Optimize Your Workflow with Contractor Invoicing Software for Public Relations

Contractor invoicing software for Public Relations

[Music] okay good morning everyone and welcome to today's featured webinar on contractor invoice options it's so great to see so many of you on here this morning my name is jessica dube and i'm going to be taking you through this morning's webinar just to let you know i am recording today's webinar so i will send you all a recording by the end of play today and it will take us around half an hour to go through today's webinar okay so let's start with the agenda so first of all i'm going to be showing you on the agent side so on your side the contractor invoice settings which are available to you then i'm going to be jumping onto the contractor side of the system there i'll be showing you how a contractor can create an invoice via fix flow i will also then show you on another job when they go to mark that as complete how they can upload an invoice onto an issue then i'll be showing you the invoice management side of things for a contractor and finally a relatively new um feature that we have is contractors can now actually email their invoices into fix flow as well so that's a really exciting feature that's kind of the main event i suppose of today's webinar so that's kind of going to be the main feature of today's webinar emailing invoices at the end of the webinar there will be a live q a so please get your questions over to me engage with me let me know kind of if you've got any fixed load question at all i'd be very happy to answer that at the end of the webinar these questions can be asked in the q and a so please click on your q and a button to ask these questions really happy to see questions it's always nice to see that um people have questions so please get them over and as i say just to keep us on track i will answer them at the end of the webinar for those of you that have just joined big welcome my name is jessica i am recording today's webinar and it will take us about half an hour to go through everything you haven't missed anything yet we've just gone through the agenda and now we're going to be starting on the agent side of the system where i'm going to be showing you how you can set your contractor settings so these can be limited from the default so here i am in my agent side of the system and just to let you know you will need to have administrator rights in order to um see and amend the invoice options to do this you'll be using your left hand menu sidebar and you will scroll down to setup again this is only optional for those who have administrator rights from setup you will want to click on settings and this will take you through to a number of the settings available for you within fixed flow you will want to stay in the tab that you're taken to so stay within issue settings and you want to scroll down and open up and expand the general section here from there you can see there are a number of different settings that you can set including require costs so if you would like contractors to provide a cost with absolutely every job they complete on fixed flow you can switch this from no to yes and that will then become mandatory and when it comes to the actual invoices that sits under here where it says contractor invoice options so mine here is currently showing that default which shows uploaded generated within fixed flow or no invoice now when a contractor then marks the job as complete this will lead to four different options for them when they have to choose their invoice method that will be no invoice required invoice sent outside of the system upload an invoice or alternatively create an invoice within the system you will see this when we get onto the contractor side in just a moment but just to let you know you can in fact narrow this down by clicking on this drop down and selecting another option so for example if you don't want your contractors to invoice a tool within fixed flow you could switch this to no invoice you could say that you want to ensure that actually contract is always invoiced through fixed flow and then you could choose one of the other options here so once you've made your selection you must remember to scroll down and click on save settings or this will not save and remember this is the best way to see hey watch which options are available for your contractors and what you've already got set and b also to amend those settings i would recommend for anybody that does have access to setup and settings to actually make sure that they're happy with all of their settings available on fixed flow and it's just a case of going through these tabs we do actually have a um a webinar every wednesday at 2pm best practice top tips and tricks which will include going through and highlighting a few of these kind of key settings for you so if you're interested in that please get in touch support fix flow.com and we can send you the link for that i hope this has however given you an understanding as to how you can amend those settings for your contractors for those who have just joined us a big warm welcome my name is jessica and i'm taking you through this morning's webinar so far all we've gone through is how to set the settings for contractors which is available for administrator administrators only through the left-hand menu sidebar you would go to setup and settings you would stay within the issue settings option here scroll it down you would want to expand the general section and the options are in fact here i am recording today's webinar so if you did miss that please do refer to the recording i will send it to you all by the end of play today share it with colleagues re-watch it whatever suits you excellent so now we're going to jump onto the contractor side of the system and i'm going to show you now how you can create an invoice through fixed flow for contractors so just to let you know here i am on my contractor side of things now