Heard of Stripe? It’s just about the easiest, fastest way for small businesses to accept payments online these days, and we’re happy to announce that you can now use it to collect payments from your customers directly through Jobber!

Our Electronic Payments Add-on enables you to hook into various payment systems (such as Stripe and Paypal) to make collecting from your customers really easy. Customers click a single link in their invoice e-mails to enter their payment information, or you can run the payment right in Jobber. Our customers find that electronic payments are drastically reducing the time it takes to collect payments, which improves cash flow — and we all know how important that is.

Why Stripe?

Stripe is a relatively new player in the payment space, competing most notably against Paypal, but they’re making waves for their extremely simple set up process for end users, as well as elegant API for more advanced integrations.

Seriously, the set up is amazing, and you should try it. It took us under 3 minutes to set up an account, link it to Jobber, and process a transaction.

One of the most important features of Stripe is that your customers never have to leave the Jobber environment when making a payment. They see their invoice exactly as it should be, with your branding, and enter their payment information right next to it. Other systems like “Paypal Standard” redirect your customer into their environment, and also require them to login or signup for a Paypal account (“Paypal Pro” avoids this issue for a monthly fee, while Stripe has no monthly fee).

Stripe’s support is also reportedly awesome (though we wouldn’t know… we haven’t needed it), and as a smaller startup with tons of momentum (not unlike Jobber!), they’re innovating quickly and driving hard to offer the best product and service possible for both developers and small businesses. We like that.

The big question then is cost. For smaller volumes, Stripe ends up being the same as Paypal: 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction (at time of writing). Of course, if you’re using “Paypal Pro” to make payments easier for your customers (and you should) then there’s a monthly fee of $35 (at time of writing).

How to Set it Up

It’s really easy.

1. Turn on the ePayments Add-on in Jobber
2. Sign up for stripe at www.stripe.com
3. Follow the instructions in Stripe for entering your business and banking information. Stripe uses this to verify you’re a legitimate business, and to settle your payments into your bank account.
4. Find the Stripe API key in your Stripe settings



5. Enter the Stripe API key you copied from your Stripe settings into the ePayments configuration options in your Jobber account settings.
6. Start collecting electronic payments! From now on your e-mailed invoices will include a ‘Pay Now’ link, and the actions menu in Jobber will have a new option to collect payments immediately.

Once you’ve got Stripe set up, you can start collecting payments immediately, and see all your activity in the easy and pleasant to use Stripe dashboard.

We’ll be adding more electronic payment options to Jobber in the future, but if you’re not already collecting payments electronically we highly recommend getting Stripe set up. It takes just a few minutes, and you’ll start seeing the benefits almost immediately. Give it a try!

Let us know what you think on Facebook, Twitter or get in touch via e-mail!

The post Get Paid Using Stripe & Jobber! appeared first on Jobber Blog.

“The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.” – John W. Gardner

Plumbing was one of the innovations that allowed cities to bloom into Empires. Irrigation for fields, tap water and sanitation turned Ancient Rome from a tiny city in Italy to a global power, but some of the problems that plagued ancient Roman plumbing still exist in modern plumbing today.

The History of Lead Pipes

In ancient Rome lead was the material of choice for plumbers because it was easily malleable, and readily available from nearby Sicily. Plumbers would pound the lead into sheets and shape the sheets into pipes by rolling them.

Although it was known at the time that lead was poisonous, the dangers of lead poisoning weren’t fully understood and the benefits seemed to far outweigh the risks. Luckily for the Romans, a quirk of the water supply, heavy amounts of calcium carbonate, caused the pipes to crust over at a rate of roughly one millimeter per year and limited the introduction of lead to the water supply. The amount of lead present was obviously still well above today’s standards.

Regulation

Today lead is used far more moderately in plumbing. In the United States the EPA enacted a law in 1998 stating that that it was unlawful to install any plumbing that wasn’t considered “lead free”. They defined lead free at the time as containing less than 8% lead. In 2011 they redefined “lead free” as containing less than 2.5% lead. Similar laws have been passed in Europe, Canada and around the world. While small amounts of lead aren’t particularly dangerous and consumers are unlikely to notice any adverse effects, studies have shown that there is no “Safe” amount of lead for human consumption.

