Shop Manager uses ‘recommendations’ for services that are found by the technicians that were not initially agreed upon. Such as a customer goes in to get their oil change, but the technician notices something else needs to be paid attention to on the vehicle. This is where a recommendation would be added to the Repair Order.
Creating a Recommendation
To create a recommendation, you must first be within an RO that is in either the Estimate or Work Order stage.
There are two main ways to create a recommendation, either within the Notes Feed or from a service that’s been added, the way you choose will be dependent on your shop’s workflow and preference.
Create a Recommendation within the Notes Feed:
- On the right panel, under the ‘Notes’ tab, there is the option to ‘Add Finding’ - select this to start a recommendation from the Notes Feed.
- You will see a clipboard icon with the words ‘Recommend Services’ above it - select this option and choose from either a ‘Quick Rec’ or ‘Recommend Service’
- A Quick Rec gives the customer a brief snapshot of a recommendation needed, only containing the title of the recommendation and the price.
- Once the Quick Rec is “published”, it will be shown in the same areas as other recommended services. However, when you are ready to approve and ‘promote’ the job, you cannot do that with quick recs as they do not have any actual services tied to them.
- Once the Quick Rec is “published”, it will be shown in the same areas as other recommended services. However, when you are ready to approve and ‘promote’ the job, you cannot do that with quick recs as they do not have any actual services tied to them.
- A Quick Rec gives the customer a brief snapshot of a recommendation needed, only containing the title of the recommendation and the price.
- When choosing ‘Recommend Service’ - a modal similar to the ‘Add Service’ modal appears, allowing you to search for a service to recommend or create one from scratch.
- Once you have located the service you would like to recommend, you will be presented with an ‘Edit Recommendation’ modal that allows you to edit the recommendation before getting ready to publish to the RO.
- Once ‘Recommend Service’ is selected, the recommendation will then populate as a ‘draft’ within the Notes Feed. To make sure this recommendation is added to the RO and viewable to the customer, it must be published.
- After the recommendation is published on the RO, it will populate within the RO under the ‘All Recommendations’ area, as shown below:
Create a Recommendation from a Service:
- While within an RO that is open, select the ‘Add Service’ button across the bottom of the screen.
- In the service summary modal that appears, search or create a new service to add to the RO.
- Once you have that service added to the body of the RO - select the ellipsis icon for that service across the bottom
- Choose to ‘Convert to Recommendation’
- The follow message will appear for confirmation:
- Choose to ‘Convert Service’ - the service will now show as an unpublished/draft note within the Notes Feed.
- Publish the note with the recommendation to add the recommendation to the RO and make it visible to the customer to review.
Warning: If you add a recommendation to a closed RO, it will not appear on future ROs. It will appear on the current work order, but never again. If you wish to add a recommendation after closing an RO: first reopen the job, add the recommendation (with any notes), and close the job again. This way it will populate on future ROs.