Building Reusable Work Plans

Availability: all plans

A work plan is a reusable list of steps for a kind of job, such as an annual maintenance visit. Each step has a type, a title, an estimated number of minutes and, if you want, a Price Book item. When a service is booked, the plan attached to it is copied onto the Work Order, so the technician works through the steps and the time they record can later be compared with what you expected. This guide covers building a plan, attaching it to a service and keeping it up to date. In the product, plans are managed on the Work Order Templates page.

Before you start

Work plans are included in every plan. Seeing the list needs permission to view templates, creating a plan or copying one needs permission to create templates, and changing or deactivating one needs permission to edit templates. The Work Order Templates item under Settings appears only for roles that can manage settings. If you lack a permission, the matching control or page is not available to you.

Have your Price Book ready if you want steps tied to items, and make sure at least one work classification is enabled, because every plan must have one.

Steps

Choose Settings in the main menu, then Work Order Templates. The list shows each plan with an Active or Inactive badge, its estimated total minutes, its number of actions and when it was last updated.
Choose New Template. The page is titled Create Work Plan.
Enter the Plan Name (required, up to 100 characters).
Choose a Work Classification from the list (required). The list holds the classifications you have enabled.
Optionally add a Description of up to 500 characters.
Under Plan Steps, choose Add Step for each step. One blank step is already there. Each row has these columns:
- #, the order of the step.
- Type, one of Inspect, Maintain, Repair, ReplaceExisting, ReplacePartial, InstallNew, Clean, Remove, Reconfigure or Other.
- Title. A row with no title is dropped when you save.
- Est. Min, the minutes you expect the step to take.
- Pricebook Item, either None or one of your active Price Book items.
- Description.
- Evidence, with Required, Photo and Signature boxes. Choose Remove to delete a row.
Choose Create Plan. You return to the list, or to the service if you started from there.

To attach the plan to a service, open the service for editing, find How the work gets done and pick the plan in the selector. It offers None yet, your own plans under Your templates and ready-made plans under Ready-made templates. Save the service. From that service's edit page you can also choose Create plan to build a new one, or Edit attached plan to change the one you attached.

Tips

Ready-made plans cannot be edited. Choose Copy on the list, or Copy plan on a plan's edit page, to get your own copy, then adjust it. The copy no longer receives later improvements to the ready-made plan.
Editing a plan that services use shows a notice listing those services. Saving changes affects future Work Orders for them. To change only one service, copy the plan and attach the copy there.
On the edit page, clear Active Plan and choose Save Changes to retire a plan. Delete on the list also deactivates the plan after you confirm.
Estimated minutes matter later: the cost reports compare them with the time your staff record. See the guide on labor and margin reports.

If something goes wrong

If the Work Classification list is empty, enable one first; see the guide on work classifications. If saving fails with "Invalid template data. Please check your input.", check the name, classification and step rows. "Plan steps could not be read. Please try again." means the step table did not submit properly, so reload the page and re-enter the steps.

Setting Up Work Classifications — A work classification is the kind of work a job or plan is for. Setting them up once means jobs get sensible defaults and your work plans are filed under the right kind of work, which keeps the…
Reading Job Cost and Margin — ServiceVisit turns the time your staff record against a work plan into job cost, then compares that cost with what you charged. Approved time on a Work Order is attributed to the plan's steps, priced…
View Work Order Templates — ServiceVisit keeps a library of Work Order Templates, which are reusable plans for the steps a technician follows on a job. You would open the list to see which templates are available and to open one…
Create a Work Order Template — ServiceVisit lets you build your own Work Order Template, a reusable plan of steps for a type of work. You would create one when you do the same kind of job often and want every technician to follow…
Edit a Work Order Template — ServiceVisit lets you change a Work Order Template that your business owns. You would edit one when a step needs correcting, or when you want the template to match how your team really does the work.
Time Tracking and Timesheet Approval Overview — Time tracking records the time a technician spends travelling, on site and working, attaches it to the work order or assessment it belongs to, and carries it through review. Most of it happens as a…