ST-50 | ServiceTitan Release Notes Overview

What's going on, everybody? It's Richard Coburger. He. The blue collar nerd. Well, yes, I am wearing sweatpants under this, thank you for asking. We have got some release notes to go over. Let's go ahead and dance around. Oh, no, that's, that's only for special occasions. I know. I hate you. Sir, please calm down. So first, under the improvement section, we have an accounting note invoice number added to email attachment. This one's pretty straightforward. Previously, when you sent an invoice out of Service Titan, the file name of that attached file would just be called Invoice PDF this. But now the invoice number is also in that file name, so it'll be invoice number 1234, whatever it is. Next, we have mark items taxable on invoices. Now, this note only applies to you if you have the markup logic account configuration enabled. That account configuration allows you to set the tax status of individual invoice items per invoice. And with this update, you can now also do that with equipment and materials. So even if the taxable status in the price book settings of that equipment or material is blank, you can, you can set that tax status item by item from the invoice itself. Next, we have a bill record redesign, and this one only applies to you if you are using the purchasing module. So I'll put a couple of screenshots up here. This is what it used to look like and this is what it looks like now. So you can see we've got that navigation bar on the side. The information is, in my opinion, laid out a little bit cleaner. There's more distinct sections. We've got that dedicated reconciliation button there in the upper right hand corner. And we have direct links right here on this page to take us right to the purchase order or the receipt that is associated with this bill. Next, under dashboard and Scorecards, the modular dashboard is now available on all accounts. So you no longer have to ask to have the modular dashboard enabled for you. It is going to be on by default. And if you're confused right now, you don't know what the modular dashboard is. Wakey, wakey, wakey, wakey. You've been sleeping. I made you some coffee. Okay, I'm gonna leave that right here. Just take that when you're ready. And then once you're all freshened up, head on down to the last release notes video to learn about the modular dashboard. Okay, I'll leave you a link. I'm gonna leave you a little card right here, all right? Love you. Next, under estimates, we have Convert Estimate Templates to Proposal templates. All this note is saying is that that conversion tool that we talked about in the last release Notes video that is ready now. So if you have old estimate templates that you would like to use with the new system or let your CSM know and they can now convert those into the new system for you. Also, if you are just getting started with the new estimate templates and you'd like a little bit of assistance to get started, I did make a short little tutorial video and I'll put a link to that in the corner of the screen here as well as in the description down below. And again, if you're totally confused here and you haven't heard about the new estimate template builder, then go ahead and check out the last release notes video. I'm not going to make you another cup of coffee. Next, we have Create Item Groups on Estimate templates. Now, to be clear here, item groups themselves are not new. We've just added support for them in the new Estimate Template builder. So with item groups, you can have a parent item and then nest sub items underneath that, and then the price of that parent item will encompass all of the sub items within it, basically allowing you to make a package that's just a single line item on an invoice. So now when building an estimate template, you'll see a new button that says item group and clicking that will allow you to put together that item group and then add that to the estimate template template. Next, under Finance, you can now offer Service Finance with online estimates. So Service Finance, that is the latest financing partner that integrates with ServiceTitan, and you can now offer your customers a direct link to apply for Service Finance right from your online estimates. To do that, you would go into settings, integrations and then financing. And assuming you're already set up with Service Finance, you should see this toggle switch that says allow customer to apply for financing through online estimates. Then when your customers are viewing their online estimates via their online estimate link, they'll have this button that says Apply for financing. They can click that to choose from one of the plans that you offer and then they'll be able to apply online from there. All right, next, under marketing, we have exportable cells. So basically from the Marketing dashboard, if you click to expand a particular cell, like let's say you're in the sent column and you see that this particular email was sent to 293 customers. Well, if you click to expand that, you get the list of the 293 customers. But now with this update, you also get that export to CSV button. So you can click that to get a spreadsheet of the 293 customers that this email was sent to. Next, we have template selection in the Campaign Builder. We've added sort and filter functionality to the templates catalog in the third step of the Campaign Builder. The catalog in the third step of the Campaign Builder now has matching functionality to the catalog outside of the Campaign Builder. So basically what this note is saying, when you're building a campaign on step three, when you actually add the content before, when you clicked the button to add content, the version of the email template catalog that you got to browse through, it didn't have that side navigation bar that had the different catalogs, categories and filters. Whereas if you navigated directly to the template library, not through the Campaign Builder, then you would have that sidebar. So basically it matches. Now you get the sidebar both places. All right, now these next two notes, these are both regarding the Google Local Service Ads integration. Now that came out fairly recently and I did make a whole dedicated video about that. So if you'd like to learn more about the Google Local Services integration, check out that video. I'm going to put a link in the corner of the screen here and of course in the description down below. But