The Automation add-on is a powerful tool that you can use to schedule automatic communications to your clients and to your staff. By putting routine automations in place, such as quote follow-ups or overdue payment reminders, your staff will spend less time on administrative tasks, while your clients will benefit from clear, professional communications.
This article provides a brief overview of each automation, and explains where to view scheduled or processed automations. There is also a brief video with more information.
To activate the add-on from the Online Dashboard, go to Settings > ServiceM8 Add-ons and enable Automation.
Overview of available automations
There are eight available automations. The five highlighted in the list below are routine activities for almost any business, so are pre-built and ready for you to enable or customise. The other three are more dependent on specific business goals, and can be created as needed. All automations have a convenient Wizard to walk you through initial set-up and any customisation required.
Booking Confirmation (pre-built)
Sends a booking confirmation to clients immediately upon scheduling a new booking within the job card.
- You can customise the message and choose if you want confirmations sent via text message, email, or both.
- Booking confirmations are only sent for bookings scheduled from the job card. You can select if you want to send a booking confirmation or not before saving.
- You can determine the timing of the reminder (for example, 8 hours before booking), customise the message, and choose if you want reminders sent via text message, email, or both.
- Booking reminders will only be sent for jobs with the Booking Reminder badge applied.
- You can determine the timing of the request, customise the message, and choose if you want confirmations sent via text message, email, or both.
- Messages will be sent only if the client has not already provided feedback for the job.
- Used with the Customer Feedback add-on.
- You can determine the timing of the follow-up, customise the message, and choose if you want follow-ups sent via text message, email, or both.
- Payment follow-ups are calculated from the date the job status changed to Completed, and are only sent if payment has not been received.
- You can determine the timing of the follow-up, customise the message, and choose if you want follow-ups sent via text message, email, or both.
- Quote follow-ups will only be sent if the client has not yet responded to the quote and the job status has not changed from Quote.
- Every new badge follow-up automation you set up is associated with a unique badge. For example, you could customise a badge follow-up to send a reminder about equipment servicing 9 months later, or to send a special offer 3 months later.
- You can also specify that if a client schedules a new job before the automated message is due to be sent, the automation will be cancelled.
- Used with the Badges add-on.
- For example, if a response on an equipment inspection form indicates a part needs to be serviced, a message is sent to your inbox that can then be converted to a job as you follow up about servicing the part.
- You can set up to three conditions that will trigger the creation of an inbox message.
- You can also specify if messages are created when the form is completed, or when the job is completed.
- Used with the Forms add-on and the Email Inbox add-on.
- You can specify if a client should receive live invoice statements.
- You can set the automation to occur at the start of each week, every two weeks, or at the start of each month.
- If an invoice for a completed job has been sent to a client but the invoice has not yet been paid, it will appear on their live invoice statement.
Viewing scheduled or processed automations
(NOTE: You can manually stop an automated communication from being sent to a client at any time from the Online Dashboard. Click here for more information.) You can see all scheduled or processed automations in the Online Dashboard from Settings > Automation. Click on the # scheduled or # processed next to any given automation to see the list of associated jobs. The example below clicked on the scheduled quote follow up automations.- Scheduled automations will display a warning if there is an issue preventing them from being sent (for example, a missing email address). If you fix the issue identified, then the automation will proceed at the scheduled time.
- Processed automations will either display a sent status, or a reason why they did not process as scheduled.
- If a scheduled automation has an issue, there will be a warning icon and an explanation. The example below is a booking reminder with an issue.
