Adding a Schedule

Schedules are easily set up in the system, and generate the upcoming reports or tasks for every visit — including the blank report form in your reporting application when a report is due.

Schedules can be repeating, in which case the system continually manages new reports for you until you stop the schedule, or One Time in the case you wish to put a single event on the calendar, like meeting a plumber.

To set up or edit a schedule, go to Scheduling (the Schedules tab) and either click an existing schedule to edit it, or click Add Schedule. You can also do the same from the Schedules tab of the property itself.

To add or update a schedule, fill in the fields as follows:

• Property: select the property from the dropdown list.
• Report Title: enter the title you want to use on the report every time that a report is created. Examples could be: Smith Residence Home Visit, Smith Monthly Car Drive, Smith Quarterly Air Filter Change, etc.
• Type: select whether you are scheduling a Report or a Task (see Tasks vs Reports).
• Template: if you are scheduling a Report, you must select a report template to use to create the report for this schedule. If you are scheduling a Task, no template is required and this field does not appear.
• Technician: select which employee will be assigned the report when created. A technician is always required.
• Start Date and Start time: when you wish the schedule to start. If the schedule is ongoing, enter the next scheduled visit.
• Recurrence: choose Daily, Weekly, Semi-Monthly, Monthly or One Time. For every recurrence you can choose a Repeat Every interval as well, which works together with the recurrence to determine how frequently the report repeats. As an example, setting the recurrence to Weekly and Repeat Every to 2 creates a schedule that repeats every two weeks. Setting the recurrence to Daily and Repeat Every to 90 creates a schedule that repeats every 90 days. Semi-Monthly works a little differently — semi-monthly is defined as happening exactly twice per month on a particular weekday. The weekday is determined by the Start Date, and then you specify in the Week field whether it falls in the 1st & 3rd week or the 2nd & 4th week of the month. As an example, if your start date is a Wednesday and you select 2nd & 4th, the scheduler creates visits on the 2nd Wednesday and the 4th Wednesday of each month. Monthly offers a Monthly on choice: either the same day of the month as the start date, or a particular weekday of the month (the 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th — for example “the 2nd Tuesday”).
• No End Date or End Date: if you wish the schedule to repeat until you delete it, leave No End Date checked. If you wish for the schedule to only repeat for a certain period of time, uncheck it and enter your desired End Date.
• Auditor Hint: the label varies depending upon your reporting system. If you are using MonitorQA, whatever you enter in this field appears in the reporting app in the “Auditor Hint” box. For SafetyCulture and HWIT Reporting, this is a note that appears with the report in HWIT and on the technician’s phone.
• Billing Item and Billing Rate: if you want completed reports to create a Billing Item, select the item from this dropdown and enter the rate next to it. Upon completion of each report that this schedule generates, the visit’s Billing Item is written (see the Invoicing documentation for more information on using Billing Items). Further charges for a particular visit — supplies, extra time — are added on that report itself with + Add billing item (Tracing Billing Between Reports and Invoices).
• Email & text (Tasks only): when the Type is Task, an Email & text panel appears where you can prepare the Email Subject, Email Body and Text Message — the same fields you would set on an individual Task. Every task this schedule generates starts with what you enter here, so you set the message once instead of on each visit. You can still adjust an individual task’s email later from the Reports/Tasks screen. This panel does not appear for a Report.

Click Create Schedule (or Save when editing).

Extra billing items

Some visits always carry more than one charge. For example: a Home Watch Visit plus a Pool Check plus Mileage. Add the extra charges to the schedule once, and every completed visit bills them all.

1. Open the schedule and find Extra billing items, under the Billing Item.
2. Click Add.
3. Choose the Billing Item. The description and rate fill in from the item; change them if you need to.
4. Enter the Quantity, then click Done.
5. Repeat for each extra charge, then click Save.

Good to know:

• The extra charges are written when each visit is completed, next to the visit’s own Billing Item. They show on the report’s billing items marked From schedule.
• Skipped or deleted visits bill nothing.
• A change you make to the extra charges applies to every visit not yet completed. Completed visits keep what they billed.
• If an extra charge did not happen on a visit (the pool was not checked, for example), delete that charge from the report’s billing items.
• Users who are not allowed to see rates do not see this section.

How schedules work in the system

1. When you save a schedule, the system immediately creates its upcoming reports or tasks out to your Report Creation Horizon (60 days by default), starting with the Start Date. Every morning the window is extended so there is always that much planned work ahead. See Advanced Scheduling: How Visits Are Generated.
2. For a Report, the report form is created in your reporting application ahead of the visit (7 days ahead by default, the Visit Form Generation Horizon). For a Task, no report form is created.
3. If you modify a schedule, the system deletes its existing uncompleted reports and regenerates them based on the Start Date and recurrence you have selected.
4. Scheduled reports and tasks are “self correcting” — they adjust their dates automatically when you complete one early or late. As an example, you have a weekly report each Tuesday, but on a particular week you complete the report on Wednesday — future reports continue on Wednesdays. If you wish to move it back to Tuesday, just complete the report on a Tuesday and all following reports adjust accordingly. You can use this to move a bi-weekly schedule by a week as well.
5. Schedules avoid In Residence dates automatically — see In Residence Processing.
6. You cannot move a schedule to a different property — delete the existing schedule and enter a new one.
7. Deleting a schedule permanently removes it and all of its incomplete reports, past and future. Completed reports are not affected.
8. Need the same one-off report for many properties at once (a storm check, for example)? Use Mass Add Schedule — see Mass Creating Reports.