basically what this integration allows you to do is add a schedule button on your Google Local Service Ads. And that offers people a very seamless, low friction way to book appointments with you. And just to be clear, even though these Google Local Service Ads notes are under the Marketing Pro section of these release notes, it's not actually part of Marketing Pro. You don't need Marketing Pro in order to use this Google Local Service Ads integration. So this first note says that the GLSA Google Local Service Ads instant booking is now available for more trades. So in addition to H VAC plumbing and electrical, it is now also available for flooring, appliance repair, cleaning service, countertops, fencing, foundation, junk removal, landscaping, lawn care, locksmith, moving, painting, pest control, roofing, sliding doors, tree service, window cleaning, window repair, water damage, water damage was the last one. I'm not doing it again. Pretend I said end water damage. And the next note is enable or disable ACP adjustable capacity planning in GLSA Google Local Service Ads settings really coming at you with the acronyms. So this note will probably make more sense after you've watched that dedicated Google Local Service Ads video that I made. But the basic gist of it is there are two ways you can set it up so that Google knows what your availability is. In Service Titan, you can either do it through business hours or through Adjustable Capacity Planning. So before this update, if you were using Adjustable Capacity Planning, then that meant that Google Local Services also used Adjustable Capacity Planning to know your availability. That's just how it worked. By default you couldn't change it. This update allows you to enable or disable it at will regardless. So before if you were using Adjustable Capacity Planning, then you had to use it with Google Local Services, but now it's an option. You can still use Business Hour settings even if you're using Adjustable Capacity Planning if you want to. Again, if you're not fully wrapping your head around what that means, totally fine. Just check out that Google Local Services video that I talked about earlier. All right, next we have a new conflict warning. When you fill out your subject line and preview text, then select a template that has subject line preview text already attached. You'll be prompted to select which of the two options you would like to use. So many email templates in Service Titan Marketing Pro already have pre populated subject lines and preview text. So if you fill in your own subject line and or your own preview text and then select a template that already has subject line and preview text as part of the template, you'll get this pop up asking you which one you would like to use, the one from the template or the one that you typed in. Next, we have duplicate surveys and this one is only relevant to you if you are using the new Reputation management. But if you are using reputation management, pretty straightforward under your surveys tab where you can see all of your surveys, you can now duplicate a survey with that clone button. Next we have new alerts for Reputation management so you can now be notified via email or text message when certain reputation related events happen. So the most common use case would probably be to set up an alert whenever you get a review under a certain threshold. So like anytime you get a Review less than 4 stars, boom notification. But there are other conditions that you can set up alerts for as well, including no response not verified and no generation URL for a survey. Next, for reputation management we also have a new surveys dashboard. Get a better idea of how a certain survey is doing based on the information you find on your dashboard so you can make appropriate changes and improve results. All right, the next note here is Fewer recaptcha challenges when logging in on desktop and mobile versions of Service Titan. The accuracy of the recaptcha challenges has been improved and won't be triggered for almost all legitimate users. Okay, so for those of you who are paying close attention, you might be thinking, oh, now hold up a minute. Didn't he say basically the exact same thing as this? A few release notes back? And moreover, didn't that turn out to be a big, fat, stinky lie? Well, yeah, it's true. I did say basically this exact same thing. If you release notes back, and that did turn out to be not super true. I know you're a liar. Sir, sir, I told you to calm down. Now listen, listen. Okay, I can explain. Sorry, guys. Hello and welcome to let's Just Blame Toms, a segment where we take mistakes and we blame them 100% on Vice President of Customer Experience, Tom Howard. Recaptchas. They're those annoying little things that try to make sure you're not a robot, usually by making you pick some trucks or streetlights out of an assortment of pictures. But the real question on everybody's mind is, why won't these things piss off? Well, there was actually a change made in the ST47 release that should have greatly reduced the frequency with which these recaptchas showed up. But many Service Titan users continued to report getting these recaptchas fairly frequently. Now, when I asked about this internally, the official answer that I got was that the changes made in ST47 should have reduced the volume of recaptchas. However, there have also been an increasing number of cyber attacks happening recently. And so that has counteracted the reduction in the number of recaptchas. But now with this ST50 release, a new change has been made that should do the trick. Now, sure, that is one possibility, but, you know, I think there's something else going on, and I can't stay silent about it anymore. See, I think that the changes made in ST47 did work, and I think the amount of recaptchas did go down dramatically. At least the number of real recaptchas. But what was popping up? Oh, those weren't recaptchas. Those weren't recaptchas at all. That was a new system made to look exactly like recaptchas, put there by none other than, you guessed it, Vice President of Customer Experience, Tom Howard. Now, at this point, you must be thinking, why. Why Richard, would he do that? What would be the motive for. For doing such a thing? The motive is that Tom Howard himself needs to be taught how to identify street lights, stop signs, trucks versus cars, fire hydrants, different types of buildings. He can't tell the