About Parts

Overview

Simply put, parts are the different pieces of an appointment. They are what make up the different items or processes that may be involved in a given service. For each appointment, these are what will show up as the individual lines of an invoice. Every company chooses how to define and use these differently, so we've given parts enough flexibility to fit your definition.

Video Tutorial

Watch a video on creating Parts and Templates

Settings and Navigation

You find the parts and add-ons list in Control Panel > Parts/Add-Ons.

Go to Control Panel > Proposals to find some additional settings for Parts.

For instance, this is where you can increase the length of descriptions shown for parts and services on your invoices. Enabling Long Line Descriptions will increase the character maximum to 2048.

Parts Grid

The Parts Grid page shows you all parts in list format. You can filter by All or just your Active parts (meaning that Inactive parts will not show in this view).

You can also Search or Download (look for the download arrow icon next to Actions) and Upload a list of parts if you choose to make bulk changes. 

Actions Button

There are two options when you click on Actions. 

1. Clean Up - this will allow you to disable or delete your unused parts. This includes all parts that are not used in any invoices or proposals.
2. Update - this is a Bulk update option, so you can quickly adjust price based on a $ or % amount. You can also bulk update all parts to be taxable, internal, or active/inactive. 

Parts Details Page

You will find basic settings, most of which are optional. All a part needs to exist is a name, description, and unit price. Finally, a part must also be active for it to be usable.

Clicking on Usage at the top will download a .csv report of where that part is used. 

On the right you can find any invoices or appointments that this part is currently used on. This is useful to see how well a part is doing or to find individual occasions where you've installed a part.

While there are only a few fields of information that are truly required, we recommend learning how to properly use the remaining fields below to effectively schedule appointments with the correct parts. You can bulk update a parts active status and taxable status on the Parts grid.

Download and Upload Parts

Dowloading parts is a simple click of a button. If you edit that spreadsheet and reupload, you will most likely have no difficulties since it is already formatted for our system.

However, if you have your own spreadsheet and you try to upload, there are some things you should take into consideration. Please read the following advisory notes:

If you do receive errors, just adjust the spreadsheet accordingly and try to re-upload. The system will give you a success message if it has gone through correctly.

If you are still experiencing issues, email support@serviceminder.zendesk.com and attach the spreadsheet that you want to upload. 

Pricing Bands

With range-based pricing turned on, you'll be able to start making use of pricing bands.  Pricing bands will allow you to set specific quantity-based prices for your parts. You could, for example, set a part to cost the same no matter what as long as its quantity is in between 5 and 10. Outside of that range, the price will calculate normally. Any quantity on an appointment  or invoice that falls within the range of a pricing band will have its price fixed based on the pricing band it falls into.

For more details, go to Pricing Bands.

Hide Part Pricing

There are two ways to do this:

1. Set it at the Part level (Control Panel > Parts and Add-Ons). Check the Internal box so that the pricing does not show on the Customer View. The pricing will fall under the Service as a whole as a Total, rather than part-by-part cost.

2: Set it at the Proposal level, so that each proposal (Control Panel > Proposal) and turn on the Hide Unit Price option. Again, the Service will show a Total cost. You can even Hide Parts completely from proposals and invoices.

FAQs

Is there a way to set a minimum number in the quantity?

The only way currently to set a minimum for a part is to add it to build a proposal template with that part.

Say we charge $100 an hour and an additional $50 per half hour after the first hour. If a client's job takes 1.5 hours, we would charge $100 + $50 = $150.  If the job is 2 hours, we would charge $100 + $50 (x2) = $200. How do we build this into serviceminder?

Edit your Service to just have a Base Price of $100 and Duration set to 1 hour. 

Then, you can create a "30-min overage" Part and have a Base Price of $0 and Duration of 30 min. 

Whenever finishing the appointment, add that part as a line item. Your quantity for that overage part will be the number of 30 min blocks past the estimated time to finish. If it took 2 hours, then you would add a quantity of 2 to the "30-min overage" part. 

Troubleshooting

I use custom fields to override quantity in proposals for parts. It stopped calculating properly, what do I adjust?

There was a recent update to the system that means if you previously had 0 in the quantity field in proposal, the custom fields no longer adjusted.

You need to edit the templates so that the quantity field is empty (meaning no 0 just blank). Then custom fields can override like normal.

I tried to delete parts, but they are still showing up? Does it take a while to implement these changes?

No, if you delete or edit a part the changes should be saved immediately. What may be happening is if those parts are used on a Proposal/Invoice, then they cannot be deleted. Because there is data now attached to that part (meaning it is tied to Contacts, Appointments, maybe even EoM reporting) then we recommend making that part Inactive. 

Inactive parts cannot be used on newly created proposals and they are hidden from the list if you are on the "Active" view of your Parts Grid.