Declaring a Service Order as Work Suspended

Declaring a Service Order as Work Suspended


Declaring a Service Order as Work Suspended

On any service request you have – you may decide you to discontinue work for various reasons, such as:

1. Discovery of additional required work or extended problems with work in progress.
2. Extended Warranty company refusal to cover a repair based upon their inspection and observation of lack of required maintenance or “wear and tear exclusion.”
3. Third party insolvency after they have approved the process but now it appears payment will not be forth coming.
4. Customer requested some repairs and now has reservations or second thoughts on the process.

Scenario #1: is mostly covered another document entitled: “Notifying customers about changes to firm job estimates.” The only real application of this writing is to note that the Status of the Service Order might be set to “Seek Approval” while waiting to communicate with the customer.

Scenario #2: Warranty Company refusal: some warranty companies have you tear the vehicle down for inspection prior to authorization. Always require any customer requesting warranty repairs to sign a statement authorizing the tear down for inspection and include a statement that ‘It may not be practical to “Open and close” the potential problem, since parts may be broken, and broken part s may not reassemble safely.” Then the customer is responsible for reasonable labor to determine the detail and extent of the failure. And you are absolved from reassembling a broken system.

With the vehicle disassembled we may appeal to the customer for repair authorization or appeal to other interested parties for assistance. Again we place the “Seek Approval” status on the invoice while we await resolution.

Scenario #3: Third Party Insolvency: this occurs infrequently, and mostly with insurance repairs or fraudulent attempts at repair. The later is generally perpetrated against the dealer with a local phone and a photocopied certificate of insurance or extended service policy and an accomplice at the phone site approving the repair. You only caught on because you did not want to wait for a cheque and the company credit card they provided was not approved. In any case, repairs have been processed, parts and labor may be installed, and we need to account for the decrease in inventory or increase in payroll expense.

Mark the status as “Seek Approval”, but don’t stop there. Customer collusion may be involved and asking the customer for payment might be effective if they understand that is the only way you will release the vehicle. Insurance companies lapse on payments or reduce approvals with some regularity – if the vehicle was already released we don’t have much to do beyond writing off the balance.

One way to write off the complete balance that will not be paid is by transferring the Warranty Invoice to an Internal Warranty/Insurance Vendor. Parts installed and labor provided, are then offset by a charge against “Bad Debt” (some people refer to it as “Goodwill”). The most direct way of accomplishing this is by:

1. Selecting the approved warranty invoice
2. Choose \File \Unapprove Invoice
3. Click “Yes” in the dialogue box
4. After highlighting the Vendor that refused payment, and copying to the notes area of the invoice, select the appropriate Internal Vendor and overwrite the vendor information. The Invoice can now be adjusted, marked approved, paid on account, and then charged to bad debt.

Scenario #4: a customer has requested repairs or acceded to your suggestion of having some repairs, and is now refusing or requesting removal. “Seek Approval” if it’s a question of source of funds. It might be resolved by extending some temporary credit. Maybe it’s the result of a misunderstanding, or expecting some pecuniary assistance from the sales department, or the factory.