What are the Risks?

A terrifying example of the dangers of lead can be found in the history of the automobile industry in the United States. In the 1920′s leaded fuel was introduced to the marketplace and, because of the poorly understood risks of lead poisoning, refineries with exceptionally low safety standards were built. In the case of the Bayway refinery in New Jersey within two months of being opened the refinery had seventeen cases of acute lead poisoning and five deaths. Thankfully, the low levels of lead present in modern plumbing, or even in ancient plumbing could never cause such acute symptoms.

Symptoms of acute lead poisoning can include:

• Nausea
• Vomiting
• Muscle Weakness
• Hallucinations
• Insomnia
• Tremors

Smaller amounts of lead like those present in a poor water supply cause less dire symptoms that are nonetheless serious, such as:

Lead Pipes in this Day and Age?!?!

Despite efforts by legislators and socially conscious plumbers, some countries and areas are still lagging behind. One of the reasons for this is that most of the legislation enacted only affects new plumbing installations, so some lead plumbing has been allowed to fly under the radar. Also, heavily leaded plumbing was being installed around the world late into the 1950s.

Here in Jobber’s hometown, Edmonton, a recent study reported around 3% of houses had lead plumbing. In Perth, Australia, a study done by the NHMRC showed that roughly 5% of drinking water samples taken were above acceptable limits for lead.

What can you do?

If you’re a plumber:

• Offering lead free options that go above and beyond local standards can boost both your business and your clients’ health.
• Inform your community about the potential risks they face and the services you can offer to help protect them.
• Engage your local government and find out which regulations apply to you, and how you can change them.

If you’re a consumer or business owner:

• Educate yourself on the quality of your water supply, or engage a professional to help you.
• When work is done on your system, make sure you know what’s going into it, and whether it’s the best option for you.
• Contact your local government to make sure your opinions or concerns are addressed.

Sometimes being socially conscious comes with a price tag, but other times it comes with increased efficiency and benefits for everyone involved. Modern innovations like PVC and ABS tubes have reduced costs, and increased lifetimes of plumbing systems and their users. Good luck getting the lead out and don’t forget: leading lead removal can lead and has led to many leads for plumbing leaders.

Cheers,
The Jobber Team

The post Plumbers Crack Down on Lead Pipes appeared first on Jobber Blog.

In the highly competitive field service industries you had better be asking yourself these questions to figure out how you can differentiate, because your potential customers sure are.

Here’s why it’s important to set your business apart and also a few ideas relevant to landscaping that might get you thinking about simple things you can do to differentiate your own business.

Why be Different?

There are few things more challenging then operating a business in a competitive market place. Some companies engage in price wars, or expensive branding campaigns to get attention and stay ahead of the competition. When charging less would push you below an acceptable profit margin and advertising is too expensive or just isn’t working, differentiating yourself is a great way to stay ahead of the competition.

How to be Different

Selling a unique or new product is a great way to set your business apart. Some recent studies, experiments and innovations have illuminated possibilities for Arborists and Landscapers to sell both new/unique and tried, tested and true products in new markets.

Introducing New Products to the Market

Growing plants not normally found in your area can provide an opportunity to introduce tried and true products to a new area.

Over time, different areas of the globe have changed phenomenally. A few thousand years ago the barren Sahara desert was teeming with vegetation and animals. An example of a more rapid and modern change is Lake Pinatubo in the Philippines which was formed as recently as 1991 due to the eruption of Mount Pinatubo. These kinds of natural changes in landscapes have massive implications for trees and plants. In 2010 the United States Forest Service published a study on tree migration in the United States. The study showed that the range for 70% of northern tree species was naturally moving northwards. Likewise, the ranges of southern and central species are also changing.

Some companies are already taking advantage of this information. On Vancouver Island in Canada, and in Washington state some cutting edge Arborists have experimented with planting olive trees that naturally grow in warmer areas like the Mediterranean. Some species have found the cold a little too hard to handle but some species, like the Frantoio olive tree pictured above, have thrived.

Unique Products

Selling a unique product can be an incalculable boon to your business.

Having a product that’s new to the market brings incalculable benefits to your business. The only thing better is having a product that’s unique. Finding a product that’s unique if you’re an Arborist or Landscaper can be extremely difficult but it’s definitely possible.

