As a plumbing company with a wide array of materials used on jobs and in our inventory, one task that would be helpful to "hand off" would be inventory management and obtaining live pricing and availability from our vendors. This would be beneficial in multiple areas within our business. We currently do not have a great system in place for managing our inventory. This affects everything from quoting projects to doing the job to billing. I would love to have inventory managed to the degree that we always know what we have on hand and its location (on a truck, in the shop, at a jobsite) and its current price for OUR vendor.
At the quoting stage it would be nice to have the ability to build out a projected material list for the job (or by line item). The ability to check box material for that job would be nice. With our line of work, we can quote a water softener install at two different residences and the materials used can be vastly different depending on the existing plumbing. Therefore, the ability to not have this tied directly to the service but rather to the customers unique quote would be helpful. It would also be helpful if at this stage if the person building the quote could also communicate a task list to the technicians that cold be prioritized and require the technicians to acknowledge that it has been completed (this could be even a job form format).
Once a quote is approved this could be used to ensure that we have the material on hand for the project at the scheduling stage or prompt the need to order for the job.
On the day of the scheduled job this information would be helpful to give the technicians a list of needed materials when they are loading up their trucks for the day as the quoting is not done by the technicians completing the job. They could also add this to the expense list as they use the product on site.
At the billing stage, we could have a material list we can check that was used, this could then fall into a line item that is categorized as material costs which would give the total cost of all the materials used, instead of having a long list of every part and making the invoice multiple pages long, with the ability to itemize this if necessary.
For obtaining the pricing we could simply upload the invoice from out vendor in the system and AI could automate entering the items in our inventory with quantity and pricing.
This would be a great starting point and have the potential to give back lots of administration time within our business.
Also I agree with the above mentioned need for Change Orders :)
