Accounts

What is an Account?

Accounts are records of the total information for a particular customer. Usually, this is information that has been generated when creating an RPH and a Lead, in other words, during the sales process.

When someone accesses an account, the user will notice an account contains information of not only the specific site, the human, and the property management company, but also a record of all the calls, mails, events, and activities of a customer.

Let us remember something we explained in the Lead Module, and that might help us to better understand what an Account is:

What's a child account and how does it work?

There are two primary types of accounts in our system: parent and child accounts.

They look identical and they have the same features, but they have different functions.

For instance, UPS is a package delivery company and they have many branches across the country, so UPS global would be a parent account.

In most cases the primary purpose of a parent account is to give one central location with all of the sites, so when a user accesses a UPS parent account the person can see all the contacts, related business activities, external proposals, documents and more, for every UPS site. In other words, this parent account compresses all the information related to the branches (children) and the headquarters (parent) of the same company.

But when the user accesses a child account, they will find the same kind of information, though for one specific location only.

On the other hand, we have another type of parent account. These are the so-called “self managed” accounts. These self manage is a sort of a universal parent, that holds all of those smaller accounts that don’t have a logical parent account.

Account protection

A protection feature exists so a Contact is not being contacted by multiple Account Managers. In the column labeled “Prot.”, a green padlock indicates an unprotected contact and a red padlock indicates it is protected by an Account Manager.

Protection is always triggered from the edition of a contact, and which is related to a Lead or an Account.

Those users who do not have special permissions to edit a contact's data will only be able to access with read-only permissions.

The person responsible for the account or lead is the only user with editing permission during the protection period. Once the time is up and the contact is unprotected, all users can see and edit its information.

In some rare cases, there may be an account with shared ownership. For example, a technician who unknowingly creates an RPH on an account that already exists, and when he loads the RPH the system allows him to have part of that property. Anyway, this person would not be the true owner of said account, but yet they would have the permission to edit it.

Account and contacts

When a user modifies the information related to the contact of an account, the system automatically changes the status of the account to protected so that no one can modify it except the new owner. At the same time, the system not only protects that account but all those that are related to said contact.

In the event that the account was already protected and that user with sufficient permissions to modify it makes any modification, the system will restart the protection period for such account.

The contact is the key link that generates the relationships within the system.

Accounts Menu

New Accounts

This option takes the user to the “New Account” form. For more details on how to create an Account and this form, please redirect to the section in this document "How to create an Account"

View Accounts

The system allows to list all the existing Accounts on the platform and easily identify whether it is a child or parent account. All the parent account’s rows will be highlighted in yellow color.

Here is possible to see the list of the existing Accounts in the database, filtered by specific parameters. There is also a search bar that can be used to refine the search by looking among the shown results.

Filters available are:

• Bulleted list item
• Owner: filter by the owner of the Account
• Quick Search: filter by predefined range of time
• Property type

It is also possible to activate the “Custom Search” that will enable more fields of filtering, such as:

• From date (creation)
• To date (creation)

Once the filtering is done, the system will show the results in a list. The user can search among the results by writing on the “Search” field (magnifying glass) and it will refine the results if there are matches with any field.

On the bar above at the right, there are 2 buttons available that work as shortcut:

• “+Account”: quick account creation form access
• “+RPH”: quick RPH creation form access

The results can be extracted and downloaded to the local disk in different formats such as CSV, Excel, PDF or can be directly printed or copied to the clipboard.

Information shown in this columns:

• Management Company: the Parent account of the shown account.
• Account: work as a shortcut to access to the account.
• Main Contact: is the main contact of the account.
• Street: account address
• City: account city
• State: account state
• Quotes: indicates whether there are quotes for the account. If yes, the money icon will be shown in green.
• Prot.: indicates if the account is protected or not.
• PARC: indicates if there is any PARC Agreement with that account, and what is the status (enabled or expired).
• Last Act.: last activity within/related to the account
• Created: date of account creation
• Owner: owner of the account. Who protected the account at the moment.

From this list there is also access to the column “Options”, with more buttons that work as shortcuts to:

• Add Note
• Add Call
• Add Email
• Add Event
• Add Task

Merge Accounts

This module allows the user to merge and/or delete accounts.

When merging an account, all the related info will be moved to the selected destiny account and the merged account will be deleted.

To delete an account the same process needs to be followed, but in this case there is no need of selecting a destiny account.

The form to merge accounts is divided in 10 sections:

• Account Info
• Child Account Info
• Contact Info
• Opportunity Info
• Events
• Tasks Info
• Notes Info
• Emails Info
• Calls Info
• Documents Info

The reason for these sections is to make it easier to select and edit the information the user wants to merge. Nevertheless, these sections don’t need to be all used and can be either hidden or shown. Only the first section contains mandatory fields, which for this case it means it is the minimum information that will be transferred (merged) to the destiny account.