when a contractor logs in the first thing they will see here is their dashboard and i'm going to go to my jobs awaiting completion here as a contractor if i click here on view all this will show me all of the jobs which i need to now mark as complete as the contractor so all of them will have the issue status awaiting job completion so i'm just going to change how these jobs are sorted and i'm first of all going to click in to this job here at the top perfect oh sorry this is actually a different one so i'm gonna actually click into this one here through the third one down and this is a job which is awaiting job completion so now as the contractor i will now need to mark this job as complete you can see the contractor here is on the next steps tab and this is where each and every party will resolve the job here we can see the next logical step is to mark the job as complete so i'm going to do that now when the contracts are marks the job is complete there will be certain information um in this job completion details pop-up which they can complete so for example here we've got the job completion date now that will pre-fill for the contractor based on the date they provided when they set the appointment date they can add a job duration here if they wish just to let you know you can make this mandatory again within that kind of settings section that i just showed you but if not it will be a an optional field i'm going to fill it in just for now contractors can also provide feedback to the agent along with completion photos and documents and scrolling down here we have the invoice method now this will show those four options i ran through earlier because of the default setting i have set up so invoice not required sent outside of the system upload an invoice or create within sys within the system so for this example i'm going to show you just how easy it is for a contractor to create an invoice within the system this is one of their invoicing options if i now click here on mark as complete and then press confirm contractors can very simply create an invoice here on this invoice creation pop-up it's so easy for them to do so you can see here they will be asked for an invoice date and a due date both of these as you can see have pre-filled but they can amend them using this calendar drop down so easily invoice number this is a mandatory field so they must here provide an invoice number and underneath here we can see the contractor costs contractor costs are split here by type and you can see there is labor materials and other so they can select from the drop down they can if they wish provide a description the quantity will always pull through as one but they can amend that if they wish the unit price they will need to add and if they are registered for vat then they can set their v80 default as you can see here they can actually amend this as well on a per invoice basis they have got the opportunity to add more than one row per invoice which they create via fixed flow and then they can check the totals which are just underneath here on the right hand side of this box once they are happy all they need to do is click here on create and that is it they have now marked the job as complete progressing the workflow the issue status will then go to either job completed awaiting feedback if you have feedback turned on or job completed ready for closure as you can see i have got feedback turned on so this is now awaiting feedback and this issue status will mirror on your side as well so it won't just be on the contractor side it will also mirror on your side of the system excellent i hope that's been helpful in terms of showing you just how easy it is for a contractor to create an invoice on fixed flow when they are marking jobs as complete next i'm going to show you how they can upload an invoice it's just as easy so if i go back to my dashboard and go back into my jobs awaiting completion i'm going to jump into this second job down here and again we're back to awaiting job completion so this is another job that my contractor here now has to mark as complete again it's easily done within the next steps tab and just to let you know contractors can also do this on the contractor app as well so as well as having a desktop version which they can access from any device as fixed flow is cloud-based contractors also have a fantastic app which they can use for on-the-go works so here they would again click on and mark as complete again the job completion date has pulled through for me they can add the duration if they'd like to provide feedback to agent and completion photos and documents again if they wish they are optional fields and for this um example i'm now going to upload the invoice so this is the selection i'm going to choose and i'd like to show you exactly how this is done now provide costs has remained here when they click on create invoice within the system that then disappears because it automatically asks for the costs when they're creating the invoice so if they choose upload invoice they can then decide whether or not they'd like to provide costs or not but this example i'll go with yes and again you can make this mandatory if you wish so i'm going to here markers complete and then press confirm so first of all if they are providing costs as well as uploading the invoice the costs asked for here it's exactly the same as the costs which they provided when they created the invoice again they're choosing the type from the drop down they can add a description quantity is one unit price and again if they've got their vat default set to 20 that will then add every time they create an invoice add costs or add a quote again they can add more than one row check they're happy with the type with the totals and then they can scroll down here we go so this is where they upload the invoice so all they do is click here click to upload find the invoice that they would like to add [Music] me sorry bear with me one second