Trade Types

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Feature enablement & creation of Trade Types

Trade types will help you segment and manage businesses that cut across multiple trades with unique branding, contacts/addresses. It will also help with better reporting, grouped by trades. Additionally, it will help improve operational efficiency through exclusivity to users to access jobs, quotes, invoices, etc., pertaining to their specific trade type(s).

• Customer Action Required: Contact [email protected] to enable the Trade Type feature.
• Limits: Up to 25 active Trade Types per organization.
• Post-Enablement: Create Master Trade Types via 

• Click the “Create” button to create the new master trade type.

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Entity relationships and mapping use cases

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Onboard to Zuper Trade Types

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a. Job Categories & Jobs

• Job Category Creation & Edits: Once trade types are created, the next critical step is to map your job categories to the right trade type(s). As mentioned in the mapping table above, a job category can be mapped to one or more trade type(s) based on your specific business needs. For e.g., A job category ‘Maintenance’ shall be associated with both HVAC & Electrical, (or) a job category ‘AC Installation’ shall be associated with only HVAC. The screen below helps you understand how to map trade type(s) to a job category.

Since Zuper enables mapping job categories to skills and service tasks, associating trade type(s) with job categories virtually establishes traceability to those skills and service tasks.

• Job Creation & Edits: Once this is done, when creating a job, you’ll be able to map a job to only one of the trade types. During job creation, selecting a trade type for the job automatically shortlists the job categories mapped to it. This will eliminate the need to endlessly scroll through all job categories when creating a job.
  • Pick Job Trade (e.g., HVAC) → Locks in the trade type.
  • Pick Job Category (e.g., “AC Repair”) → Only shows categories for that trade.
  • Add Products/Parts → Only see parts linked to that trade (like HVAC filters).

Additionally, mapping a job to a trade type ensures it’s visible only to users who belong to that trade type (we will see how users can be mapped to a trade type below).

• Line-Item/Product Selection Within Job: Additionally, when adding line items to a job, they’ll be automatically shortlisted/filtered based on the job trade type (we’ll see how to map products to trade types soon, below ). This again helps users find the right parts/services for a job rather than weeding through an infinite list of parts/services available within your organization.
  • Parts belonging to job trade type: Auto-filters (e.g., thermostats for HVAC job).
  • When users are associated with more than one trade type, selecting the “Any” option lists parts across all their trade types. This shall be handy when a job must encompass parts cutting across multiple trades.

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b. Product Categories & Products

Product Category Creation & Edits: Once job categories are mapped to trade types, the next logical step is to map your product categories to those trade types. As mentioned in the mapping table above, a product category can be mapped to one or more trade type(s) based on your specific business needs. For example, A product category, Pumps, HWT, shall be mapped to ‘Plumbing’ trade type, while Air Conditioners, Furnaces shall be mapped to HVAC trade type, and finally, Consumables shall be associated with both. The screen below shows how to map trade type(s) to a product category. Illustration: A company has HVAC and Plumbing trades. They can create trade-specific catalogs, so each trade-focused user(s) sees only their items. Some items are shared. Go to:

• Category: “Air Filters”.
  Assign to: HVAC only.

• Category: “Sealants”.
  Assign to: HVAC and Plumbing.

Once done, the product category visibility across users will be displayed when selecting trade type(s).

• HVAC User(s): Air Filters, Sealants.
• Plumbing User(s): Sealants.

Parts/Services Creation & Edits: Once this is done, when creating a product, you’ll be able to map a product to a trade type. When creating a part or service, selecting a trade type automatically shortlists the product categories mapped to it. This will eliminate the need to scroll through all product categories when creating a part/service. As mentioned in the job section above, this will also enable auto-filtering of line items within a job by trade type. Go to:

• Product: “HEPA Air Filter”
  • Trade Type: HVAC
  • Product Category: Air Filters (auto-filtered based on product category mapping).
• Product: “Universal Thread Sealant”
  • Trade Type: Plumbing
  • Product Category: Sealants (auto-filtered based on product category mapping).

Once done, the visibility of product(s) across users will be shown below.

• HVAC User(s): HEPA Air Filters.
• Plumbing User(s): Universal Thread Sealants.

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c. Team & Dispatch Board

Teams Creation & Edits: After completing the job & product category mapping, we need to map teams into trade types. This will help sharpen the dispatching experience. Dispatchers will see only the team(s) filtered by trade type on the dispatch board. While a team can belong to a trade, Zuper allows it to be mapped to more than one trade type IF your business requires cross-functional/trade teams. Follow the steps below to associate trade type(s) with a team: Dispatch Board: Under the dispatch board, there’s a new multi-select filter that allows dispatchers to filter team(s) and job(s) based on the trade type(s). The filter will only show-up trade types that the user has access to. On selection of trade type(s):

• Dispatchers’ queues will only display jobs that belong to the selected trade type(s), along with jobs with no trade type at all.
• Similarly, Teams will also be restricted based on their trade type for the user to select. This will ensure dispatchers dispatch to the right team without worrying about dispatching across trade type(s), which could jeopardize the necessary skills, the right team, and availability.