Steps to merge:

1. Select Account
2. Select the values wishing to keep (include the Account)
3. Select the Related info to keep in the selected Master Account
4. After this, press “Merge button to start the process
5. Users can use the option Delete After Merge to remove the account with the remaining related data

How to create an Account

There are two ways Accounts are created; Lead conversation through a ‘Closed Won” opportunity or manual entry.

Most often it is created when a Lead has an opportunity, and that opportunity becomes a sale. In other words when the opportunity is closed as won, then the Lead itself transforms and becomes an account. That is almost universally the way it is done.

On the other hand, sometimes we might need to manually create an Account. The primary use case for manually creating an account is when we get an RPH for some specific business and the customer has more than one location and they require a quote for all of the properties. And because the only way to relate few Leads is by creating a parent account with a child for each property.

The system has two ways to manually create Accounts:

• From the Account menu, under the “New Account” button
• And from the “Create Account” button available from the “View Account” button on the Account module.

Either way the same form needs to be filled and is explained in detail in the following sections.

Information contained within an Account

Information unique to each Account can be found in tabs across the top of the page.

These Tabs are:

• Account
• Map Location
• Child Account
• Contacts
• Opportunities
• External Proposals
• Reported PH´s
• Event & Activities
• Documents
• History
• Work History
• Payments (only for Account type “Child”)

Account

This tab contains basic information about the Account. It is separated in subsections for a better sorting of the information. Note that this information is the same that needs to be filled in the “New Account Form” when creating a new Account.

Account Information

• Owner: the name of the account manager
• Company/Site: this name must be unique. After the user type the three first characters the system will show you all similar names.
• Management Company: the parent account.
• Main Phone
• Fax
• Property Type
• Región
• Website
• Email Domain
• Lead Source
• Main Contact: If working with a Child account, only the contacts related to the Parent will be able to be selected. If does not exist, must be added previously.
• Acc Payable: is the contact of the person in charge of processing payments on the client side (for whom the work is performed).
• Where Obtained
• Self Managed (Checkbox): defines that the account is Self Managed, therefore does not have Parent Account.
• Major Player (Checkbox): defines if is a big account.
• Payment Terms: used to calculate the Invoice Due Date. If the invoice is not paid before the Due Date, the customer will be charged with penalties.
• Account Description

Compliance Vendor

A special fee has to be paid to the government when Pothole Repair creates invoices for certain companies. In order to fulfill this requirement, the system allows the user to set up the account to select the Compliance Vendor (the existing agreement), define the Vendor ID, add notes related to that process and also the Fees.

E.G.: Pothole must pay 5% of the total of an invoice to the government, the company can automatically add that amount to the customer invoice by setting a “Fee value” and a “Fee type”. Furthermore, it is possible to select the ranges of dates in which the extra fee will be applied.

The fields to setup this process are:

• Compliance Vendor: this is a dropdown list where users can choose from the vendor that applies for the account.
• Vendor ID: See explanation below.
• Compliance Vendor Notes
• Fee Value: according to compliance vendor
• Fee Type: according to compliance vendor
• Start Date/End Date

Address Information

Accounts have address validation through Google Maps. The address information section has a “Validate Address” button to get the correct street and map coordinates (latitude and longitude values). States and Cities brackets are connected, and each one has a search field to easily identify values of states or cities.

• State
• City
• Street

When validating an address, the system verifies that there is no other account or lead with exactly the same address than the one added. If that happens, the system will show a notificacion and will not validate the address

Billing Address Information

Just like the section before, the validation through Google Maps is also available. The only difference here is the information on these fields will be used to create the invoices.

Usually the information is taken from the Billing Address ifnormation in the Parent Account, but can be modified if the Children account requires it.

Fields are:

• Suite
• Apartment
• Bill Box Number or PO: defines the PO number in case an invoice or something else needs to be sent by mail.
• Electronic Email Bill: defines an email address to where the invoice should be sent.
• Special Billing Instructions: in case the job is completed, notes regarding special billing instructions can be added.

Map Location

Shows a satellite view of the site location, using the Google Maps API. From here the user can see location coordinates and choose between map and satellite view (GMaps features).

Child Account

From this section users can access and manage all the information regarding the child accounts, or existent leads related to the parent account if there were any.

The system will list all child accounts linked to the Parent Account and sort them in the same manner as the “View Accounts” link found in the Accounts tab at the top of the page.