One amazing story of a unique product is the Golden Spruce. The Golden Spruce was a genetic mutant that grew on the Queen Charlotte Islands (aka. Haida Gwai) in Canada. It was unique amongst spruces in that it was a beautiful golden color rather than green. In a bizarre, widely documented story the spruce was cut down in 1997. However, cuttings from the tree were preserved and today are sold under many names, most popularly perhaps, “Bentham’s Sunlight”.

Obviously finding a one in a billion genetic mutant on a remote island to reproduce and sell is a pretty high risk business model, but there are other strategies for finding new products that can and have been employed with great success by average Landscapers, Arborists, Gardeners and Farmers.

Heirloom Plants

Some plants with a history of popularity are coming back into style and adding them to your inventory can mean more business.

Many businesses have based their entire models around Heirloom plants and Heritage fruits. Heirloom plants are plants that were once commonly grown but have now fallen off the map. Amazingly, lots of these plants still exist in the wild decades after people have stopped cultivating them. Some people have been going out and finding these survivors. Learning about what people have grown historically and what grows naturally around us can give you lots of ideas about what people may want to see in their yard.

Wild Varieties

Wild plants that grow naturally in your area can be a cheap, easy to maintain and even unique option. The natural world around us is filled with beautiful and useful plants and trees that your average person doesn’t know about. Finding or using plants native to your area can be a great way to differentiate yourself from the competition. Loads of information is available about plants that grow naturally in different regions. Wild strawberries, for example, grow wild here in Jobber’s home province of Alberta.

Here are some resources for learning about plants that are native to your area:

• Canada
• The Pacific Northwest
• The Southern States
• Global

Adding Value with Information

Educating yourself, and your customers on the history and uses of various plants can be a great tactic to get people talking and add value to your products.

In this day and age, information is practically free and as the saying goes, knowledge is power. Snap dragons, pansies and roses are all beautiful garden flowers but when you have a client on the fence, knowing that those flowers are all edible and maybe even having a recipe or fact sheet on hand can make all the difference. Learning about the history and uses of different plants and sharing that information with your customers can boost the value of your product while costing you next to nothing.

Some products have even been marketed or valued almost solely based on history and tradition. Here are some examples of these:

• Poinsettias
• The State Flowers
• Ash Trees
• Olive Trees
• Mistletoe

When people think of lawn care, tree planting and other field service industries they don’t often think of the “cutting edge” (no pun intended) but like any industry there’s an amazing number of possibilities for innovation and improvement. We hope we’ve helped you think of a few!

Cheers,
The Jobber Team

The post How is Your Field Service Business Different? appeared first on Jobber Blog.

Field service companies using Jobber are drastically reducing and even eliminating paper in their businesses, which is great for the environment, the overall efficiency and speed of your business, and of course, your bottom line.

Jobber has a sophisticated internal infrastructure for making sure the items you send get where they’re going, and we even provide tracking functionality whenever possible to give you more information about the delivery of your e-mail, whether it was opened, and when.

When e-mailing a quote, invoice, account statement or payment receipt you’ll be presented with a dialog box that lets you specify or change the e-mail address, and also customize the body and subject line of the e-mail that will be sent. A PDF copy of the quote, invoice, statement or receipt will be attached to the e-mail.

Something a lot of people don’t realize is that you can change the default wording for all of these e-mails independently in your Jobber Account Settings. We’ve provided a reasonable place to start, but you’ll probably want to customize it to the tone of your business and include other relevant information about how to get in touch with you.

All of your e-mail customizations can be done under the ‘Email Options’ section of your Account Settings.

You’ll notice that subject lines and message bodies in the Email Options are full of words that look like {{CLIENT_NAME}}. These are called Variables, and are used as placeholders for the information that changes from e-mail to e-mail, depending on what kind of item is being sent, when it’s being sent and to who.

Jobber’s Email Options support variables for a whole bunch of different things, like Client Name, Invoice Number, Invoice Total, Invoice Due Date, Quote Sent Date, Payment Amount, and much more. You can use these to highly customize the e-mails that you send to your customers out of Jobber.

Full documentation on Jobber’s Email Options can be found here, including a full list of supported variables.

