For the modern field service business, there’s no getting away from the fact that electronic job sheets are the way forward. If your business is still using outdated paper job sheets, it might be time to start thinking about data management in your organisation and how you can bring it into the 21st century. Centralisation of information is the key to success for field service businesses in the digital age, and in this post, we’re going to be looking at how job sheet software can bring numerous benefits to your business today.
What are job sheets?
But first, let’s start with the basics: what exactly are job sheets? Put simply, they’re a page that gives a field service engineer all the information they need to complete a job, and they’re where they can record the work completed when it’s been carried out. They’ll feature important information such as the materials used, the name of the engineer and the site location, and they’re indispensable for the field service management industry because they’re what underpin each and every call. To make things easier, many field engineer software options now use job sheet software for creating job sheets, using templates to speed things up still further.
Paper job sheets vs mobile job sheets
Paper job sheets are just that: a piece of paper with the job details written on them. A mobile or digital job sheet has the potential to be so much more than that. When incorporated into field service management software like RedZebra’s Call2Field, your job sheets can be seamlessly incorporated into your processes, giving you the ability to create them as part of the call scheduling process and then enabling you to track an engineer’s location, see the job status and access customer information.
The disadvantages of paper job sheets
Mobile or digital job sheets offer a number of clear advantages over their paper counterparts, and over the years, the list of reasons for getting rid of paper job sheets has lengthened as more efficient solutions have become available. Let’s take a look at some of the disadvantages of using outdated paper job sheets.
Time-consuming
It’s time-consuming to enter information onto a paper job sheet manually, as it means the same customer information has to be entered each time. This duplication is avoided by using software that automatically populates a job sheet with customer information from a central database.
Misinformation
There’s no doubt about it – paper invoices are naturally more prone to human error, and it’s been shown that this is the case. This is due to the lack of having a system in place, leaving it down to the individual as to how a job sheet is completed. This leads to the potential for engineers heading out to a job with the wrong information in their hands, or for the wrong information being recorded when the job is finished.
Lack of consistency
With paper job sheets being prone to human error, this also paves the way for a lack of consistency. There are likely to more discrepancies in the information provided on paper job sheets than there would be on a digitised system, as an engineer may fill in details such as the customer name in a different way from their colleagues, for example.
Double data entry
As well as being more time-consuming to complete in the first place, paper job sheets may necessitate information being duplicated for other staff members in the company, such as executives and management, as each department may require a copy. This work can cost a company hours of valuable time that could be spent elsewhere.
The advantages of mobile job sheet software
As we’ve already touched on, there are clear advantages of switching to mobile job sheet software, and they go beyond making up for the shortfallings of paper job sheets. There are two key benefits of making the switch to electronic job sheets, and they’re connected with workforce mobility – particularly important for the field service management world, where this has been a part of the industry for some time.
Improve Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
First and foremost, a digitised system for job sheet creation can help you to improve customer relations. Instead of waiting days or even weeks for more traditional invoices to reach them, as is the case with paper job sheets, customers can receive their invoices almost instantly with a digitised system. A mobile job sheet system cuts through inefficient internal processes and external factors such as postal delivery, enabling smooth and efficient dealings with your customers from start to finish – a great way to make a good impression.
Improve employee engagement
When outdated systems are still being used, engineers may become less motivated over time, causing them to rush through completing job sheets at the end of the day. This can cause unnecessary stress and conflict within organisations, as well as meaning that job sheets aren’t filled in properly.
Through modernisation, it’s often possible to improve employee engagement, because they’ll recognise their employer’s efforts to empower them to do their job to the best of their abilities. And the benefits of complete modernisation in the field service industry go far beyond that, as we’ve discussed in our recent post on digital transformation.
RedZebra’s job invoicing software
With RedZebra’s job invoicing software, you can digitalise your job sheets and automatically generate invoices when work is completed. This streamlines your processes, saving valuable time and ultimately money. It’s a highly adaptable solution that can be customised to suit the specific demands of your business.
Get in touch
Job sheets are an integral part of any field service business, and having a solid online database is a great place to start if you’re looking to streamline the invoicing process. Why not try out the software and see for yourself how it could benefit your business? Book a consultation with a RedZebra expert today and we’ll give you an online demo to show you what our job invoicing software can do for you. Alternatively, send your questions by email to [email protected] or call 01296 350350.
