glance. That's not in phase one, but it is going to be in phase one. Phase two. So to everybody who had those gripes, howdy, y'.

All.

Okay, next. Okay, this is another y' all item. We have the ability to switch from the Go environment to the next and practice environments in the office side. And this one I want to pause on and do some explaining. So, Service Titan, the live account that you work in every day, that is the Go environment. You see it in the URL go.servicetitan.com Most of you, if you've been around a while, are also aware of the next environment, which is A sandbox environment, which you previously had to get to by just typing in next.servicetitan.com so you had to know already that this sandbox existed and you had to know the URL to get to it, which is not particularly user friendly and inconsistent with the mobile side, which does have a button to switch to Training mode, which is the Next environment. So now on the Office side, from your profile dropdown, you will have a button to switch to the Next environment. But you can. You also have a button to switch to the Practice environment. This was a big problem. Most people didn't know that the Practice environment even existed. That's practice.servicetitan.com Next and practice are intended for two separate things. The Next environment is called Next because it gets the next upcoming release sooner than your Live account. So the next environment is intended for training on the upcoming release features. And that's it. That's the one thing that Next is intended for. It's. It's not intended for just general training and practice. The Next environment isn't particularly stable. It's kind of slow. You probably won't have a great time spending like a lot of time in there if that's like your main place to go do training. That's what the Practice environment is for. The practice environment is more stable, plus it's got the current release in it that's in your Live account. So it's probably better if you're just trying to train somebody to train in that. And the Next environment refreshes its data once per week. So once per week it goes and takes a snapshot of your live account and sucks all of that data into the next environment. And that new snapshot of data is going to overwrite everything in the next environment, including any changes that you made over the previous week. So some people would use the next environment to like work on building out a price book. Bad idea. You can lose a lot of work that way. The Practice environment only updates its snapshot with every release, which happens approximately monthly. So data does still get overwritten in there. If you're gonna use it for something like building out a price book, you still need to be exporting that regularly to avoid losing work. But that happens on a monthly basis versus a weekly basis, so your risk of losing work is reduced. Now, don't take that as an endorsement for that use case necessarily. I don't know that I fully recommend using Practice or Next or any sandbox environment for building out a price book, but it is definitely an option. I just want you to understand how everything works so that you can make an informed decision for yourself. And by the way, this change does carry over to the mobile side, so the training mode nomenclature has been removed since that's contradictory to what we call it on the office side, the next environment, and it's just confusing and text. Now also have the option to either switch to the next environment or the practice environment. Okay, and this one is a y' all item. This is one from my original list. So this is one that I personally requested, so I don't have any particular names to tie to this one. If you're confused, by the way, as to how something called you asked, we listened can sometimes mean that only I asked for it, go back to the first video I did explaining the y' all program. That'll make more sense. Okay, next, under equipment, I'm still keeping the y' all hat on. We have capacity levels and dimensions added to equipment details on mobile. So for a while now, you've been able to add this information to equipment from the office side when you're building out equipment, the capacity levels, like the tonnage of an air conditioner plus the dimensions of a piece of equipment. But that information wasn't viewable on the mobile side, but now it is. So when a technician looks at equipment that is on a location from the history tab, same place they always did, they can see that very helpful information, like you probably need to know the dimensions of something to know. Can I fit it in this crawl space or this attic or whatever? This feature was asked for by Several companies, including ABT Mechanical, Dwyer Plumbing and ICOMFort Heating and Air Conditioning.

Howdy, y'. All.

Okay, next, under accounting, we have two big new features. So we have the new transaction hub and new revamped auto batch settings. So these two updates are pretty major. And I'm not going to go into too much detail in this video because I did make a completely separate video about both of these features, and I'll leave a link to that video at the end of this one. But basically, the transaction hub is going to make your accounting data a lot more clear. If you have certain payment terms, it's going to be very easy to see what invoices are overdue and by how much. You'll be able to make bulk changes to invoices and customer payments. The workflow to review invoices before you post them will be much, much easier. And you now have the ability to track bank deposits within service titan, so you can track when you actually put the money in the bank plus the auto batching, which is totally revamped from the previous version of auto batching. I think the previous version it always had to auto batch on an hourly basis basis, which I always found weird. But it's not like that anymore. You can do it on whatever cadence you want. I would recommend daily and the new auto batching features are really good and for most people, most of the time I now recommend just using the auto batching. But again, that's real high level and I've got a completely separate video that goes into all the details. Okay, next, under the new section of these notes, we have some new leads integrations. So there are new integrations now with Angie leads, and with that we're sunsetting the old HomeAdvisor integration because Angie is Home Advisor now. Sunsetting it, meaning we're retiring it. There's a new Home Depot leads integration, a new Building 36 smart home leads integration, and a new flow Path leads integration. And if you're interested in any of these integrations, check out the full release notes. There are links to a webpage where you can go and request having these enabled. All right, next, under the improvement section of these notes, under accounting we have automatic reconciliation for non PO bills. So you now have the option to have your non PO vendor bills automatically reconciled upon creation. Next, under FinTech, you can now submit a Greensky Financing Direct funding payment request from the office. So now whenever somebody in the office charges a payment type with the Greensky direct funding attribute, the direct funding request form now appears. That way you don't have to log into Greensky, you can do it all within Servicetitan. Next is the FinanceIT funding checklist single access link. So if you're integrated with FinanceIT, the funding checklist now has a link that technicians can access at any time in the ServiceTitan mobile app. That way the checklist can be gradually filled out over multiple appointments on the same job, or even by different technicians. Okay, next, under Marketing Pro, you can now create prospecting lists with Marketing Pro Direct Mail. And this is a pretty big deal. So previously with Marketing Pro Direct Mail, you could only use it to remarket to your existing customers. So you could send mailers out to your existing customers, but you couldn't do prospecting with it. But now you can. So you can create lists of prospect properties based off home tax assessment data, basically meaning that you can send mailers, offers, or whatever you want to do to people who aren't already your customer. And you're able to set inclusion and exclusion filters based on some really helpful data like the total assessed value of the home, the age of the structure, the total interior area, how long ago the property was last sold, whether it has a fireplace and how many fireplaces it has, if it has a garage and if so, how big that garage is, and how many bedrooms or bathrooms a home has. So some super helpful stuff to really help you narrow down to the demographic you're trying to reach. Okay, next, under reporting, the payment terms field has been added to the invoices data set. Not much else to say about that, but just worth pointing out. And finally, under Telecom, we have improved number assignment for Phones Pro. So now you can see all of your phone number assignments as well as make adjustments to them all within Service Titan, whereas previously you had to log into Dialpad to do that. And we also now have the ability to export a list of your phone numbers. So if that's something you want to do. If you're not using Phones Pro, that's under Settings, Phones and Phone Numbers. Or if you are using Phones Pro, then it's under Settings, Phones Pro and Phone Numbers. And for Phones Pro users, you'll have an Assignments column on your export so that you know what the assignment is in Dialpad. I feel like my voice is so scratchy. Anyways, that's all I got for today. Hey, be sure to hit like if you like 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 new updates. Please remember that your engagement through likes, comments and subscriber numbers are the ways in which my success is measured. And don't forget to check out that video on all of the accounting updates. I think that's a pretty important one for everybody to see because everybody does accounting and you should see a link to it right around here right now.

Sam.