Over the years we have collected labor to apply to work orders in a myriad of manners. We started from an attendance time card which the mechanics completed at the end of the day telling us what times they worked on which jobs. Then we moved to individual job time cards while still retaining an attendance time card for payroll. Then some of the companies got racy and had only one time card which fed work in process but was data entered to the payroll system. Can you imagine? Then we had one card feed both systems – think of that some efficiencies arriving. Finally technology showed up and we had scanning devices either hand held or bar code scanners to record time. A long road travelled over forty years.
The objective is still the same isn’t it? We need to collect time against a job so that we can update standard job times, record time to create an invoice for the customer and provide an entry into the payroll for the technical so they can be paid.
So now we have laptops and tablets and PDA’s. And each of these devices can be used to collect labor information.
So why not take the leap and get labor entered by the technician and give them a device with which they can place their own parts orders? I have no idea why we can’t get this done. So contact your business system supplier and tell them you want the technician to be able to use a laptop or a tablet, an iPad, Galaxy or any Android device or a Thinkpad Tablet, like I use, any of which can be connected to the internet to have access to the electronic parts catalogues and service documentation. They can get that done for you. Then both you and the technicians will be much further ahead than with what you are using today. The time is now.