InflatableOffice has a very sophisticated conflict management system. The following topic explains it in detail.
Definitions:
- Lead - An inquiry into your company for your services. These are managed on the Leads page. They can have the following different status: Quote, Hold, Contract, Confirmed, Complete.
- Quote - The starting point of a lead. A price estimate for your services was prepared, recorded, and displayed. This is the only status of lead that is not included in availability checks.
- Hold - Your customer is interested, and you want to hold the selected rentals and their quantities for that particular time and duration. Each rental is given a Priority Time based on the time that you chose to hold the lead.
- Contract - Once your customer has requested a contract, you upgrade the lead status to Contract while you prepare, send, and save their contract.
- Confirmed - Once your customer confirms the event (by returning a deposit, contract, etc.), you will want to set the lead status to confirmed. You will then be able to record further correspondence with your customer.
- Complete- Once the event is past and the balance is received, mark the lead complete to keep it out of your way.
- Priority Time - The time set to a rental to record the current booking time, and consequently, give it a priority in the conflict management system.
Usage:
1) You do not have to follow any particular order when classifying leads. You may change their status at any time to any status. This will have an effect on conflict management though.
2) Upgrading from Quote to any other status sets a Priority Time for each rental selected in that lead.
3) Downgrading to a Quote from any other status removes the Priority Time each rental selected in that lead.
4) Changing the status between Hold, Contract, Confirmed, or Complete has no effect on the Priority times for the rentals unless a rental quantity is increased/decreased, a new rental is selected, or a current rental is deselected.
5) Each time a new rental is selected or the rental quantity is increased for leads classified as Hold, Contract, or Confirmed, the Priority Time for that rental is set to the current time. If a rental quantity is decreased while a lead is classified as Hold, Contract, Confirmed, or Complete, that lead maintains priority for the rental but only at the new quantity. If a rental is deselected while a lead is classified as Hold, Contract, Confirmed, or Complete, that lead loses priority for that rental.
6) There are two types of conflicts, firm and potential. Firm conflicts designate overlapping rental bookings. Potential conflicts are used to warn you of close rental bookings. We use a cushion to detect these potential conflicts. If the travel, setup, and tear down times are empty, an 8 hour cushion will be applied to the start and end of the lead. If the times are not empty, a 1 hour cushion is applied to the start and end of the lead.
7) Allowing Customers to view availability has the following effect. Pop-up Quotes from the Customer Quote page will show the rental in red if that quantity of the rental is unavailable.
8) Exclamation points are used to alert you to a special situation with a lead. These are red if there is a firm conflict or customer request. They are yellow if there is a potential conflict or in cases where you have flagged the lead for followup. Only one exclamation point is shown at a time with the following priority: firm conflict, customer request, potential conflict, and flag for follow up.
9) When viewing a lead, the conflicting rentals are red or yellow. Hovering your cursor over their text will show you a time based chart with the conflicting leads. The text on the chart shows you the lead time span, organization name, and rental quantity. You may click on the leads to go to them.
10) Conflicts on the leads page are only shown when a lead is classified as Hold, Contract, Confirmed, or Complete. However, once the lead end time has past, it will not show conflicts even if they exist.
