Release #65 | ServiceTitan Release Notes Overview

What's going on, everybody? It's Richard Coburger here, the blue collar nerd. Hello. Hi, how are you? How you doing? I can't hear you. It's release notes time. First, under the highlight section, under price book, we now have weekend and holiday rules for dynamic pricing. Okay, so previously in dynamic pricing, when you want to add an after hours rule, this is what you saw. So you were able to set a single rule with a single if then statement. So if the scheduled start time of the job is between this time and this time, then charge this much extra dollar amount or this much extra percentage. But now this is what we're working with. So I'm going to come in here and add an after hours rule. I can name my rule. So let's call this one the After Hours Weekday. And now you'll notice I can have multiple conditions under this rule and I can choose between end and, and or logic. So let's say it's between 6pm and 6am and the day of the week is. This is our weekdays rule. So we're going to choose everything except Saturday and Sunday. Hit apply. And then if we wanted to, I could say end or, or again and even add a different condition to this rule. But for this example, that's all I need. So I'm going to hit this minus to take that away. We'll call that an extra $100 flat. Okay. And then I can hit save. And now the after hours option is still here. So I can add a second rule. You can actually add up to five rules. So we'll call this one the weekend rule. I'm going to completely take away this scheduled start time because I'm going to say that we charge the same on weekends regardless. But if you have a separate weekends after hours rate that's different from your weekdays after hours rate, you can do that too. But I'm just going to say if day of the week is Saturday or Sunday, then let's say that's a $125 surcharge. Great, I'll hit save. And now I can add even another rule. We'll call this one the Holidays rule. So I don't care about scheduled start time. I just care if it's a holiday. So I'll say if date. And now all of the federally observed holidays are preloaded in here. So we can just leave that alone or we can uncheck some if we want to. This is really handy because even if the holiday falls on a different day of the week one year versus the next, it doesn't matter. Dynamic pricing knows that it's a holiday and we'll say we charge an extra $2.50 for that. Now, you'll notice there's also this field for after hours priority that's basically there to prevent multiple rules from matching and then compounding different fees on top of each. So basically, dynamic pricing is going to look in order of the priority that you're setting here. So it's going to say, does it match priority rule number one? No. Does it match priority rule number two? No. Does it match priority rule number three? And once it finds one that matches, it's going to stop checking. So for this, I want it to check if it's a holiday first, because if it is a holiday, then I don't want dynamic pricing to see that it's also a weekend, for example. And then charge the weekend rate instead of my holiday rate. I want the holiday rate to be higher priority. And that's the basics of it. So now we have three separate after hours rules. Very handy. Definitely gives you a lot more flexibility. I know that some people were using pricing levels to kind of work around some things, but now we have better solutions. All right, next we have a y' all item. So there is now a new filter on the dispatch board that will let you filter by teams and by technician's skills. So previously you were able to filter the dispatch board by business unit, but the teams and skills filters are new and that gives you a lot more flexibility of how you want to filter your board for certain dispatchers. If you have certain dispatchers that only dispatch certain teams, for example, you can get a lot of clutter out of their way. And filtering by technician skills, obviously going to be very handy as well. This one was asked for by multiple companies including Aquarius Water Conditioning, a Star Heating and Air, Blue Chip Maintenance, First Point LLC, Plumbing, Medic and Progressive Service Company.

Howdy, y'.

All.