As always, you can find us on Facebook, Twitter and get in touch via e-mail too!

Cheers,
The Jobber Team

The post Customizing Quote and Invoice Emails appeared first on Jobber Blog.

The answers to both are almost always a resounding “Yes!”. There’s no doubt that Jobber is a useful tool for lots of business types from all over, but sometimes even we’re a little surprised by the industries that are using Jobber and where they’re from, so we thought we’d share some fun facts with you.

Where in the World is Jobber?

Jobber is headquartered in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and we have a great client base right here in the Great White North… eh? In fact most of our earliest customers are from Edmonton — they’ve been with us from the beginning. Our Canadian clients are scattered from East to West, but our biggest Canadian user bases are in British Columbia and Ontario.

Where in the World are Jobber’s Customers?

Our neighbours to the south make up the majority of Jobber’s user base. We have customers all the way from California to New York and everywhere in between — and a surprising number in sunny Hawaii too!

Besides our friends to the South, two of Jobber’s next largest user concentrations are in the United Kingdom and Australia. This makes sense, because currently Jobber is only available in English. The USA, UK, Canada and Australia are the four biggest English speaking countries on the planet, so it’s no surprise they’re putting Jobber to good use.

So what was it that surprised us here in the Jobber office? Well, Jobber has made it’s way to some English speaking countries that you wouldn’t expect, as well as many countries where English isn’t the dominant language at all. Altogether Jobber now serves several dozen countries on several continents.

Through the winding tubes of the world wide web Jobber is helping run businesses as far away as Norway, Sweden, Ireland, Germany, Jamaica, Mexico, the Czech Republic, South Africa, Botswana, and more!

Will it work for [Your Industry Here]?

When we first created Jobber we designed it for the needs of field service companies in general and our early beta testers who helped us flesh out our features were primarily from Landscaping and Painting related industries. Over the past couple of years all sorts of companies have signed up for Jobber and most of them were obviously a great fit. Arborists, Maid Services and Carpeting and Flooring companies took to Jobber like fish to water, and now make up a sizeable part of our customer base, but every day we’re seeing new industries that we hadn’t anticipated, and that sometimes outright surprise us.

Here are just a few of the less common industries using Jobber to manage their businesses:

• Poop Scoopers
• Process Servers
• Home Automation
• Tuck Pointing
• Stilt Walkers & On Site Entertainers
• Photographers
• Yacht Care

Jobber is extremely flexible, and our customers have been really clever in finding creative ways to apply the software effectively to a multitude of industries and uses. Bravo!

Thanks, gracias, merci and danke for reading!

Cheers,
The Jobber Team

The post Who Uses Jobber & Where… appeared first on Jobber Blog.

You might have noticed that Jobber’s mobile interface has been getting a lot of love lately. We’ve been implementing new features, adding functionality from the full Jobber interface, improving performance and tightening up the work flows.

All of this work is in preparation for an upcoming move to full native mobile apps for both iOS and Android mobile devices. The move to native is a major undertaking though, and we’re making sure that we’re taking the right, measured steps to get there.

Here are just some of the recent mobile improvements, and there’s more on the way!

New Navigation Drawer

First things first, we’ve introduced a new Navigation Drawer and eliminated the old Dashboard. The new drawer is much faster for jumping around to different sections of the mobile application, and simplifies the interface significantly. Show the drawer by clicking the menu icon in the upper left corner of any major section.

Pro Tip: The Navigation Drawer button is only on the main sections of the mobile application (it’s a back button in other areas, such as a Client Summary page), but you can show the Navigation Drawer from any page by simply swiping the top bar to pull the drawer out.

Photo Attachments

We’re excited to announce this highly anticipated feature — photo attachments for Clients, Jobs and even Expenses!

Now you can attach a photo right from your mobile device either directly to a Client Note, on a Job Note, or on an Expense record (which is great for taking photos of reimbursable expense receipts). The new attachment functionality can be found right where you would expect it on the new & edit forms for Client and Job notes, and Expenses.

Custom Fields on Mobile

We know that many of you have been patiently waiting for this functionality, so we’re happy to be announcing it.

Custom Fields are now displayed for your Client records, and you can also add or update Custom Field values when entering or updating a Client’s information. This is great for having your team in the field ensure that all of your Client information is always current and up to date.

