What the engine does with a booking
The billing decision
Every line is billed to the customer, to warranty, or to the customer’s plan. The engine reads the lines the moment the work order arrives and again whenever a line is added, removed or changed, and writes the answer to Zoho’s Billing Status. What each outcome means is on How invoicing works. A line is a warranty line when its Charge To says warranty. It is a plan line when the customer’s plan covers that product: the office ticks the covered products on the Zoho subscription (Covered Items), and a line naming one of them costs nothing. Which plan counts. The subscription named on the work order is the one that decides what is covered. With none named, the customer’s own running plan is used, and only when they have exactly one. A plan is running while it is active, in trial, or past due. A line the engine cannot price. A line that is neither warranty nor plan has to name a catalog product with a QuickBooks item behind it; when no line on the job is billable and one of them names no such product, the engine refuses to decide and flags the job for a person rather than write off work that may be owed. A plan job is also written onto the customer’s subscription in Zoho as a visit, but only when the work order’s Subscription lookup names that subscription. What the visit list holds and what its states mean are on Subscriptions.Emails and pushes
- With Notify Client on, the customer gets “Your Comfort Hub appointment on …” with an Add to calendar link.
- The day before the visit, the same customer gets “Reminder: your Comfort Hub appointment on …”.
- Moving the appointment sends “Your Comfort Hub appointment has moved to …” with an Update your calendar link, and no second confirmation; see Reschedule or restaff an appointment.
- The technician’s phone gets a push when an appointment is booked, moved or cancelled, and when they are added to one. That needs the technician to have the app; see Add a technician.
- An appointment still open an hour past its arrival window gets its technician an Appointment Not Completed push (”… is still open. Please complete or update it.”). The engine looks every hour; after the first push it repeats once a day, in the morning, until the appointment is completed or cancelled. See Scheduled jobs.
Two things to know
- Line descriptions. What you type on a line in Zoho is kept. A line saved from the app takes the catalog item’s name and description instead.
- Equipment. The Service calendar widget makes equipment when it books an installation. A job booked any other way gets its equipment when it is completed; see Complete a work order.