Invoice2go and other programs

[Jobber]

So how the deposit works depends on if you mark the deposit on the invoice or the job/quote.

In most cases, people are taking the deposit on the job after winning the quote. In that case, Jobber will prompt you to add that deposit to the billing history, and this is done before the invoice is created at the start of the job. Thats the most common workflow since that way the deposit will be transferred from the job, to the invoice when you go to create the invoice.

If you add the deposit to the invoice, then it is not added to the billing history automatically since you only added it to the invoice and not the job. That is something that I will mention to the devs though. The invoice that you send will still be correct, but an invoice is generally something that is pending, so once the invoice is paid, then it is recorded in the billing history and so will that deposit. You can also go and manually add that deposit to the billing history, but that might have to be done in the tablet view and not the mobile view.

So in essence, enter the deposit first, before you do the invoice, and the deposit will show up in the billing history and be carried over to the invoice when you go to create the invoice.

Let me know if that does not make sense.

-Landen

 

[lumberjack]

That makes sense. The job was guaranteed via credit card, check was sent via snail mail from the west coast. The job was done before I got the down payment (check).

I opened the client, recorded an $800 payment for the 19th. That corrected receivables. The invoice still shows $2400, but when you open it, it says $1600. Still playing with it.

 

[Jobber]

That makes sense. With the invoice showing #2400, that might be a graphical bug that I will submit to the developers so that it will show the correct number.

-Landen

 

[lumberjack]

BTW, Jobber having an online presence is a wonderful thing! Sure we can call/email Jobber, but the forum is a more laid back, informal, friendly kind of thing.

I am sure it will wear off over time, but the newness of Jobber for me makes bids/invoicing fun. Especially when they have email and I type out the bid and email it to them while we are still talking! I do mention what I'm doing so they don't think I'm texting while talking to them!

 

[MasterBlaster]

 

[Jobber]

Thanks! I have been trying to make being in the forums and various communities more of a focus for us. We used to be in the forums but we sounded too professional, now I try and keep it more laid back and friendly.

I also find it odd that no other companies are trying to connect with people on the forums. It's the best way to directly talk to you guys.

Hah! Thats awesome. Maybe it will not stay fun forever, but as long as it is not a pain thats good. The faster you get with Jobber and the less you have to use it the better.

We hear of a lot of people doing that, sending the quote right in from of them and we always hear that it impresses the customer. As long as they don't think you are ignoring them.

-Landen

 

[lumberjack]

I was typing a quote for stump grinding while talking to the customer. [Minor Hero Moment]He asked if I was texting, and right as I said no and explained, his phone dinged with the email of the quote coming in. [/Minor Hero Moment].

I think if I get an iPad with mobile data, it would look better to the customer than some kid (I'm 27) pecking away at his phone while carrying on a conversation without eye contact.


Another something that would be helpful for me on the quotes front would be the option to switch a quote to an estimate on the page. My default is set to give quotes, which is what I normally do, fixed bids for a given parameter of work. However, given my diversity of work, I commonly have jobs that are sold hourly. Like yesterday I submitted a $14k hourly estimate on a job. In the notes I listed that it was an estimate, but a little check box to alter the default setting would be nice.

Also, it would be nice to have the option to move the notes up to the body area of the quote to keep the signature line on the same page.




Another thing that I will likely add is an exclusions/qualifier/disclaimer page. Our old contracts had this wordage:

"All work is to be done on property located at the above address. Signatures below give Rutherford Contracting LLC (RC) and its employees permission to access the property and perform the described work. Signatures also certify that the scope of work is on property owned by you and/or the work is within your rights to have performed. RC is not responsible for damage done to unknown septic systems, irrigation systems, underground wiring, unstable soil, etc. RC is not responsible for future settling of backfilled areas."

However a second page with places to initial/sign would likely be better on this new, cleaner outline. The page could be generated on another program, but a way to integrate it with Jobber would be snazzy. Another idea would be to have default notes that populate the body are of the quote for given services. For example excavator mowing is <3-4" material in hardwoods, <4-5" in softwoods. Or for stump grinding/excavation, that we are not responsible for unmarked/unknown underground utilities.

 

[Jobber]

Thats awesome! iPad would definitely be a good choice since Jobber works really well on that. You can switch views if you need to easier and our designer has started working on a responsive design for tablets.

We actually just pushed out a new update to the PDF template designer that is for quotes, invoices and jobs. In there you can change the Quote to say Estimate. Now this is for changing the template, and not on each individual quote. So if you keep changing back and forth you would have to keep changing the template back and forth each time.