Plan Visits & View Visit Notes

Serious scheduling is a heavy-lifting activity, and it’s best to do on a computer where you can take advantage of Jobber’s grid and map scheduling interfaces. But sometimes you just need to quickly schedule a Visit for a job in the field, and now you can!

The Actions menu on Jobs now has a ‘Plan Visit’ item so you can create, schedule and assign Visits. We’ve also made an improvement so that Visit Notes that are entered are visible when viewing the Visit throughout the mobile interface.

Line Item Auto Fill & Non Taxable Line Items

This one was more of a bug, but it’s a bug no more! Any default pricing and description information will be auto-filled into new line items on Quotes, Jobs and Invoices on mobile.

We’ve also added proper support for the newly added non taxable line item functionality. See the little asterisk beside the line item name? That means it’s non-taxable, and won’t be included in tax calculations.

Better Task Lists, No More Accidents

We made a quick little improvement to mobile task lists that should save some frustration for many of you. Prior to now, clicking an item in a task list would mark it complete, while the small arrow to the right of the item would display more information about the task. More often than not this meant accidentally marking a task complete, which is annoying.

Now the target area around the box on the left is clearly defined, and is the only touch area that will mark the task complete. Clicking anywhere else will show you more information about the task.

Lots more improvements too…

These are just some of the top improvements we’ve made to Jobber Mobile, but there have been many more, including the usual performance enhancements and bug fixes.

We’ve added a Call the Office button with your office phone number (as specified in your account settings). This is just a handy shortcut that can save your employees a few seconds in the field if they need to call in for clarification on something.

We recently added the ability to record Payments from Mobile, but have now added a prompt to ensure that you do record a payment when marking an invoice paid on mobile. There can sometimes be confusion if an invoice is marked paid but no payment is recorded — hopefully this will help avoid that!

We’ve been working hard on moving Jobber Mobile forward, and are excited about keeping the momentum up in our push towards native apps. Hopefully you find these new features and improvements helpful — let us know what you think!

As always, you can find us on Facebook, Twitter and get in touch via e-mail too!

Cheers,
The Jobber Team

The post Jobber Mobile Kicked Up a Notch appeared first on Jobber Blog.

Like all of Jobber’s reports, this one can be sorted and filtered, and you can also select which columns you want to see, including scheduled date, completion date, who the Job was assigned to, and the dollar amount for the Job.

This report is really handy in a variety of situations, including seeing the value of the work you currently have active and booked.

We’ll be adding a similar report for Recurring Contract Jobs in the future, however it’s significantly more complex and we’ve got some foundation to lay before we get there.

Hopefully this new report helps some of you get even better visibility into your business in Jobber. We’ll be continuing to add more reports and functionality (as always!), so keep an eye out here on the blog for all the new announcements.

We’d love to hear your feedback — you can find us on Facebook, Twitter or via e-mail!

Cheers,
The Jobber Team

The post New One Off Jobs Report in Jobber appeared first on Jobber Blog.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that over 1 million people every year suffer a back injury at work. People who perform landscaping, cleaning, maid service, painting and other field service work are also particularly susceptible to neck, arm, wrist, leg, ankle, hip and shoulder injuries, just to name a few.

Read on for some quick, easy tips on staying liber and strong on the job.

We all know that keeping our equipment and tools in good condition and operating smoothly is critical to doing good work, and doing it fast. Your body is by far your most important piece of equipment — without it, nothing is getting done — so shouldn’t the same principles of maintenance and upkeep apply?

Here are some examples of quick and easy exercises to help you promote good health and wellness, and to reduce your chances of injury while working in the field. It may seem a little bit silly, but even a simple routine like this every morning can save you a lot of hassle and pain in the long run.

Stretching Exercises Help to Avoid Injury in the Field

You should always make sure to stretch before working a physical job to help avoid injury. Stretching warms up your muscles, reducing the chances of strains, tears and other muscle injuries. The following five stretches only take a few minutes, and great for warming up.

1. Upper Back Stretch

   Sit down in a chair and slowly lean forward, as if you’re trying to touch your toes. Stop when you start to feel your back muscles stretch, but before you feel pain. Hold this stretch for 10 seconds.

