Benefits of adding extra users to Powered Now

Powered Now is job management software that helps businesses of all sizes to manage their appointments, quotes, invoices, teams, and customers more efficiently. It offers a wide range of features, including a visual scheduler with drag and drop, team tracking, HR features such as the ability to record holidays and sickness, a customer portal which allows your customers to download their own paperwork and premium support with a dedicated UK help desk.

Some Powered Now customers only have selective staff on their system but the full benefits of Powered Now are only realised when all of your team have their own accounts. That is when you will see the full power of the digital revolution:

• Better control: With a complete picture of what’s going on and where, you are in complete control of your business.
• All information shared: everyone that needs it in your team can see the latest information. It ensures that everyone is on the same page, knows what to do and reduces mix-ups. This is because everything is on the system and all changes are logged and tracked, so it is easy to see who made what change and when.
• Increased efficiency: Powerful scheduling helps to increase time on the job and reduce travelling time. Having multiple users working on Powered Now can help to increase efficiency and productivity too. For example, one user can be working on scheduling jobs, while another user is working on invoicing.
• Improved customer service: With your customers able to look up things for themselves, you can undoubtedly impress them and provide better service.

Get rid of all re-keying

We all know how frustrating it is if a job has to be done repeatedly. Yet amazingly, many trade businesses are still organised to do jobs twice in the area of paperwork, the most hated part of the job. This is what happens when you don’t have a single, automated system which supports all aspects of the job with the whole team on board. It leads to re-keying the same information into more than one system, or even worse, writing it down many times. Sometimes it even means putting it into a system as well as writing it down, then losing the piece of paper!

Drag and drop scheduling

In the premium tier of Powered Now, the scheduler is a powerful tool that allows you to view any jobs that have not been allocated. At the same time all the jobs that have been allocated are shown against each team member, so you can see where the gaps are.

Unallocated jobs can be dragged into these spaces in the schedule. You can filter the view by job status, date, and other criteria. It all helps you to quickly and easily identify any potential conflicts or bottlenecks as well. The result is that everyone has a clear picture of what is going on. It doesn’t rely on the memory of certain employees.

You can also see which job staff are currently attending which jobs.

The full benefit can only be realised when everyone has their own login account.

Track the team

Powered Now's team tracking feature allows you to track the location of your team members on a map in real time. This can be useful for a number of reasons, such as:

• You can use the team tracking feature to identify team members who are located near a customer site, so that you can assign them to jobs nearby. This is particularly useful if there is an emergency. It can also help to improve efficiency by reducing travel time.
• You know exactly where the team travelled. You can use the team tracking feature to check that team members were where they were supposed to be as well as checking things like adherence to the speed limit.
• You can use the team tracking feature as part of your adherence to safety protocols. If they are doing dangerous work or at risk of assault, you know where they are.

Individual location can only be tracked when each member of staff has their own login.

Kick out the filing cabinet, holiday and sickness spreadsheets and any expensive HR system

Powered Now's HR features allow you to manage your team's holiday schedules, sickness leave, and employment documents. These features can help you to ensure that your team is compliant with all relevant employment laws and regulations.

This makes filing easy, there is much less chance of lost paperwork and a central electronic repository makes things so much easier to find.

You can only get rid of all of the paperwork related to staff when there is an account for every staff member.

ONE system

You don’t have to have lots of systems when one will do. Powered Now can replace the system that does:

• Quotations
• Invoicing
• Timesheets
• Diary
• Certificates
• HR
• Scheduling
• Tracking
• Team chat
• Project management

Maybe you don’t use systems for all of these, maybe you have to endure the costs and hassle of certificate pads, envelopes, printer ink, paper and stamps. Then there is the staff learning curve for each of the different systems, the problems when the systems get out of step with each other and the sheer complexity. Getting all of your staff onto Powered Now means one system, one learning curve, one bill and no paper.

And with Powered Now’s comprehensive Xero interface, all of your data is passed to accounts with a click of the button and your tax returns are automated too.

With everybody able to access the same system, the full benefits of a single central system are realised, not to mention the reduction in hidden and explicit costs associated with having multiple systems.

Separate responsibilities

Depending on the size of your team, you may wish to separate out responsibilities. This is much easier with everyone on the same system. For instance, one user can be responding to customer inquiries, while another user is scheduling appointments. The work itself can be done by specialists that become particularly quick at certain tasks. With everything visible and easy to organise, it’s much simpler to assign the right people to the right jobs. Splitting work up like this can greatly improve efficiency.

Keep everyone in touch

Powered Now's team chat feature allows you to communicate with your team members in real time. This can be useful for a number of reasons.

You can use the team chat feature to coordinate work between team members. For example, you can use the feature to assign tasks, discuss job progress, and resolve any issues that arise.

The team chat feature can help you to build relationships with other team members and improve team morale. By communicating with your team members on a regular basis, you can get to know them better and build more trust. This can encourage your team members to work together and achieve common goals. You just need an account per team member.

Forms and certificates

Powered Now's forms and certificates feature allows you to create and manage a wide range of forms and certificates, such as job completion forms, risk assessments, and health and safety certificates. Then there’s all the gas, plumbing, electrical, oil and green certificates plus much more. All of these forms can be completed on your smartphone even when there is no signal, meaning that you don’t need to have a backup paper system. You can then send these forms and certificates to your customers or team members for them to complete and sign electronically.

It all means that there’s no need for paper pads and general purpose forms can easily be tailored to meet any special needs of your business.

Improved accuracy comes from the fact that there is inbuilt validation and more than one user can review forms and certificates before they are sent out. This can help to improve accuracy and reduce errors.

Having all of these easy to use forms and certificates helps to ensure that your business is compliant with all relevant regulations.

To get the full benefit, you need every staff member to have their own account.

Keep your customers informed

Powered Now's portal is a self-service portal that lets your customers view and manage their own paperwork. Customers can log in to the portal and see their job history, download invoices and certificates, and communicate with your team.

Customers can be told who is coming to an appointment and the visiting team member can let them know when they are on the way.

Customers will think that they get better service by providing them with a convenient way to quickly sort out queries for themselves.

And the customer portal will reduce your workload by giving your customers the ability to self-serve in this way.

With every engineer or field technician having their own account, customer can be reassured by being sent the name and a picture of the person who will be visiting.

Conclusion

I hope that this article has shown how providing full access for your team to your Powered Now account can pay for itself in spades. Benefits include improved visibility and communication, increased efficiency, reduced errors, better compliance and improved customer service.

If you are considering adding extra users to your Powered Now account, we recommend that you contact Powered Now to discuss your specific needs. We can help you to choose the right subscription plan and features for your business.

It’s not just about how much time you can save - although time is really money in the trade - it’s about the professional image you can project to your customers and how much less hassle that you will have.

Maybe it’s time to make the jump? Book a session with our Powered Now experts to find out more.