You can see everything that the new designer can do here: https://learn.getjobber.com/hc/en-us/articles/201427410-Customizable-PDF-Templates

As for the signature line and notes at the bottom. The signature gets pushed to the next page because it makes sense that you would want them to read all of your terms and conditions before signing. So if you were to remove some text from those paragraphs, you could have it show all on one page. Some people have a lot of text in their terms, so it take up a full second page and the signature follows.

One thing you could do, is uncheck the show signature in the template designer, and at the top of your terms put : Signature________________ with a bunch of underlines so it shows up on top. There is a limit to how much you can fit before it goes to a second page though. I am going to figure out that number and add it to the documentation.

Another new addition is that you can now have custom fields show up on your PDF's made by the template designer. You might want to check that out and see if that will work for you. Sometime in the future we do want to make it so that you can send attachments/notes/images along with quotes when they get emailed.

-Landen

 

[lumberjack]

I have an iPad Air on the way with mobile internet.

An awesome thing happened this week... After I finished this job, on the drive back to the trailer to load up, I pulled out my phone, closed the job, and sent the invoice before I hit the ramps on the trailer. I thought that was neat.

More standardly, on the job I did before that, the customer was standing there when I was done. I opened the side window and was chatting with him. He asked if I would send a bill (used to be a big pain), I told him I was sending it as we talked. His check was in my POB two days later.

 

[lumberjack]

One more suggestion... I'm thinking of starting to use the expense tracking feature. I added it, it would be nice if there was a link in the Quick Create/Create button on the tablet/phone interface.

 

[Jobber]

Thats awesome. We have been hearing of that more and more. We have one guy who we keep in contact with and he tells everyone how at the end of each day, he grabs his scotch, takes 5 minutes to send all his invoices for the day and he's done.

Being able to invoice people when you have just done a great job and it is fresh in the customers mind makes it soo much easier to reduce the chance of a late payment. Thats wicked to hear that it worked for you.

Thats a good point about the expenses on mobile. Ill pass it along to our mobile dev Sean. Thanks!

-Landen

 

[NickfromWI]

Landen- maybe you can help. I have a small list of major gripes I have with jobber. Some are things that are basically never gonna happen and I have to just learn to deal with (like an iOS app)

However, I have one that I cannot believe you guys haven't fixed yet- even though I know you've known about it for many months now and I have been told was going to be fixed promptly. I'll explain-

So j just spent 20 minutes creating an estimate with 10-15 line items. Because typing in the phone on your tablet interface is tedious, and there's no iphone app to smooth the process, I zoom in to see what I'm typing. No big deal. Except while navigating the page, I swiped to scoot the page over so I could see the text box to the left, but instead of moving the page it went BACK .... DELETING THE WHOLE FN QUOTE!!!

Now even on this lovely website we are both viewing right now if you hit the back button, a little box pops up warning you that you'll lose your changes if you actually go back.

Can you light a fire over there to make that happen in jobber? This isn't a once a month problem. My wife and I text eachother whenever it happens to either of us and we know it happens on average 1.5x/wk for EACH of use. I've literally lost hours and hours of work over the last year with jobber.

And I know you have a mobile interface. I don't like it 1 bit. So that's not the solution.


love
nick

 

[NickfromWI]

IT JUUUUUST HAPPENED AGAINNNN!!!! Arghhhhh!!!!!


love
nick

 

[Jobber]

Hey Nick. I totally understand where you are coming from. I have done that myself on other sites where I accidentally swipe form left to right and I go back to the last page, loosing what I was doing.

I did not know about this, so I am going to email your post to our mobile guy and our CTO. Totally makes sense to have a notice asking if you are sure you want to leave the page when you are in the middle of entering into text fields.

As a side note, we have our Android app in a private beta and a few of our users are testing it right now. We have 2 developers on mobile so iOS is to follow soon after. I still have you mind for when we start beta testing the iOS app.

Even though you have probably mentioned this to someone here before, thanks for bringing it up again. I will do what I can to get a fix on that since its an important usability part of using Jobber.

I will let you know what happens.

-Landen

 

[Jobber]

Hey Nick, got a small update for you while we still look into it.

Turns out they did add a prompt before leaving the page a few months ago, and it works on all devices, except for iOS. We just tested it on Android and it prompts you before going back, but on iOS it is not. It seems that Apple changed how it works right after we did it. They are looking into what we can do since those changes done by Apple.