difference. So now you're thinking, Hang on, Richard. Are you telling me that this guy is capable of coding something that looks exactly like recaptchas, putting it into Service Titan under everyone's noses, and yet he cannot tell the difference between a stop sign and a building? Yes, my friends, that is what I am telling you. Because Tom Howard is himself a robot. I hate you, Richard. That's all for today's edition of let's just blame Tom. Lock your doors. Stay safe. See you next time. And there will be a next time. Sorry, guys. Next, under Price Book, we have new inline editable columns. So there are now a couple new columns that you can edit in line via the new Price Book inline editor. Those columns are the taxable column and the Business Units column. The Business Units column, by the way, does require a certain account configuration in order to be showing up at all. Next, we have improved bulk editing of Price Book fields. So bulk editing, just so we're clear, that is when you can check off multiple items in the inline Price Book editor, and then any changes you make applies all at once to everything that you have checked off. So there are now new columns that you can do that bulk editing with. And those columns are business unit and taxable. Those new columns that we just got from the last note and also pays commission, tax specific bonus, and cost of sale. Again, business units. That column does require a specific account configuration in order to show up, and so does the cost of Sale column. So if you're not seeing one or both of those columns, that's probably normal for how your account is configured. Next, we have Price Book keyboard shortcuts. So the Price Book item table in edit mode now supports enhanced keyboard shortcuts. And that's awesome. Keyboard shortcuts definitely make life a lot easier, especially when you're making a lot of edits. I'll go ahead and put a screenshot up of what those keyboard shortcuts are. Feel free to pause the video here, take a screenshot, whatever you need to do, and you can also find these in the Knowledge Base. This is just a screenshot out of the Knowledge Base, and that article is linked in the Release Notes document. Next, we can now attach PDFs to service items in the Price Book. This is handy for things like spec sheets or product brochures. Now, we have already been able to attach PDF assets to equipment items in the Price Book, but now we're able to do it with service items as well. And these PDFs show up on the mobile side just like the pictures do in the Price book so your technicians can use them as presentation tools. Finally, for the price book section, we have the collapsible sidebar. So that side navigation bar now has this little arrow that you can click and that will collapse that navigation bar. That just gives you more screen real estate to work with. If you're working in the price book, making a bunch of edits or something, and you want as much screen as possible to work with, you just collapse that sidebar and then bring it back when you need it. Next, under Payroll and Timesheets, run daily timesheets for clocked in employees. When running timesheet reports for the current day, if an employee is on the clock, the report calculates their hours up until when the report is running. This allows you to accurately track when technicians and office employees are approaching overtime pay. Yeah, so before if you ran a timesheet report while an employee was currently on the clock, the report would show their actual working time as a pretty inflated number because it would run as if they were working that current day all the way up until 11:59pm so just the way the report logic worked before, it was just like, I don't know, this person's on the clock right now and I don't know when they're going to be done. So I'm just going to run it as if they worked until midnight. And obviously if you're using that report to try and manage overtime, to see who's approaching overtime and who do we need to rotate in or out, that's not super helpful if it works that way. So it doesn't anymore. Whoa, this is worthless. So now the report runs with the working hours up until the second you hit run report. So if that person has been working for four hours when you hit run report, then that's what it will reflect. It will show four hours for that day. Next, under reports, we've got some new job related KPIs added to various report templates. So the jobs report template that now includes non billable hours, the business unit performance report template now includes costing related KPIs and the invoice items report template now includes columns related to tags and labels. All right, next, under settings, you can now hide prices in your price book by business unit. A new setting allows you to hide price book items based on the job's business unit. When the setting is enabled for all jobs assigned to that business unit, prices are not available to the technicians. This setting overrides the technicians price viewing permissions. This gives you the option to create jobs where prices are hidden from technicians. And if you're wondering why you might want to do this, I know one use case is a company that does both commercial and residential services. So maybe when a technician goes out to a residential job, they need to have all of the prices available so that they can present directly to the customer. But when they go out on a commercial job, all of the pricing might be handled in the office. Or maybe you just have accounts with certain spending limits on them. And so for those scenarios, maybe you want the technicians to be able to go out and just add whatever's needed to the estimate or the invoice without seeing the prices. And finally, under fixes we have a fix related to statements. So the amount on balance forward statements is now calculated with the invoice balance amount instead of the invoice total. So there was previously a bug with those where under amount it would show the total invoice amount and not the actual balance, not the amount owed. But that has now been fixed. 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 Surface Titan's YouTube channel if you've not done that already. And leave me a comment in the comment section down below to let me know what you think your engagement through Likes, comments and subscribership numbers are the ways that Service Titan and I know that I'm doing a good job. Appreciate it. Peace it.