Okay, next, under FinTech, we have a new financing integration with Goodleap. Not much more to say there, but more integrated financing options. Always better. Okay, next, under CRM, we have phase 2 of the customer and location page redesigns. And this one's labeled as A y', all, but I'm going to call it a baby, y', all, only because, yes, this phase two does technically address some feedback that we've gotten, but it's not really in response to feedback. Everything in phase two was already planned from the beginning of phase one, but we do have another phase coming that is truly reactive to feedback that we've Received. Okay, so this is what we're working with. Now. The first thing I want to point out is that the customer and location pages now have different graphics that show up here in the upper left hand corner. So that's the customer graphic. But if we go to the location, you'll see that it's a different graphic and a different color, which makes the customer and location pages much easier to distinguish at a glance. Very handy. That's something I've heard people mention forever, that it's really hard to tell which page you're on just really quickly, and that should definitely help. Now also, we have this kind of breadcrumb trail up here. So we see that I'm under the Jack Turner location, but I can click back right here into the Jack Turner customer page that I was just on. Another cool thing is that this little default customer icon here, I can hit add photo here and upload my own custom picture. Now, the next thing that's probably pretty obvious is that a lot of the information that used to live in the header now lives in this new sidebar over to the right. So we've got two tabs here, details and notes. Under details, we've got tags, contacts, and additional info. And these sections are collapsible. And we could hit the edit pencil right here to make some changes. Now we've also got this really nice new customer summary section. So we can see the lifetime revenue from this customer, what balance they have due, what payment terms we have applied to them, and how overdue their balance is if they have one, as well as the credit available on this account. Plus, up here in the header, we have a customer since piece of data that tells us what year this customer started with us. I'll also point out that this sidebar on the left here is now collapsible. So you can collapse that and give yourself some more horizontal space to work with. And when you have it collapsed, you could leave it collapsed. And then when you move your mouse over to it, it shows up for you. And then when you move your mouse away, it collapses by itself. Again, very handy. You'll also notice that as we scroll down, this header kind of shrinks down, but it stays floating. And it kind of does the same thing where it tells me what customer I am on. And if I kind of hover up there, it. It expands to give me some more information. Now, up here at the top, I have buttons to add a payment method. I can add a new location. And on the location page, those action buttons are book a job, add an attachment or add equipment. And then from this kebab menu, that's where I can collect a payment, create a project email, or print statements, or switch to the old design if you must. But I wouldn't. I think this one's much better. And by the way, that little modal pop up that shows up on the call booking screen that has been updated with this new design as well. You know that little pop up that doesn't have to pop up automatically if you don't want it to. Right. We all know about that setting because we all watch all of Blue Collard's videos. Right. Okay, next, under accounting, the job costing revenue calculation has improved. Now I want to pause and spend some time really explaining what this means because I feel like this note could be a little ominous. Like, oh, what was wrong with it before? Right, so let me explain. So let's say, for example, you had some sort of buy down workflow. So like a situation where some maybe third party financing company is paying you and not the customer directly. Well, in that situation, the customer is not the one paying you money. So you want to zero out their invoice to be able to send them their invoice and say, you don't owe me anything. And that's typically done with like an adjustment invoice with a negative task on it. And that negative task is tied to a liability general ledger. Okay, so what would happen previously is that specific situation would mess up your job costing because it would show your revenue as being $0 because it took every task into account, including the negative task to calculate your revenue because the calculation didn't take into account that one of those tasks was tied to a liability general ledger account. But that's not true. You did get the revenue. The financing company paid you. So now tasks that are mapped to liability GL accounts will not count towards or against your revenue calculation. Okay, next, under equipment, we have another yawl item. I'm going to call this one a baby y'. All. As well, we now have additional equipment fields. So in the equipment section, seer 2 and ear 2 are now available fields. Those fields are also available from the bulk price book editor. Now, plenty of people have asked for this. For example, here's Armando Ortiz. If, by the way, you don't know what Seer 2 and Ear 2 are, it's probably because you don't do H Vac. These are new efficiency measurement standards, which is why I'm calling it a baby y', alls, because they are the new standards. We kind of had to Add them. So, yes, it's a y', all, but I just, I don't want us to throw ourselves in Unzip parade, you know? Okay, next. Under job booking and contact experience. And this one, this one gets the parade. This one gets the big hat, baby. We have the ability to make the job summary field required on the call booking screen. And this was a very popular idea in the community. This idea post was originally made by Jessica Smith, and it had 117 votes. So in order to make that field required, you're going to go to Settings, Operations, and Job Booking, and you'll see a checkbox there to make the summary field required.

Howdy, y'.

All.