Right now, if you fill in description on line items that were there when you opened the quote, they will stay there if you go back and then forward again. But new line items that you add are being lost when swiping back.
They are looking into if they can add back the prompt with the changes Apple made or if there is anything else we can do.

-Landen

 

[lumberjack]

You have used Jobber a lot more than I, Nick... what don't you like about the mobile interface for creating quotes?

I bought a iPad with mobile data just for using Jobber while I was on the phone with the customer.

 

[NickfromWI]

The basic gist is that it's hokey and not ready for the major leagues. Example:

Why is that text all cluttered up?

There are other more substantial issues that make the mobile interface sucky for me.

When selecting line items while creating a quote you have to scroll to the item. I've got 50 items or so on the list. If I want to do INJECT- I have to scroll scroll scroll scroll to find it and hope I don't pass it because then I have to scroll back up. Just let me spell it. I don't have the time or patience to be scrolling all day.

The other major gripe- for the life of me I can't figure out how to see the calendar. I can't tell what I have to do 2 weeks ago. I've got to think that I'm just using it wrong. Maybe Landen can show me what I'm doing wrong, but regardless I hate scrolling anyway so even if I COULD see the calendar, I wouldn't bother with the mobile interface.

The tablet interface is better but not great. Looking forward to the ios app that should be out by 2016


love
nick

 

[Jobber]

I'll submit that messed up text as a bug and try to get it to happen on my phone. The calendar is something that does need a lot of work on the mobile interface.

I do have another update though since we just had our meeting. We are awaiting our certificate from Apple to be able to push to the app store. Sounds like we will be testing the iOS app in the office over the next week, and they have made some updates to the calendar in the native app. It was something that we started thinking about a couple months ago and working on making it better. Actual release date to everyone we don't know, but we are making progress.

I don't think you are doing anything wrong, its just that it does need a lot of work. We instead decided to focus on the native apps, since more people will use them instead of the mobile site. I don't know if we can open it up to beta testers just yet, but if we can I will post here first.

-Landen

 

[lumberjack]

That text does the same for me. It's a glitch, but it doesn't bother me all that much.

For list of services, I have mine arranged alphabetically, ~25 services so far, although I need to work on that. With them alphabetically listed, I have no issue scrolling to what I'm looking for.

To move side to side, stay in the middle third or so of the screen, outside of that goes back/foward on the browser.


The calendar I don't use, but I could certainly see how it would be an important asset.

 

[NickfromWI]

To move side to side, stay in the middle third or so of the screen, outside of that goes back/foward on the browser.

Well derrrr. But the difference is quite subtle. Also- it can happen accidently when you just look away for a second AND the on screen safari back button is RIGHT next to the add item button. So regardless of the swiping thing it happens just by pressing the button accidently.



love
nick

 

[Jobber]

We have had a bunch of updates over the mont of april and a big one just this last weekend.

We now have integration with Xero Accounting! It is similar to QuickBooks Online and we have quite a few people ask if we would eventually have integration with Xero.

Not sure if anyone here uses Xero and Jobber but if you do you might want to check out the blog post: http://blog.getjobber.com/2014/04/april-feature-update-xero-integration-beta/

And about mobile apps, offline capability is being worked on a lot trying to get it working well. Still waiting for our provisioning certificate from Apple so we can start testing the iOS app.

-Landen

 

[lumberjack]

Is there a way to batch print job sheets?

Next week I have 20 stump grinding jobs to do for example. If there was a way to earmark those jobs and arrange them in a list in the program, that would be ideal, but batch printing the jobs and arranging them in order would also work. I would rather not have to open each job and print individually.

 

[matdand]

Invoices too. Batch printing a month of invoices would be nice!

 

[Jobber]

Is there a way to batch print job sheets?

Next week I have 20 stump grinding jobs to do for example. If there was a way to earmark those jobs and arrange them in a list in the program, that would be ideal, but batch printing the jobs and arranging them in order would also work. I would rather not have to open each job and print individually.

You probably already know about Day Sheets but they will work for printing out all the jobs for a day. You can also just go to the Jobs tab and print that page. Jobber knows to format it a bit but that is one area where I would like to see it be a bit better.

Batch printing for jobs is a very interesting idea. I will see what the devs think about that.

matdand, you can batch invoice and choose to either send them by email or print them: https://learn.getjobber.com/hc/en-us/articles/200648875-Billing-Invoicing#batch_invoicing

You just email yourself the two pdfs, one with the mailing list labels and the other with all of the invoices that you can print.

-Landen

 

[sotc]

Any progress on the app?