2. Lower Back and Arm Stretch

   Stand up straight and stretch your arms straight out in front of your body, with the palms of your hands facing each other. Gently push your arms forward and hold for 10 seconds.

3. Wrist Stretch

   Hold your arms straight out in front of your body, with the palms of your hands facing the floor. Slowly bend your wrists, so your fingers are facing the floor and hold for 10 seconds.

4. Leg Stretch

   Everyone knows this one from grade school — stand up straight and bend your right leg behind you, towards your butt, reach behind you and grab your right ankle with your right hand. Hold this stretch for 10 seconds. Repeat with your left leg.

5. Ankle Stretch

   Sit down in a chair and raise your legs up from the ground, no higher than waste level. Point your toes towards the ground and hold for 10 seconds.

Exercise to Build Muscle & Stay Strong

You might not think you have to exercise because of all the physical activity you get at work, but this isn’t true; many supporting muscles in your body don’t get the direct exercise they need from the repetitive motions of your day to day work. In addition, it’s important to get sufficient cardiovascular activity to promote good heart and lung health, which is not usually achieved through work activities. You should aim to exercise at least three times a week.

Here are some very simple examples of exercises you can do to promote muscle growth and help avoid injuries.

1. Arms, Chest and Back Exercise

   Stand up straight and hold your arms straight out in front of your body, with the palms of your hands facing each other. Ball your hands into fists, or hold five pound weights (depending on your strength). Slowly pull your arms to the sides of your body, bending your arms and keeping them level with your chest. Then, slowly bring your arms back straight in front of your body. Repeat 30 times, resting for a minute between each 10.

2. Leg and Abdominal Exercise

   Lie flat on your back with your legs straight out in front of you. Place your arms by your sides. Slowly lift your legs, keeping them straight, up to waist level or as far as you can comfortably go. Then, slowly lower your legs back to the ground. Repeat 30 times, resting between each 10.

3. Cardio Exercise

   Jog, run, bike or row. Whatever you can do to raise your heart rate for at least 20 minutes is great. If you’re not big on those activities, you can even march in place in your home for 15-20 minutes while swinging your arms back and forth to increase cardio impact. The most important thing is just to sustain an increased heart rate for 20 minutes or so on a regular basis.

Gradual Progress

Don’t get discouraged if you’re just getting started — the most important thing is to just get out there and make sure you’re doing at least some exercise and stretching on a regular basis. In addition, don’t push yourself to do more than you’re comfortable with. The key is to make gradual progress. Start out slow.

Hopefully these exercise and stretching suggestions will encourage you to develop good physical activity habits if you don’t already have them. Remember that it’s not necessarily about being fit — you work a physically demanding job that’s hard on your body; staying limber and strong is important in order to avoid injury and keep you on your feet.

Cheers,
The (Concerned for Your Well Being) Jobber Team

The post Avoid Injury in the Field with Stretching & Exercise appeared first on Jobber Blog.

This has been one of the most frequently requested features over the past few months, and with the Beta release of our Routing functionality we’re happy to announce that Jobber now has a great set of tools for helping you route your unscheduled work.

Read on for an introduction to this great new functionality!

Set Up a Master Route

Updated: We’ve re-located the Master Route section to the Management area rather than Clients. It can now be found under the ‘Management’ tab, instead of the ‘Clients’ tab as shown in the screenshot below.

Your Master Route sets the default order for all of the clients and properties in your Jobber account. This default order will be applied to any subset of tasks that you have scheduled for a particular day, but not for a specific time. You can always reorder the tasks on a specific day using the Calendar Map, but the order that’s set here will be used as a convenient default starting point.

Jobber’s Master Route makes scheduling easier and helps you get your jobs done faster. The Master Route section can be found under the Clients section of your Jobber account. All of the client properties in your Jobber account are listed down the left hand side with corresponding pins on the map.

Properties that could not be geocoded have a small warning icon.

Order the Properties in Your Master Route

Ordering the properties in the Master Route is easy. First click the property on the map or in the list that you want to start with and click the Start Routing From Here button. This will set that property as the first one in the Master Route. You will now be in Routing Mode, and notice that the pin for the property will turn red, the property will be moved to the top of the list on the left, and there will be Save and Cancel buttons in the upper right corner of the screen so you can save or discard your route.

