Service Prep

The Service Prep system controls items from the stage of ordering, receiving, moving to the trucks and making sure they are either installed or returned to the shop, so they can be returned to the distributor. Reports tell you what items are needed for each technician and where these items are; are they in the warehouse, on a shelf waiting or possibly with another technician? Every time an item moves it is tracked.

Service Prep expects items to be received into the main parts area and then prepped to shelves or bins. Most companies have a shelf per technician, maybe a bin for each or alphabetic shelves for items by customer name. In each case we will be setting up locations in EPASS for each of those shelves or bins.

Initial Setup:

System Maintenance

Purchasing variables needs Update Invoice Item Location on Order checked and item inventory variables needs Auto Commit Item in Invoicing checked.

Route Table

The location needs to be filled in.

Invoice Type

Mark Item as Installed/Shipped on Commit must be unchecked.

Invoicing

When item lines are added to invoices through invoicing or Mobile Technician the location will default as the current truck.

PO-12 Recommend PO

You will run the ordering report and it will order items as usual. You can also add items to a PO manually and select the invoice they are associated with as usual.

Receiving

Whether you are receiving on screen or through the barcode scanning, they will be received as usual. After receiving, you need to print labels.

The label shown below is ‘4X2 Durochers’. It contains the parts information along with the route (SV1), invoice number (4864) and the customer name (Jones).

Prep Items with EPASS Warehouse Management

Crystal Reports

Since all companies are unique in how they do locations, trucks, shelves, and bins, we have Crystal Reports that can be customized to work for each company.

Although the reports are free of charge, the customization is billable and our technical support team will let you know if there are charges involved.

The first report (Items to Pick for Service Calls) shows each invoice, item, technician, and qty. The yellow highlighted area indicates the item is not committed which means it has not come in. It also shows the date the invoice is currently scheduled for. In this case most have been rescheduled since we don’t have the inventory.

This first report is optional as quite a few clients use the barcoded label that we showed before as their way of putting the items away on the shelves. The label also includes the customer name and route, so no matter if your shelves are by technician or by customer name, the labels contain all the same information as the report. The report is beneficial if you stock a lot of inventory in your warehouse vs ordering parts for each job.

The second report (Items to Transfer From Service Prep to Truck) is organized by route and shows each item that you need to give the technician and where the item is currently. In this company the routes are numeric and you will see the majority of the items for Truck 11 are in 11BIN, but one of the items is in 54BIN, so that invoice must have been re-routed to a different technician after the items were already put on the technician's bin/shelf.

After the invoices are completed or, if the technician deletes a line from the invoice, the system knows the item was prepped to him and it was not installed.

Any item not installed will appear on the IN-23 Location Overstock Report. If the technician brings the items back, you will transfer them from his truck back to Main stock, but until that happens, the items will keep coming up on this report.

Once we get the items back from the technicians, we also have a limited amount of time to send the items back to our distributor. This is where IN-29 Old Stock Returns report steps in.

The IN-29 will show all items that can be sent back because they are no longer needed and on which supplier invoice they were purchased on, so you have good claim data to return them on.

See Also

• Prep Items for Services Calls (EPASS Warehouse Management System)
• PO-12 Recommended Purchase Order Report
• IN-23 Location Overstock
• IN-29 Old Stock Returns

Updated

November 30, 2023