Information that can be found in this tab is:

• Child account name
• Open Quotes: if the child account has any open quote, a green money icon will be shown
• Main contact: main contact of the child account
• Address
• Región
• PARC agreement: indicates if there is any PARC Agreement with the child account
• Last activity: any kind of action triggered on the object will be considered as last activity
• Owner
• Creation date

Also, there is a column “options” with shortcuts to perform actions such as:

• Add Note
• Add Call
• Add Email
• Add Event
• Add Task

This is the same set of Action Tabs available in most of the sections in the CRM.

Additionally, data can be exported or copied as well to an external source.

Change Main Contact

There is a button to change the main contact for all the child accounts listed. This is a very important feature since editing the main contact will trigger the account protection and change it's owner.

When the user clicks on the button, instantly the column of “Main Contacts” is modified and each record enables a dropdown list so that the main contact for every single child account can be modified.

Contacts

This is a very important tab where users will find the contacts list for the account. Here they can access detailed information about each contact for the account and manage it through different actions.

Add New Contact

This action will redirect to a form with the following sections

• Principal Contact Information
• Contact Description
• Address information

This is the same form used in the Lead module when adding a Lead for the very first time, and which is repeated throughout many other sections of the CRM

Relate Contact

Relate contact: this action allows the user to link to the account any contact (previous creation) within the CRM.

This will open a pop-up window showing the available contacts and related contacts,

so the user can choose from either list and add contacts from one list to the other.

For further information visit the Contacts page

Options

Furthermore, users can also perform specific actions for contact from the “options” column in this tab. These are:

• Set main contact: this will instantly set the selected contact as the main contact for the account
• Remove contact account: this will instantly remove the contact from the account
• Add Call
• Add Event
• Add Note

For further information visit the Contacts page.

Opportunities

This tab displays and provides access to all Opportunities related to the Account. If a Parent Account, all Opportunities related to the Child Accounts will be listed, as well. Remember, Accounts (both Child and Parent Accounts) may have multiple active Opportunities while a Lead, by definition, may only have one

The fields available on this tab are:

• Opportunity name: works as a hyperlink to open the opportunity. Will always be the concatenation of the name of the account and the date when was created
• Contact: Main contact of the account that holds the opportunity
• Requested date
• Valid until: due date of the opportunity
• Closing Date
• Quotes: informs the status of the Quote
• TRs: amount of items that the opportunity has inside
• Amount
• Stage
• Owner
• Created
• Last activity

Also, there is a column “options” with shortcuts to perform actions such as:

• Add Note
• Add Call
• Add Email
• Add Event
• Add Task

For further information visit the Opportunity page.

External Proposals

What's an external proposal?

Sometime we come across big damages or jobs that are outside our scope, like paving.

So in order to provide a good service and attend to our customer’s needs, we have created a series of partnerships with strategic partners that provide all of those related services we don’t. For example: paving, concrete, line striping, sealcoating, etc.

This is what we call “External Proposal”.

An External Proposal is a referral to one of our strategic partners, to provide any of those services.

In this situation there are 4 possible scenarios:

1. We go out to inspect their property and they have one or more potholes that we can fix, in which case we are going to create an opportunity and we are going to send it hoping we get the work.
2. It is also possible that we go out to the lot and we find potholes that we can fix, but maybe they also have a broken sidewalk or the stripes aren't painted, or maybe they have a giant pothole. In this case we have work that we can do, but also have work that one of our strategic partners can do.
3. In some other cases it could happen that one of our inspectors visits a property, and when they look around and there is damage that only a strategic partner can do and nothing we could do even if we wanted to.
4. And the last possibility is, our inspector goes out to the lot and there is no damage nor work for us to do, since everything is in good condition. There is no damage for us to fix, and there is no damage for our partners to fix. This can only happen as part of a PARC agreement visit, during a property check.

From a business perspective, if you are our customer and we are taking care of your lot, we must help you, even if we can not directly solve your problem. This way we ensure delivering a high quality service by having the damage fixed by one of our partners. Otherwise our relationship with our clients could be jeopardized because of a poor attitude from us to satisfy our customers needs.

To avoid getting a bad name, we refer one of our partners to do the job.

How to create an external proposal

There are two ways in which it can be created:

1. When one of our inspectors is on the field and they are looking for anything wrong, they can use the mobile app to either enter a pothole, or they can use it to enter an “out of scope damage. When this happens, an email is sent to the partner and the client explaining the situation and reason for calling someone else to do the job.

1. The other way to create an external proposal is the manual creation. It can be done, for instance, when a customer calls explaining they need a repair which is classified “out of scope” as well. In this case, we can create the external proposal within the system. At this point no automated emails will be sent, because these can trigger by the user once all the information is completed in the system, so everybody knows what their role is.