Now just keep clicking on map pins in the order that you would like those properties to be visited in if they’re included on the schedule for a given day.

When you’re done setting your route just click Save in the upper right hand corner. You can also Cancel any changes made since the last time you saved, and Reset Route if you want to completely erase your existing Master Route and start again.

Here’s what a partially completed Master Route might look like.

Master Route Optimization

Jobber has an experimental Route Optimization Add-on feature that can be used to automatically set the initial Master Route for you. (Note: This is an experimental Beta feature — it’s not perfect. Yet.)

This can be really handy if you have a large number of properties in your account that need to be included in your Master Route. Keep in mind though that there’s no substitute for human intelligence when routing your properties — only you know the best order, keeping in mind the specifics of the work you do and the areas you service. Route optimization will produce a decent Master Route, but you will probably need to make some tweaks to it when it’s finished.

Route Optimization is a Beta Add-on in Jobber and will need to be turned on in the Add-ons area of your Account Settings. Because route optimization is extremely processor intensive, each Jobber account is limited to 2 optimization runs per day.

Editing the Master Route

You can make changes to your Master Route when you add new clients to your Jobber account or if you just need to make an adjustment. Simply click the map pin you want to start with, and then either click Insert at this point to make adjustments starting from that pin, or Remove from Route to remove that property from the route entirely.

If you want to make a routing change, click Insert at this point and then click the map point that should come after the currently selected pin. Continue making the necessary routing changes until you’re satisfied with the new route — the new changes will be highlighted in red, while the existing route that’s being overwritten will be in blue. Click Save in the upper right corner to make your changes permanent.

Using the Route & Ordering Jobs

The new Master Route that we just set up will now be used any time we have a day with visits for jobs that are scheduled for any time that day (i.e. they’re not scheduled for a specific time). In these cases the tasks will automatically be put in the order set by the Master Route.

The Calendar Map View (above) shows us that the Anytime Jobs we have for today that are already assigned to employees are set to be done in the order that is specified in the Master Route. In most cases this is going to work well for us, but in some cases we’ll want to re-order or customize the routing order for the day.

We can do this easily now — Jobber allows you to re-order the Anytime Today tasks by simply dragging them in the list to a new position. The new ordering will apply to the tasks for the day being worked on only, so that your original Master Route is preserved.

We’ve also recently added Assign Mode to the Calendar Map View which allows you to quickly and easily see assignments and assign tasks using the yellow bar along the top with your employees listed in it. We’ll cover this helpful new functionality in more detail in an upcoming blog post.

Routing has been a long time coming, and we’re really happy to be launching the first version of this new functionality in Jobber. We’ll be making a number of improvements and additions to this stuff going forward, so please get in touch to let us know what you think.

As always, you can find us on Facebook, Twitter or via e-mail!

Cheers,
The Jobber Team

The post Jobber’s Routing Features are Here in Beta! appeared first on Jobber Blog.

We put a lot of time and effort into making Jobber the easiest to learn and use software for field service companies, which reflects our core principle: Simplicity.

But it’s also really important to be able to get access to all of the information you’ve stored in Jobber, even outside of the streamlined, efficiency focused interfaces of the software, and that’s why we’re constantly adding to and improving our reporting functionality.

Read on for more about some recent improvements we’ve made to Reporting in Jobber!

This time around we’ve added the ability to customize report columns for any report in the Management section of Jobber. You can do this by clicking the new ‘Columns’ button that’s available in the upper right area of all reports.

All information that’s stored in the database for that particular kind of item (Client, Invoice, etc…) will be available in the Columns list to be included in the report.

Custom Field Reporting

One of the great things that this new feature accommodates is reporting on Custom Fields.

For example, using the ‘Client Contact Info’ report you can select any Custom Field you’ve set up for your clients to be included in the report, like Marketing or Referral Source for example.

Exporting a report as a CSV file will automatically include all columns so that you can manipulate the data in Excel using all available information.

We hope this improvement to Jobber’s Reporting functionality helps you get better visibility into your information so you can make better decisions and get more done. Let us know what you think on Facebook, Twitter or via e-mail!

Cheers,
The Jobber Team

The post Customize Your Report Columns & Custom Field Reporting appeared first on Jobber Blog.