Block Leading in Service Assistant Service Assistant gives you the tools to take a group of properties from your database, route and print a list. You can then take the list out on the road and estimate property sizes, then easily update those records in Service Assistant. After you have imported an address list into your Marketing Database, go to Reports Customer List Sales Estimate Book. There are many choices to make: Company/Branch Possibly just one, two or all. Zip Codes Most likely you will do one at a time Marketing Customer Import Date If you only want the list you just imported, use Today or the correct date range Marketing Customer Source Code If you only want the list you just imported, select the source you used for the import Customer Type marketing imports default to Residential, but if you are printing for other customer statuses, you may wish to exclude commercial properties
Season Range this will not matter for marketing records, but if you wish to list customer records from other statuses (see below) you will need to select which seasons for which these customers have programs Sort by Geography will launch Microsoft MapPoint to allow you to select visually. Alphabetically will print in street name order Hide Sizes, Hide Prices. If you are re measuring properties, you may not wish to show existing information, forcing your estimators to give you new sizes. Include only Marketing Customers with No Sizes if you already have measurements, you may wish to exclude them from this list Only show customers with phone numbers if you plan on following up with phone calls, you will want to check this New Page for Each Street this will be important if you are printing by alphabet, so you can manually route Minimum Number of Properties on a Street for the sake of efficiency, you may not want your estimators driving down a street for a very few records. Printer Offset, Estimate Form, Referral Options to be used when printing Estimates with, or instead of, the Sales Estimate Book. These options are the same as found on the Estimate Routing and Printing menu option. Print Est or S.B. by Status You have the option of printing estimates for the same properties you are measuring. You may include other statuses for the Sales Book (possibly old cancels or current customers, just so you have some property measurements as reference), but not include them when printing the estimates In the example below, we selected by Alphabet, including all statuses, with a minimum of 3 properties per street and a separate sheet for each street. At the top of each page, we see the street name and the zip code. On each property line, we have a bar code (representing the customer number), the customer status, account number, name, address, city, zip, phone, Residential/Commercial, status, Program Code/size/prices/season (if any).
If generating by Geography, you can launch MapPoint by hitting the globe at the bottom of the screen (the globe does not appear if Alphabet is selected). To use this feature, you must have Mapping Assistant, with your accounts geo coded and your Carrier Route utility run. Each pushpin represents a single street segment. This is defined by unique combinations of street names, zips and carrier routes. Select these pushpins as you would when routing invoices right click and drag a rectangle around a group, right click within that rectangle and left click on Add pushpins as stops. In the example above, we selected just 8 pushpins, but that represented a total of 379 customer records, as we see in the Service Assistant Totaller window. As you do with invoices, you should optimize to route efficiently. When you have all stops you want and have optimized, you can Get Directions. You would then go to the Mapping Assistant s File Print menu to select what kinds of maps you want to print (if any). When you hit the printer button in the Totaller window, you will get the street sheets in routing order. These pushpins will then be removed from the map, allowing you to select the next estimator s route. When finished with all the routes for the day, click on the Done button and you will be returned to the Sales Book screen. Note: these pushpins will disappear (after hitting the Printer icon) during this session only. If you hit Done and re enter (even immediately), all pushpins will all re appear. Do not hit Done until you are completely finished the entire zip code. The estimator should drive down these streets estimate the lawn size (for the properties without sizes) and write them down on the sheets.
Back at the office, you should take those sheets and go to Activity Quick Salesbook Entry. There are five steps to this procedure. 1) Enter Basic Information. If you wish to move Marketing Records to your Active Database and give them programs, you need to choose a Customer Status (0 3), the estimating Employee and the new Customer Since date. You have the option of just leaving those records in the Marketing Database (and updating only the size). 2) Enter Program Information If you are moving Marketing Records to your Active Database or updating information on Estimate Status Customer Records, you will need to define the Program Code, Source and Season that you are about to add.
3) Scan Customer Numbers with the cursor in the Customer Number field, use your bar code scanner to enter all customers on the sheet. Any record that was already in your Active database will show an asterisk next to it (and will appear when you Print Exception Report ).
4) Enter Size The records will appear in the order of scanning. You can take the Exception Report and Delete Record for any record you do not wish to update. For the others, you can go down the list and enter the size written on the Salesbook sheets. The price will fill in according to the price chart. You also have the option of adding Flags to the individual records. 5) Finish to save your entries, you will need to hit this button under this tab. You can now use these records for exporting to Marketing Prepay letters, Postcards or other marketing efforts.