Additional Document Options and Features

The document screen provides a lot more functionality than just creating a document, all optional of course.  Below are a few key things you can also do when creating / editing documents.

Converting Documents

Documents can be converted, or copied to different types, for example, an Estimate can be converted to a Job Sheet or Invoice.

In most cases, converting a document will not retain the original, although there is an option available to retain estimates.

When converted, the new document will retain a reference to the previous, for instance:

Job sheet 50 converted to Invoice 1002 will retain the job sheet number and can be found by searching for this.

The "Copy to" option makes a copy of the current document (leaving it intact) and creates a new document based on your selection.

Setting Reminders

Reminders can be setup for a specific vehicle directly within a document.  This can be done once a vehicle registration is entered, since reminders are Vehicle specific not customer specific.

Click View/Edit next to the reminder section, located on the History tab.

You can specify the type of reminder (see reminder templates), the due date and how you wish to send the reminder, either by

• SMS
• Email
• Print

The "Days in a Adv" field refers to how many days before the work is due to trigger the reminder for sending.

This can be set to different intervals for each method, such as setting SMS to 2 days before, Email to 7 days and Print to 14 days.

Recurring  allows you to specify the frequency at which this job is carried out, so for instance, an MOT test is a yearly test, in which case you would enter 52 weeks

If a reminder is recurring, once it has been sent it will automatically reschedule based on the interval provided.

You can add as many reminders / types of reminder as you wish.

VRM Lookup

The VRM lookup system uses the vehicle registration to perform a data lookup via our servers.

Each lookup costs 1 Credit (See account & credit packs)

If a successful VRM lookup is performed, all of the available details will be added to the vehicles record, this includes the majority of fields available.

Print Correspondence Template

This option allows you to use a correspondence template with details from the current document.

You can setup as many templates as required using merge fields, the merge fields will then be populated.

Send Email to Customer

This allows you to send a one-off email to a customer and can be based on a correspondence template.  This email will not attach the current document, although this is available by clicking either Issue > Issue & Email or by clicking Draft > Email Draft

Send SMS to Customer

This allows you to send a one-off SMS message to a customer and can be based on a correspondence template.

The SMS system uses 0.5 credits to send a message

Attachments

You can attach images, documents or PDF's to both a customer record and a vehicle record.

This can be done via the document, but also via the customer / vehicle profile screens.

Attachments are stored internally to Garage Assistant. You can insert single, or multiple items at once