Planned Maintenance

The Planned Maintenance module is designed to manage service contracts and regular service plans both practically and financially. Service contracts/plans are held for pieces of equipment that require forecasted preventative maintenance, service safety checks. Each contract can contain a cycle of services; the timing of each service can be based on calendar time or usage (hours, miles, kilometres, tonnes, etc.). Each contract can multi-thread and include tasks based on usage and date (e.g. Services based on hours used and safety inspections based on weeks/months or years). Each task/service can carry a list of parts required along with standard time taken; this helps schedule work once the jobs are created. Each contract can contain multiple locations, and each location can contain multiple pieces of equipment.

At regular intervals the tasks that are due (within a chosen date range) can be extracted into a list, this then prompts the Service Desk to contact the customers to confirm the task due and make the practical arrangements. The CRM module can be used to automate the production of reminder letters, fax or emails to the related customers to inform them of services due if required. At any time the confirmed tasks can be automatically created as workshop jobs with all the correct details.

The jobs are also automatically added to the Workshop Scheduler with the required date set to the estimated service date and showing the estimated time required. Once in the scheduler, the normal scheduling routines can be used to decide exactly when tasks are performed, and by which technician. Any parts linked to the service will be added to the job, along with any standard instructions.

A variety of charging mechanisms exist for a contract, this includes charging on a time and materials, clock reading, upfront or fixed price basis. A batch invoicing routine raises sales invoices as required for the future contract charges. One of the traditional problems with managing the financials of this type of contract is apportioning the revenue over the period covered by the charges. The Planned Maintenance module handles this automatically and if an invoice is raised for charges in advance the system will bring in the revenue over the appropriate period. Where an external supplier carries out the work, the corresponding purchase invoices can be posted against the contract and the costs are spread over the period covered.

The module also has financial and statistical reporting built in to each contract. The financial statistics (revenue and profit) can be viewed by contract, location and by equipment. This acts as a drill down from a customer down the each individual item on contract. This is a powerful management tool to help the management make better business decisions.

Key Features are:

• Manage contracts for preventative and contract maintenance
• Many financial models for charges and costs
• Automated invoicing for contract charges
• Automatically spread the revenue over the period of contract cover
• Multi-threading ability for tasks (calendar time and usage)
• Three levels of management - contract, location and equipment
• Full revenue and profit analysis statistics with drill down to individual jobs
• Fully integrated with other modules - Wholegood/Vehicle, Workshops, Parts, Accounting and CRM
• Handles costs from third party suppliers and sub contractors
• Automated reminder system to forecast future tasks and drive customer contact and bookings
• Automated creation of workshop jobs to match the planned tasks