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d. Users:

This is the last and most important part of the setup. This is the first step towards ensuring that users working on specific trades will see details specific to them and do not tread into/tamper other trade specific data even by mistake. User Creation & Edits: Mapping the correct trade types to user(s) is crucial while creating a user (or) editing it for existing user(s). As mentioned in the mapping table above, each user can be associated with one or more trade type(s) based on their scope of responsibilities within your business. Illustration: Assume an organization is part of both HVAC and Plumbing trades. They can assign users to specific trade types while creating/editing an existing user. Go to: For example, John Doe is part of the HVAC busines only. And Jane Smith is part of both the HVAC and Plumbing businesses. Enable Data Restriction: This is the company-level flag that imposes users’ data exclusivity (Restrict access to only Trade Type data?) – What jobs/job categories, invoices, quotes, products/product categories & teams that they can view and manage within Zuper. Without enabling this, trade types will just be an additional field across jobs, invoices, quotes, etc., with no control on user visibility. So, make sure you enable/disable this based on your business needs (for businesses using trade type “just” for reporting/organization jobs, this can be switched off). **Once switched on, **user visibility and access will be controlled based on their assigned trade type(s).

• HVAC User(s): Accesses HVAC jobs, invoices, quotes, products, etc.
• Plumbing User(s): Accesses Plumbing jobs, invoices, quotes, products, etc.
• Multi-Trade User(s): Accesses both HVAC & Plumbing jobs, invoices, quotes, products, etc.

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Automatic flow of trade types between Jobs, Quotes & Invoices:

After a quote is accepted by a customer, when job(s) are created from the quote, the job automatically inherits to trade type of the quote from which it is created. Subsequently, when invoices(s) are generated for the job, they too automatically inherit the trade type from the job. The traceability and flow of trade type between jobs, quotes, and invoices are automatically maintained by Zuper. The same applies irrespective of the order of their creation. For example, if a job precedes the quote (or) invoice precedes a job, the downstream entity automatically inherits the trade type from its predecessor. As with a job, both invoices and quotes shall be mapped to only one trade type. Trade types of quotes and invoices are available in their respective details sections. Sample screens are presented below for reference.

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Filters, Views & Reports:

Filters & Views: With the introduction of trade types, it’ll be possible for you to create filters and views across all the listing pages based on trade types. This includes jobs, quotes, and invoice listing pages. Filter: The sample screen below will help you include the trade type as part of your views. Reports: To make the most out of the induction of trade types, it’s critical that they find their place in the major reports of Zuper. Hence, you’ll be able to find trade types as part of all the reports below. 1.     Job master 2.    Invoice master 3.    Product master 4.    Product group master 5.    Quote master 6.    User master 7.    Payment transaction

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In summary, trade types in Zuper serve as the foundation for organizing operations across multiple business lines/trades, or specialties. By carefully setting up trade types and aligning them with jobs, users, teams, products, and categories, you define the right boundaries for each business area/function, while enabling access to all the critical capabilities of Zuper.

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FAQs 

1. What will happen to existing jobs, quotes, and invoices that do not have trade types associated?

All the above entities will be visible to ALL the users as they are in the current state. If you want any of them to be restricted to certain business users, please edit them and update the trade types, individually (remember to enable the data restriction flag!).  

2. What if a pricelist associated with a certain trade type gets linked to a job from a different trade type (due to the customer being associated with that pricelist)?

The customer takes precedence. Hence, the pricelist will get applied on the job line-items. To avoid unintended pricelist impact, make sure you model pricelist on specific products/services. For example, if you want your HVAC VIP customers to get a ‘10%’ reduction on their maintenance services, create a pricelist with HVAC specific maintenance services alone. Hence, when a pricelist of HVAC trade types gets applied to Plumbing job through customer addition, Plumbing parts/services will be immune to HVAC pricelist impact.  

3. What will happen to my existing/saved filters & views?

Your saved filters/views remain intact. However, the results from those filters may look different depending on your trade type association and the data restriction flag.

• Data Restriction Flag is OFF → Behavior will remain largely unchanged.
• Data Restriction Flag is ON → User will only see records inside their trade type. Hence, a saved filter/view might show up “lesser data” for few users based on their trade type.

 

4. Is it possible to add a part/service belonging to a trade type to a job, invoice, quote from a different trade?

This is technically possible when a user is associated with more than one trade type. Just that they must choose a different trade type while adding line-items. While this helps cross-functional jobs involving items from multiple trades & businesses, users must be careful not to overstep this flexibility by skipping the mapping of products/product categories to right trade types. This will have a direct impact on trade type level reporting.  

5. Can I create a quote belonging to a trade type and then edit the association of its job/invoice to a different trade?

Yes. However, this is not recommended by Zuper. This again will have an impact on your reporting. We suggest updating the trade type of ALL traceable entities if you happen to update the trade type of one of them.  

6. Does Zuper synchronize with QuickBooks Online (QBO) based on trade types?

No. We do not support that yet. However, it is part of our future roadmap.  

7. When the visibility flag is on, will users be able to view ALL jobs, invoices and quotes belonging to their trade types? 

No. The visibility will also take into consideration their individual roles/custom roles. For e.g.,

• Admin view all the jobs, invoices & quotes belonging to the trades that they’re mapped to
• TLs will view only jobs, invoices & quotes that belong to their teams/team members filtered by trade types that they’re associated with
• FEs will view only job, invoices & quotes that belong to them filtered by trade types that they’re associated with