Once you have received quotes from your contractors, you have the option to either:
1. Ask the landlord for approval of the quote
2. Ask an external user for approval of the quote
3. Approve the quote yourself and instruct the job
This article will walk you through option 2.
Once you have received the quotes from a contractor (please click here to understand this works flow better) one option is to ask the landlord for approval of the quote before you award the contractor the job.
The issue status will be 'Request for quotes ended' and this will be displayed on the top left hand side of the screen under the address.
On the 'Next steps' tab you will see that the next step lies with you as the agent and the 'Reminder date' will be today's date as the issue is back to your 'Issues requiring action'.
On the right hand side on the 'Next steps' tab further down there are two options for your next step; 'Award job' or 'Request quote approval'.
If you do not need a quote approval you can click 'Award job', but if you do need quote approval, then you will need to click 'Request quote approval':
When you click 'Request quote approval' you will see the following pop up:
On this example there are two quotes, you will need to select the quotes which you would like to send for approval and then you will be asked who you would like to approve the quote. You can also select the box below to say that you would like to allow the reviewer to see all quote documentation (if this has been added):
The drop down options are as below:
In this example we are going to select 'External user'. You will then need to select an external user on the pop up. You can select them by clicking on 'Change'. You will need to start typing in their name or email address. The external user will need to be on your system already in order to pull through. Once you are happy, you can click 'Proceed to next step':
You will now notice that the issue status has updated to 'Awaiting user review', the 'Reminder date' has moved to a date in the future, taking the issue out of your 'Issues requiring action' and then 'Task to do' has moved from the agent to an external user:
The external user will receive an email similar to that of below:
They will need to click on 'Review issue and quotations' to login to the system.
Their system looks similar to yours, but more stripped back. They have 4 tabs; 'Next steps', 'Details', 'Comments' and 'Appointments'.
On 'Appointments' they can see view of all appointments which have taken place for this particular issue.
On 'Comments' they can send a comment to the agent only.
On 'Details' they can see all of the details regarding the issue, but this will not include the contact information of the reporting occupier, so no telephone number or email address.
On the 'Next steps' tab the external user will be able to progress the issue:
They will then be presented with the quote(s) and they will need to click on the quote to open it up and see the details:
A summary of the costs are shown on the left hand side of each option:
When clicking on each quote, it will open up the quotes and they can choose to either approve or reject the quote:
When they reject one of the quotes, they will need to give a reason and then press 'Save reason and reject quote'. They cannot reject a quote without giving a reason. Once the quote has been rejected it will go back to the agent:
Once they have provided a reason they can click on 'Save reason & reject quote':
The external user is then taken back to the 'Next steps' tab page where they will need to click on 'Review the quotations' again to review the second quote:
On this example, the second quote will be approved. Once they have clicked on 'Review the quotations' they will see the second quote left to approve or reject:
When they click on the quote they will see the full details and on this example they approve the quote:
Once they have clicked on 'Approve', the external user will be brought back to the 'Next steps' tab and they can see that the issue status has now updated to 'Quotes reviewed' and they can clearly see on their 'Next steps' tab that there are no further actions for them to take:
On the agent side the issue status has also updated to 'Quotes reviewed', the 'Reminder date' is back to today's date and the issue now lies back with the agent to take the next step:
On the 'Next steps' tab, you can click on 'Review quotes' which will show you the quote(s) and you can clearly which quote the external user has approved:
You can click on the rejected quote to find out why this has been rejected:
From the 'Next steps' tab you will see that there is one next step available: 'Award job':
You will then see your quotes and you will need to click on the approved quote to open it up and award the job:
This will open up the quote and if you scroll down you will be able to award the job to the contractor:
Once you click on 'Award job' the pop up will expand and you can then scroll down and click on 'Instruct job'. The reason for this is that it allows you to make changes to the invoice and also add instruction notes, instruction documents and health and safety documents.
Once happy, please click 'Instruct job':
You will now notice that the issue status has updated to 'Job awarded, awaiting appointment date', the 'Reminder date' will have updated to a future date and then job is now with the contractor you awarded the job to:
From here, the job can be progressed as normal.