This post is to give a processor the basic concept of how to process a work order. Before I delve into the detailed training guides on processing orders on particular vendor portals, I want the processor to understand the some of the general rules of processing.
Video Transcription
Hello, this is Zayed Ahmed from ASLBPO and welcome to another edition of Property Preservation Training. Today, I will be talking about some of the basics of how to process a work order. The contractors work for different national companies such as MnM, Assetshield, MCS, etc. who issue work orders to these contractors to complete work on vacant properties. Our work as a processor, in this cycle, is to submit results to the national companies through their vendor portals. Although, the portals, which are either web based software or are install able applications of these national companies have different interfaces and are different from each other, there is a general pattern to the information they want and the way we submit the results. Basically, we can divide the process of submitting an order in 4 segments, which are:
A) Completing a Property Condition Report, which in short is also called a PCR.
B) Submitting bids to repair damages present in the property.
C) Uploading and labelling photos of the property
D) Lastly, invoicing for the work completed.
Property Condition Report:
The first section of a work order in any vendor portal is the PCR. Most PCR will contain a long list of questions pertaining to the condition of the property. A general set of questions which all PCR will have irrespective of which vendor portal you are working on are: the date at which you visited the property, termed the “completion date” which must be the same as date in the photos; questions regarding damages present in the property, also called the damage report section; and a general set of other questions regarding the type of property and its current condition. As you can see in the video, I have some screenshots of the PCR formats present in different vendor portals, namely Assetshield, MCS, MSI, MnM, Safeguard, and Five Brothers. As you can see, some are a long one page PCR as in the case of MSI, MnM and Safeguard while others are segmented themselves such as for Five Brothers, with different sections having queries about a specific topic. It is important that we always fill up the PCR correctly
Submitting Bids:
Submitting a bid means that we provide a statement to the national company saying that a certain damage or issue is present in the property and if the contractor is to repair or cure it they can do it at a certain price if the bank approves. Bid descriptions which we mostly have in pre-formats, need to be detailed and must contain the location of the damage or issue present, the amount or quantity of the damaged parts and the cause of the issue or damage for which it occurred along with how we will cure it. The price for which we can cure it is mostly calculated using web based software such as Repairbase or XactPRM.
The Photo Section:
The photo section is where we upload the photos of the property submitted by the contractor and label photos to show work done and support what was noted in PCR and the bids that were submitted. Common photos that are submitted in all work orders are the Street Sign photo, the Property Address photo and pictures of the front, side and back of the property as proof that the correct property was visited. All work done photos will also have a set of “before” photos, showing the condition before the work was done, a set of “action” or “during” photos showing the work being done and a set of “after” photos showing the condition after the work being done. These must always be clearly and correctly labelled as they are proof that the particular work that was instructed to be done was completed.
Invoice Section:
Lastly, the invoice section is where we invoice for the work that the contractor completed as per instructions. In orders where, the contractor did not complete any work and only visited the property, either because the national company asked for the contractor to report the condition of the property or because the work could not be completed for a particular reason, we invoice a “Trip charge” which is the charge for visiting the property and provide the reason of why the work was not completed if applicable.
Whichever vendor portal we work on, all the aforementioned will mostly hold true when processing a work order, the only difference is the interface of the portal in which a processor is working in and certain rules regarding to pricing and how the order is processed that is specific for the vendor portal or national company to which the results are being submitted to. Hope, this helps you to better understand how a work order is processed, till next time!