Three years ago ARPA grew to whereas I needed something better than an excel spreadsheet to track calls, customers, etc…

I looked at them all... I chose ESC. Not going to lie, it was price, but now I am happy I chose ESC.

What does it do for me?

It took about 1 week, or less for me to learn the program, by myself.
It took about 2-3 days training to teach my dispatcher.

ESC tracks all my service calls. Entering them, once the customer is in the system is a few mouse clicks. Then drag it, time stamp it when the call was promised to the customer under the techs name. You can stamp the call pending, waiting on parts, notes (a folder) traveling or working. At a glance I know “every” call that is not completed and their status.

When the phone rings, the dispatch board pops up that customers info, all of it!

There is a section on the dispatch call that we record all kinds of info for that particular call, parts cost, special instructions, who we talked to customer wise, and if ordered parts, who we talked to at the parts house and when we will get it, etc. The possibilities here are endless, use your imagination.

You can time and date stamp the call so it turns red if you have missed the promised time. This is VERY helpful when you are running 100 miles an hour in the office and a tech gets bogged down on a call and you forget that they need to be at a certain place at a certain time.

When the call is completed, it gets invoiced, I do mainly commercial, and so nothing is COD. Taxes are done automatically. I can track the actual hours and parts cost for each job compared to the call, customer, tech, etc. Even call backs, warranty, etc are tracked. I look at this every so often to see how techs are doing, and if I need to adjust, on the spot, pricing anywhere. This feature alone has increased my profit tremendously!

The system has an inventory that I break down, one for each service vehicle, and what is in my shop. If a part is used in inventory, a couple of mouse clicks, it is added to the invoice automatically. Every week the dispatcher runs an inventory report for parts used and sends it to my supplier. Monday AM, the parts are in a box for that van. No more loosing inventory…mysteriously…. or not having a part on the van because you forgot about it.

The program has a flat rate system where as you input all the info. Not going to lie, I tried it, got impatient and bought a flat rate program and ESC merged it automatically!