okay it was four three one seven perfect sorry so we've got the costs they're going to upload this invoice and it's this one um which i created earlier so this is a really easy way for contractors to upload invoices they created maybe using another um invoice system such as xero or quickbooks something like that they've uploaded the invoice they can upload more than one and then they click submit and again that's it the job again has updated now to job completed awaiting feedback as i have my feedback settings turned on and that job is now marked as complete the contractor now has no further um actions to do the next thing i want to show you is how contractors can manage their invoices via fix flow before i show you the email option so with the desktop version of fix flow so this is not available in the app and that's really really important to understand the app does not mirror the desktop version the app is more for on-the-go works quickly logging in and adding an appointment date logging in and marking the job is complete logging in adding a comment whereas the desktop version is more complete as it does have this left hand menu sidebar along with a customizable dashboard so just to show you you can see there's an invoices section here on their left hand menu sidebar again only available for the desktop if i click here on invoices it will take the contractor through to three tabs inbox unpaid and also paid so inbox i'm going to get to in just a second but if we go to the unpaid section these are all of the invoices which they have either uploaded created through the system or emailed through to fix flow which they have not yet marked as paid so they would then need to go through and manually mark these as paid as they get paid if they would like to manage their invoices via fixed flow there is a mark all paid button here and once they have marked um an invoice as paid that will then come off of this um list and it will go on to this paid list here if they make any errors no worries at all they can always mark as unpaid so if they've made a mistake it's very easy to rectify that's no problem at all and they can also search using these search bars here at the top of the page they've also got invoicing details and that will take them through to within their setup section here on the left-hand menu sidebar this invoicing section which i'm going to go into in just a moment inbox so contractors can now email their invoices straight through to you this can be a really really good way for them to do this as it means that they don't need to log into fix flow and actually mark jobs as complete anymore the issue once the um invoice has been emailed through the um invoice will automatically attach to the correct issue and mark that as complete for them so it's actually a much better way for contractors to um use fixed flow in the inbox section if any of the invoices are unattached to the issue so they don't automatically attach then you will see they will appear here within the inbox section they will receive an email to let them know that the in the ema that the invoicery did not automatically attach to the particular um issue and also they will see here there's a little notification to let them know that there are in fact unattached invoices so they will automatically attach but in order for them to attach the contractor must ensure that the is number so the issue number on fixed flow is on the invoice if it is not on the invoice then the invoice will not know which issue it attaches to also one other thing to let you know is if you have already closed an issue then the invoice cannot attach to that issue so the issue must be open and it must be at either the issue status job-awarded awaiting appointment date or awaiting job completion so either of those two issue statuses on an open job the the issue can the invoice sorry can automatically attach to the issue as long as the issue number is on that invoice if it doesn't attach they can come on here and manually attach them or delete them alternatively so they've got the two options here they can attach them to the issue if they want by searching the issue here or they can delete the document altogether now i'm going to show you how they can actually email this across so they will need to use their unique email address which is on fixed flow and that is shown by either going to invoicing details here or alternatively from setup and clicking on invoicing here they are shown their invoice inbox so this is the email address that contractors will need to use if they are going to email their invoices over to you and each contractor will have their very own unique email address here so please do not take a note of this one this is the one for my dummy contractor which i'm about to show you how this works just to let you know that underneath here they can set their v80 um default rate so this is 20 if they are not registered for v80 they may as well set this to zero and then v80 will not add to any of their invoices they create through fixed flow costs they provide or quotes so now i'm going to show you how a contractor can email in their invoice so i've copied this um email address and what i'm going to do now is i'm going to get my emails up for you and show you just how easy this is so here i've got my um message first of all i'm going to paste in my unique email address into the to section here and then add a subject now the subject does not need to include the is number or anything like that it can simply be invoiced anything the contractor wants they don't need to put anything either in the subject all they need to do is now attach the correct invoice so with this example i'm going to correct i'm going to add sorry this invoice here or attach this invoice and press open and now the invoice is attached to the email and that is it so if i now press send that's it nice and simple if i now go back to issue oh sorry my dashboard i'm just going to wait a second because