External proposals that may be related to the Account will be visualized on this tab. It is also possible to create a new External Proposal and link it to the Account by clicking on the button “Add External Proposal”.

The External Proposal can be seen from this list by clicking on the Proposal # as well.

The information will be visualized in the following columns:

• Proposal #
• Partner
• Created by
• Created (date)
• Status
• Options

When it is a Parent account, all the External proposals that belong to the related children account will be listed too.

Reported PH’s

Shows the list of all the RPH’s linked to the Account, and allows the user to quickly work with the records using the functions available on the column “Options”

A Child Account can have only one RPH active at the same time.

But when it is a Parent account, all the RPH’s that belong to the children accounts will be listed

The visible columns of info are:

• Account/Lead: if the account is a parent account, all the children accounts that have RPHs related will be shown.
• Rel Opp: if exists a related opportunity to the RPH, the name will be shown and will work as a hyperlink.
• Status: RPH status
• Created by
• Created
• RPH Source
• Source
• RPH Assigned
• Where Obt

There is also a column named Options, which work as shortcut to manage the RPH, with buttons such as:

• View Damage Info
• Send Email
• View Audio Files
• View History
• View RPH Images
• Add RPH Images
• Change RPH status

To see the function of each button, please visit the RPH page.

Event & Activities

This tab shows the Notes, Call, Emails or Tasks related to the Accounts. The main purpose is to keep the communication flowing with the customer by logging all the activities.

If the user is working with a Child account, only the events and activities related to that account will be listed, but when working with a Parent account, all the events and activities related to all children accounts will be shown.

Objects that can been seen on this tab are:

• Open Tasks
• Closed Tasks
• Emails
• Calls
• Events
• Notes

Documents

The Documents tab is where you can upload and access documents related to the Account. You will also find useful documents here that are shared by all Accounts, such as our W9 and COI Request Form.

History

Keeps a record of all the activities done on an Account. Any modification or information added/attached is logged in the system and shown in chronological order on this tab.

The user can see this in a list with the following columns:

• Modified Date: date and time of the log
• Type: event that triggered the log
• Owner: owner of the Lead
• Modified by: user that performed the activity that triggered the log

Work History

Keeps a record of all the Works done for the account; such as opportunity creation, opportunity closed, dispatch created, invoice created among others.

The information that can be found on the screen is:

• Opportunity Name
• Closing Date
• Location
• Amount/TR
• Dispatch Nro
• Dispatch Type
• Tech Lead
• Helpers
• Invoice no

Payments (only for “child account type”)

It is used when a customer overpays an invoice or just makes a payment without any invoice, then Pothole Repair needs to register that the customer has credit available to be used in a future work.

If the customer has a payment created, on the next invoice generation the system will detect this amount and will reduce it directly from the invoice.

Create New Payment

It is possible to quickly register a payment on the child account by using the shortcut .

The system will show a form where the user needs to enter the information and save the work; then the payment will be automatically associated to the account.

Actions available working on Accounts

Common Action

These are the actions common to most of the modules:

• Add Note
• Add Call
• Add Email
• Add Event
• Add Task

Available actions - Accounts Module:

Create Opportunity

This shortcut enables the user to quickly create an opportunity related to the account. The only constraint is it will not be possible to create an opportunity, if an open RPH is not related to the account.

Add Child

This is a shortcut to create a new account and relate that new account as a Child of the account in which the user is working.

The system will guide the user to the form explained in the section “How to create an account”.

PARC Agreement

PARC stands for Preferred Asphalt Repair Contract

A PARC agreement is a service contract. This agreement provides a discount for any repairs needed within the period of a year, and during the course of that year we will come to the client’s property and inspect the lot 3 times. We will provide a report with recommendations for each visit, yet the client is not obligated to carry on with any of those damages.

If they have a PARC agreement and they authorize the repairs, they get an additional 10% discount on any work they choose or authorize during the year that PARC agreement is in effect. Plus, the PARC agreement extends the warranty from 12 to 15 months.

Usually we are in charge of scheduling the visit throughout the year, nevertheless the client has the freedom to call us if they consider it necessary.

LINK TO FLYER

PARC Proposal

Shortcut to create a PARC and associate it to the account. The process will simulate a proposal, dispatch, and invoice process creation, but the only Item on all the process will be a PARC item.

If a PARC already exists for the account, the system will validate this and will not allow a new PARC creation.

PARC Options

This feature is only available for users with Admin role. It is a feature that enables to either modify the active PARC agreement or delete it.

If deleted, the system will automatically remove the dates and all the pending events that were triggered by and related to the PARC.