So… Our Field Service team is looking to get more information on the Field Service Module and I started playing around with it and have a few questions.
Is there a way give a customer a quote for a service visit?
I also went through the process and went to invoice a service job and it closed the service job but didn’t actually create an invoice, I’m assuming I did something wrong. Does anyone have or know of any documentation that someone could read on the service module?
Invoices come from Sales… there needs to be a Sales Order involved. The Job itself is not a “billing entity” per se, and all it really carries is your cost. If you’re selling warranty (or non-warranty) service, you need part numbers for them that you can add onto sales orders that you can price for your customers.
I don’t think Epicor has updated the Field Service education or technical documentation since probably the Truman administration.
Well… I honestly thought that the Service Call was the equivalent of a Sales Order. Does anyone know how sales order ties to a service call or what that part of the process is/looks like?
I feel like there is so much potential for us and it’s just frustrating that moving forward with things like this are so difficult with the documentation we have.
I figured out the Field Service module at an old job, unfortunately I do not remember much on how to use it. What I can tell you is that back then, there was not even an Epicor employee who knew how it worked. We had a consultant come in to train and they ended up breaking our Production environment.
So, I just dug in and tried every transaction and every scenario that I could come up with. I was able to create a process that a Customer could return material to us and we would create a field service job. If it was under warranty, the system knew and did not charge them. If it was not under warranty, the service tech could evaluate the part and build out an estimated job that we could go back and quote to them. I had a separate price list for parts that took the cost and added something on top of it. When the repair was done and shipped, it automatically pulled into Invoicing like shipments do.
It definitely was not a smooth streamlined process, but it got the job done. Wish I could give you more detail, but this was back on 10.0.700. If you roll up your sleeves and dive in for 80-120 hours, you could probably figure a lot of it out.
A couple of things to keep in mind. The operation on the service job should be of the Service Call type. And you may or may not want a Labor Rate for estimated vs actuals.
After labor is issued to the service job and the call gets closed create your invoice group and select Field Service Calls from the Get actions menu. This will create your invoice.
Thank you for the replies, I realized my mistake. When I set up the Service Call I pulled the information from the pack which apparently checks the boxes for labor and materials. That caused the ‘billable’ fields to be empty which then caused the invoice not to create. After a few days I think I can say I understand the process enough to generate an invoice.
I had some issues with service jobs and tax, maybe this has been updated. Our issue was the service job would not separate the materials and labor for sales tax calculation into avalara. caused some heartburn because states treat material and labor different? why because sales tax is fun.
I ended up customizing the sales order entry screen and using counter sales for the service calls, a line for labor and lines for materials. not elegant, but it was easy.
@Schae235
I too am reviewing how the service call is quoted and invoiced.
For a quote - you can print the Call ticket which will show the number of expected hours and material that are planned for the job.
After the job is started, and more materials and hours are added, the call ticket can be printed again prior to invoicing.
I have attached the call ticket for reference.
Out of the box, right now, the unit price is not printing, nor the extended prices.
I am putting a ticket in on this.
For the invoicing I have found out that the labor portion of the job is not printed on the invoice, only the material prices.
From EpicCare(less) - here’s the response for the invoice…
" Why the service call labor hours are not included in the printed invoice?KB0121865
The system is working as intended since the labor hours, and value is included already in the extended price of the Service call displayed in the invoice If the customer would like to see displayed in the invoice:
the number of labor hours worked the extended price of the labor hour the options could be:
An enhancement via Epicor Ideas Customization via our Custom Solutions Group (CSG)"