now as the contractor i should receive an email in just a moment to let me know whether or not that invoice has in fact attached correctly to the correct issue or not attached either way the contractor will receive an email to let them know so i'm just waiting on that for just a second what i'll do is in a waiting completion if i just find the correct oh it seems to have disappeared okay perfect so what i'll do is it seems to have already attached i'm just waiting for that email i'm going to go back now in as the agent and i'm going to quickly search for the issue perfect so just giving it a quick search there and i can see that this issue has actually gone straight to job completed awaiting feedback we're now waiting for the occupier to provide feedback as i mentioned before that's the setting that i've got set up and if i go into the contractor section within this issue itself i can go to job costs and invoices just to let you know you can see it says here um in the contractor cost section the costs that were in the invoice that has been emailed across will actually pull into the contractor cost section as imported amounts it will be as one amount so if for example there were different rows say for example i don't know labor materials and then another section they will all pull into one row as a full job cost so that will actually go straight into fixed flow from that invoice and also i can see the invoice here just waiting for that email from the contractor bear with me one second so the invoice is showing here for me as the agent so we're happy with that the contractor has also now received an email which looks like this saying dear mr pepper the invoice file um invoice and then it's got here the number has been successfully attached to issue and this is the issue here and this is the issue that i'm just showing you now um so they match so it's very very easy for contractors to do this and as i showed you the contractor didn't need to go into fix flow and actually mark the job as complete again this can be done at two different issue statuses even before they've added the appointment date they can go in and add the invoice and bypass that entire section and take the invoice straight to job completed awaiting feedback so that can be really really handy for them it allows them to easily send in invoices which they've created from other systems such as quickbooks xero and not have to log into fix flow and actually go through and provide for example and the completion details so i hope that has um been helpful in terms of showing you just how easy it is for them to do that a few questions have come in which is fantastic um just to let you know i'm just going to go through kind of the key takeaways of this uh webinar now so first up you can amend your contracts at invoice options so i showed you how to do that you will need administrator rights it's just within setup and settings contractors can easily create or upload an invoice when they mark a job as complete so i showed you just how easy it is for them to do either one contractors can also email in their invoices when they do email their invoices they must ensure they're using their unique email address and that is supplied by fix flow the is number must must must must be added to the invoice in order for it to automatically attach to the correct issue contractors will receive an email to say whether sorry whether the invoice has successfully been matched to an invoice and finally issues will automatically update to the next issue status uh just to let you know when you do close the job you do have the option then to um to forward the invoice on either to another email address altogether or to the landlord or contractor so you can do that as well guys i hope this has been a helpful webinar there have been a few questions come in which is fantastic to see before i go through those i just want to release a quick poll it would just be great to get some feedback from you guys to see how you got on today there are four very quick questions uh question one is did you find the webinar useful questions two and three are both out of ten questions one with that is low and ten is high so the first one is how helpful did you find the content of today's webinar so it'd be great to know did you find the content useful or not number three is all about the presenting style so it'd be great to know whether you found it presented well or not and finally do you feel confident now and understanding how your contractors can submit invoices via fix flow so it'd be great to just get some clarification from you there i do hope you found it helpful and thank you so so much for joining me i'm now going to be answering the questions so thank you for getting them through so uh question one is hello jessica does fix flow now allow contractors to provide multiple quotes after being rejected i know from previous experience after a contractor submitted a quote that it was rejected they couldn't upload another because after entering the information the screen would freeze saying an unexpected error has occurred sonny i'm really sorry to hear about that i know that at the moment there are a few um issues around the quoting process which we are fixing you guys are going to notice we do now have a quote tab within each and every issue and this is going to give you a better overview of all of the quotes that come in it is a work in progress we haven't really um shouted out about this too much yet um but it is a work in progress so i will um we will be in touch with you once this is better i know there are still a few issues that if you have i think it's one contractor they can only currently provide one quote we are working on this sunny i do apologize for any issues i will bring this up with the development team again just to say it's been brought up all right i do apologize for that in the contracts a cost section when completing a job and adding costs eg labor and materials um