Okay, next. And this one's under purchasing an inventory, but it's also kind of an equipment note. It's the multiple equipment records update. So previously, when installed equipment was created based on an invoice, one equipment record was created per line item, even if the quantity on that line item was more than one. And that created problems with accurately tracking equipment, but also with serialized inventory, because more than one serial number would be assigned to a single equipment record. So, moving forward, installed equipment generated from serialized inventory will generate a piece of installed equipment for each quantity of that invoice item. Okay, next. Under telecom, and this one's kind of a big deal. Second Chance Leads is going into beta for Phones Pro. Second Chance Leads intelligently analyzes phone calls using machine learning. And if it believes that that phone call was a lead, it will save it here under the Second Chance Leads bucket for further review. And it will do that even if the CSR marked it as not a lead. And that gives managers an opportunity to potentially save some leads that otherwise would have just been forgotten. Very cool. Now it is just going into beta with this release. If you're on Phones Pro and you want to sign up for that beta, I'll put a link in the description down below where you can do that. Now, yes, this is a Phones Pro exclusive. And before anybody gets their jimmies rustled about it, I just want to say it's a Phone Pro exclusive, because it has to be. You see, the way that this works, at least the way it works right now, is not by analyzing the phone call audio. It's by analyzing a transcript of the phone call and transcriptions of phone calls is something that happens with Phones Pro. It's not something that happens with the standard phone integration. And for that reason, at least at this point in time, this can only work with Phones Pro. Okay, next, under accounting, we have the automatic refund banner. So to help you keep track of your refunds, any invoice that is created by the use of the automatic refunds workflow is now labeled and this banner also includes a link back to the original invoice. Next, Customer Credit is now an available column in any AR transaction reports. So any AR transaction reports at the customer level now include the customer's available credit at a glance. Next, the job audit trail now includes payments. So a record in the audit trail will be created whenever a user collects a payment on an estimate that's tied to a job, collects a partial or full payment, or unapplies a payment from the invoice. Next, we have another y'.

All.

I'll call this one a baby y' all as well. You can now add a payment to a batch from the Edit payment screen. So if you're editing a payment, you now have this button to save it and add it to a batch. Now this idea did have only five votes in Community, but hey, a y' all is a y' all no matter how small. Now, I believe adding it to a batch from the Edit payment screen actually used to be a feature, but it was a feature before Payment Collections, kind of the revamped system and then it didn't carry over when Payment Collections was first introduced. So obviously we don't want to take functionality away and now that's been resolved. Okay, next we have another y'.

All.

I'm a little biased, but I'm gonna put the big hat on for this one. We have updated payment button verbiage for estimates on mobile. So using Payment Collections service, Titan has a built in workflow for collecting deposits. And the way that a technician is supposed to collect a deposit out in the field is by collecting that deposit payment on top of a sold estimate and not on top of the invoice like they normally would. But previously there was no button anywhere in mobile that said the word deposit on it. When you went to the sold estimate, the button that you were supposed to hit just said the word pay. And that in my opinion was very unclear and made a lot of Service Titan users less aware of the fact that there was this built in deposit workflow. So now the button says pay deposit. Now this is one from my original list, so I don't have names to tie to it. But I am very happy to see this implemented what with it being my idea and all.

Howdy y'.

All.

Okay, next, under Community, keeping the y' all hat on, ideas added to Community are now more easily shareable. So previously, if you made an idea in community and you wanted to kind of promote that idea and ask people for votes. You couldn't just post a direct hyperlink to that idea post. That wouldn't work. So. So you just kind of had to copy the ID code and share that and hope that people would use that to find it on their own. But as of March 3, 2023, you can now share links to idea posts. I don't have specific names to tie to this one, but I think we can all agree. I don't think there was really anybody who thought that it was ideal to not be able to share a hyperlink to a post. You know, if you think about it, this y', all, it's kind of like a mom. It's gonna help other y' alls get created. Mmm. So I guess this y' all is more like a fertility doctor. Hmm. I don't know. I kind of lost the plot. We're sunsetting legacy search. So if you haven't switched over to the new search experience that was introduced last year, the old search design is no longer going to be available. Next, under job booking and contact experience, we have another y' all item. You can now edit the end date and time on jobs and appointments while booking them. So in your job type settings, you can set default lengths for specific job types. For example, you can say, here's my H VAC maintenance job type and its default duration is 2 hours. But that 2 hour duration might be based on an assumption that this house has one system or two systems or whatever. But if you're going to a property with more or less systems, then maybe you need that job length to be adjusted. So previously you had a couple of options of how to handle that. Option number one was you could have multiple job types for those situations. So you could have a one system maintenance job type, a two system maintenance job type, all the way up to whatever you think is plausible. Or you could keep just the one job type and then have somebody adjust the length after it was already booked. But that would have to happen on a separate page. But now you have a new option. You can allow the person booking the job to adjust the end time while they're booking it. So in order to allow this, you need to go to Settings, Operations, and job booking. And you will see this checkbox there that says edit end time. And with that checked off, the CSR or whoever it is booking a job will have the option to edit the end time of a job or the end date of a job. This is another One where it's kind of hard to say exactly how many votes it had because there were a lot of duplicate ideas in the community. But to everybody who asked for this, Howdy, y'.

