In almost all areas of business, the client is given a warranty on the work performed, parts installed or the goods sold.
Clients can apply for a warranty for different reasons: defective goods or spare parts (i.e. fault of the supplier), poorly performed service (fault of the technician), or other reasons. In any case, if you provide a warranty, you should replace the product or re-provide the service free of charge.
Presetting Your Account to Work With Warranty Work Orders
1. Use a different work order type for warranty cases.
A warranty work order is a new work order which means you don't need to edit or make changes to an old closed work order.
This is important for several reasons:
You can keep a record of warranty work orders and track their percentage of the total work order number.
You won't have a mess in calculating employees' salaries.
It’s just not logical, as you have already closed that work order and taken payment from the client. If you reopen the work order and edit it (for example, reduce the price), the system will automatically offer to refund the client when you close it again. But you are not returning anything — you are redoing the work or changing the product for free.
If your account does not have this type of work order, you can create it yourself. Read more about adding work order types in this article.
2. Set a zero price.
Since we usually take no money from the client for warranty repairs, all services and parts must be added at zero price. For services, we simply edit the price to 0, and for stock items, we can use the “Zero” price.
Read more about creating and using a zero price in this article.
3. Set up payroll calculation for warranty work orders.
When creating or using warranty work order types, there are several scenarios for calculating employees' wages. Some companies reduce the payment to technicians for such work orders, some do not pay at all, and some want the cost of the part to be deducted from the salary if the breakdown was the employee’s fault.
To implement various scenarios, you can create different work order types and set up different payroll calculation rules for different work order types.
For example, there are two types of work orders: Warranty (employee’s fault), Warranty (reduced percentage), and Warranty (zero calculation).
You should set up the following calculation rule to ensure that the employee gets a smaller percentage or amount for the work in the warranty work order than in the original one.
Select the “To specialist for the labor or service in order” rule and specify the “Warranty (employee’s fault)” work order type and a % calculation method. Next, specify the calculation from the Profit and a negative profit value (e.g., -100000). The bonus value must be 100%. Also, check "Add the cost of products written off at 0".
As a result, when an employee adds a service and a zero-priced item to a work order, the employee's salary calculation will have a minus in the amount equal to the cost of the part.
Important: use this calculation method only if the work order contains a service with a cost of zero and the service has no cost price.
If you do not want your employees to either get any reward or have a payroll deduction for the work under warranty, then configure the following calculation rule.
Select the “To specialist for the labor or service in order” rule and then specify the “Warranty (zero calculation)” work order type and a calculation method. Below specify a calculation from the Sum or Profit and set a commission value.
As a result, when an employee performs work on the usual work order, he or she will receive the standard commission. If the employee performs work on a warranty work order, he or she gets a reduced commission. Please note that a reduced commission will not be displayed on the Salary tab in the employee profile or in the calculation on the Finance > Payroll calculation.
Processing Warranty Work Orders
1. Find the closed work order the client refers to for warranty.
You can search for the work order by asset serial number, client’s phone number, work order number, or barcode. Learn more about searching for work orders in this article.
2. Click the Actions button and select Continue in new work order.
A new order creation window will open with the client and asset information already filled in. You only need to edit the work order type and information in other fields to finish creating the work order.
Then you work with the warranty work order according to your processes.
As a result, when you work with warranty work orders as a different type, you’ll get:
a correct payroll calculation;
the ability to make different calculations for employees depending on the type of warranty;
analyze warranty work orders with work order reports or Company Insights report (how many there were, which employees are most often called for warranty and how much you lose on that, understand the reasons: fault of the technician, supplier, or something else).