after saving and revisiting this section the order is incorrect labor would be at the top of the table and materials would appear next has this been rectified oh another good question sonny i'll look into this after the webinar i'm not 100 sure um on the order of that but i'll definitely look into that for you and i'll drop you an email if that's all okay um i'll definitely look into that for you today another question can the invoice function sync with repits so the contractor uploads the invoice and it sent straight into repit that's a great question robin at the moment that's not possible um i know that we are doing some more integration works with repit i will ask if that is in the um kind of looking at the roadmap i will ask that for you i'm not 100 sure at the moment i know it doesn't there are sometimes limitations to these integrations unfortunately massive thank you to everyone that's filled out the poll um i'm going to end that one now the final thing that i actually want to point out to you is that we do have a contractor help site i don't know if you are aware of this i will be linking it out by the end of play today as well it's a fantastic way for you to actually uh train out to your contractors all about fixed flow it's available on contractor hyphen help.fixflow.com and it does have some articles and also we have a full video library for contractors here so i will be linking this out to you today please make sure that when you're training out your contractors you are linking this out to them it is also in their welcome email as well to try and get them more up to speed with everything fix flow and finally if you have any questions please remember you've got this little need help widget down here in the bottom left hand corner of the site if you click here you can always search for your questions this is the quickest way to in fact get an answer so if you do search and you can also contact us here as well so please make sure that you are using that for any questions you have and that you're actually searching here first as you will probably get an answer much quicker excellent um perfect so there's another questions come in from kirsty is there any functionality for contractors to upload quotes for separate options for example a heating contractor may wish to quote for a repair option or a replacement option and the landlord not to be able to approve certain aspects of the quote rather than an all or nothing and so contractors should be able to provide more than one quote as i mentioned when i was answering sonny's um first question there is a bit of an issue at the moment around all contractors being able to provide more than one quote i know it is something the development team are looking into as um as it is something that should be possible on fixed flow for them um [Music] but they should be able to provide yet more than one but separate options so when they provide a quote so that landlords can say yes to part of it and no to the other part is that what you mean kirsty it'd be great to get some more feedback on this because we're always always looking for feedback from you guys you're our clients you're all very very valued from us and we would love to know kind of how you use the system and what's best for you so any feedback at all we massively appreciate it i cannot promise that absolutely everything will come to life on fixed flow but i will always do my very best for you um yeah if you could if you could let me know exactly what you mean it's a i think what you mean is if a quote comes in the landlord can approve some of it um and not all of it perhaps um but it'd be great to get some more details from you kirsty if you don't want to put it in the q a then you can always um contact us support at fixedflow.com yes okay i'll definitely put that forward to development it's not currently possible they're either essentially approving or rejecting but i know we are doing more and more work around quotes and it does need to be more flexible um so i'll definitely put that forward to development for you excellent so i've answered all the questions sonny i will look into that thing for you regarding the um the order of the quotes um another questions just come in so great so keep getting your questions in guys for those of you leaving us now thank you so so much for joining me this morning i hope you have a lovely afternoon and friday tomorrow which is always nice and and do keep well during this time so the next question is from amy so hi jessica we spoke a little while ago about raising jobs in bulk i think development we're looking into it is there an update is that for occupiers being able to report multiple issues at once oh you raising jobs so sorry amy just to clarify would you be going through create issue here and creating multiple jobs at once or is it once you have jobs sending multiple to contra okay this way so if you were to click on create issue currently it's one job at a time it's exactly the same for occupiers again i will raise that again with our development team all of your ideas that you put forward to me now will be sent through to our development to our development team i know that they have got a really long roadmap at the moment and we're always trying to make improvements for you guys there's actually another release going out today the releases are every two weeks and i will put that forward for you again i cannot promise everything i know it's something a lot of people have raised so i'm hoping being able to report multiple issues at once is a thing that gets added but like i say unfortunately i can not promise um but i know it's something that i'll definitely push for for you you're welcome excellent guys i'll stay online for a couple more minutes um happy to answer more questions or get more feedback thank you okay there seems to be no further questions thank you everybody and have a lovely rest of the day thanks again for joining me it's been a pleasure bye