All.

Next. Under job planning and management, there's now a warning message when booking a job from a sold estimate on a project opportunity. And this warning message lets you know that booking a job from a sold estimate on a project opportunity will not allow you to properly perform progress billing on the project level. This is something that's mainly relevant to new construction companies. So if that didn't make any sense to you and you don't use progress billing, don't worry about it. Okay, next, under pricebook, we have the Allow discounts code field and the Allow membership discount field. So previously, any service had just a single checkbox that said allow discounts, and that checkbox affected both membership discounts and discount codes. But now those have been separated out. So there are two checkboxes and you can control them individually. So if you don't want to allow membership discounts on a certain task, but you do want to allow discount codes to affect it, you can do that or vice versa. Next, with dynamic pricing, we now have individual or aggregate markup calculations. So when you're setting up your markups and dynamic pricing, you'll now see this option to choose individual or aggregate. So if you don't understand what the difference is, let me try to explain. So let's say you have a material markup rule. Any material that costs between $0 and $100, that's going to get marked up 100%. And any material that costs between 100 and $500, that's going to be marked up 50%. And let's say on some example service, you have three materials tied to it and each material costs $50. So if you choose the individual calculation, which was previously the only calculation available, all three of those line items are going to be marked up as individual things. So every material costs $50, and $50 is between 0 and 100. So all three of those materials are going to get marked up 100%. But if we chose the aggregate calculation, then the cost of all of the materials that are tied to that service would get added together first and then we would mark that up. So 50 plus 50 plus 50, that's 150, which falls between 100 and 500. And therefore it's now going to get marked up at 50%. Okay, next, under purchasing an inventory, we have an update to returns, so you can now create a return for received items without waiting for the bill to be created. Next, under Reporting and Dashboards, another y' all item so you can now select year to date or previous year in the date range field when setting up a scheduled report. Previously, year to date and previous year were available date ranges when running a report on the fly, but you weren't able to schedule reports with those date ranges. Now, there were a lot of duplicate ideas about this posted in the community, so it's a little hard to say exactly how many votes it had, but based on what I saw, it had at least 20 total votes.

Howdy, y'.

All.

Okay. And finally, under Titan Advisor, the benchmark report is now available in Titan Advisor. And the benchmark report is really cool. It shows you where you stand in comparison to other companies that are like you. So for example, you can see what was your job average that year versus the job average of other companies that are like you. You're similar size in a similar area. This is a report that uses Titan intelligence, but previously you had to contact Service Titan to get this report sent to you. But now the report can be accessed directly from Titan Advisor. But do note that you do need to be a Titan Advisor admin user. And because the report uses like at least a year's worth of your data, not everybody's going to have a available. For example, if you just went live recently, you're not going to have enough data for this report to be available to you. We also don't currently have enough data to provide benchmark reports to customers in Alaska or Puerto Rico. And if you've opted out of publications from the Data Preferences page, you also will not be able to see this report. Ah, I left the hat on. The benchmark report thing wasn't a y', all. But I don't feel like re recording it. Sorry. Maybe we could CGI the hat out like they did with Superman's mustache. Anyways, that's all I got for today. Be sure to hit like if you liked the video and found it valuable, be sure to subscribe to service 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 hey, if you feel like I'm doing a good job, do me a favor and tell somebody. You can do it in the comments down below. You could mention me in one of the surveys that Server Titan sends out. That sort of thing really helps me out a lot. Appreciate it. Peace.

Sam.