A service is the work performed by your company. Services make up the Contract or Work Order Opportunities you estimate and must be created in the service catalog in Administration before being added to an estimate on an opportunity.

​Some examples of services include:

To create, edit, or deactivate a service, you must have:

✅System Admin access or Branch Admin with Enhanced Branch Admin Security enabled.

2. Click the Estimating tab.

3. Click the Service Catalog tab.

4. Click the blue New button.

5. First, enter the Service Name using a prefix for the matching division.

🧠 The Service Name shows in Aspire Mobile to your Crew Leaders within a Ticket.

6. Next, enter the Display Name.

The Display Name is what will be displayed on your opportunity and invoice layouts. This will automatically populate when the Service Name is entered, so if you’d like something different on your final invoice to your customer, then change the name here.

⚠️ Check your spelling since this is how this service will be displayed to your client.

🧠 The Display Name shows in Aspire Mobile to your Crew Leaders within a Ticket.

7. Enter the Abbreviation. This is limited to 20 characters.

The Service Abbreviation is also how the service name is displayed on the Schedule Board and in Aspire Mobile on the Daily Plan screen:

8. Select an existing Service Type. Service Types are used to classify services and associate each service with a division.

9. Select the specific branch where the service will be available or leave it blank if available for all branches.

10. Select the item types that are taxable.

The Taxable Items field lets you specify which item types are considered taxable for the service in the service area.

If your company does business in multiple states that have different taxation requirements, you can set exceptions to the taxable item by state or province by clicking the Service Tax Override icon to display the Service Tax Override screen.

Create Service Tax Overrides for additional states by clicking the plus icon.

When this is done, a new line will be added to the list at the bottom. Select the state or province for which the override should be created and click the checkboxes for the items taxed in that state.

If your company is not required to collect taxes in any of the service areas, you do not need to add any item types to the Taxable Items field.

11. If desired, enter a minimum charge that Aspire is able to recommend for the service.

The service price is calculated based on materials, labor, markup, and profit. If it is less than the minimum charge, then the minimum charge will be invoiced.

12. If needed, enter in a sort order. This affects the order in which services are added to the Route Screen. It also is responsible for reordering services on a contract opportunity once the estimate is saved.

For example, services entered for Janitorial could have four services with a sort order:

If an estimator selects,

Once the estimate is saved, the services will be reordered to:

13. If needed, select a Custom Form for the Crew Leader to complete once a work ticket has been completed.

📑To learn more about Custom Forms in Aspire Mobile, please read this article.

📑To learn more about Custom Forms in Crew Mobile, please read this article

14. Check the box if the service should be available on Contracts. The Contract Service checkbox allows you to choose if a service will be available when estimating a contract.

Services are available for work orders regardless of whether this checkbox is checked.

15. You can also check the box to Require Approval before the ticket can be invoiced.

When this box is checked, any ticket completed for the service must be approved before it can be invoiced.

📌 Note: It’s recommended that all T&M services should require approval.

16. The Multi-Visit checkbox allows crew leaders to complete the work ticket and any requested forms, without putting the work ticket in Complete status. It also allows auto expenses for subcontractors to be purchased per time-period rather than requiring that the work ticket be complete.

🧠 Multi-visit services are commonly used for Seasonal Snow Contracts wherein a single work ticket is established for the entire snow season. Time is allocated to those work tickets through multiple visits as needed.

Check this box for your services that need to be used as multi-visit services.

17. Default Pay Code is used to specify a particular pay code associated with that service and overrides the employee’s standard pay code. This is commonly used for specialty or snow services since employees are often paid a premium for working on these types of services.

📑To learn more about Snow Pay Codes, please watch this video.

18. Workers’ Comp Code can be used by a payroll provider to specify hours worked within a workers’ comp code.

This field can be used by companies that integrate their external payroll systems with Aspire.

Workers' Comp Codes can be set at the service level when exporting employee time from Aspire to another system. Workers' comp codes may also be created for individual employees or divisions.

📑To learn more about Payroll integrations and their set up please visit here for QuickBooks Desktop, and here for other payroll systems.

19. Service descriptions are commonly displayed on a proposal layout to further describe the service to a client.

Here’s an example of a proposal with the service description included:

📌 Note: Service Descriptions are available to be displayed on opportunity proposals, but not available to be displayed on Invoice layouts.

20. Next, review if you need to add a service schedule.

For contract services, you can set standard service schedules that will be performed at standard intervals over the life of the contract.

When you schedule the visits associated with a recurring service, Aspire uses the service schedule to assist with bulk scheduling visits.

You can create multiple standard schedules for a single service based on the number of annual occurrences.

The Service Occurrence Schedule screen allows you to set standard service schedules for contract services that will be performed at standard intervals over the life of a contract.

📌 Note: If you select the Max check box, the scheduler cannot create occurrences greater than that shown in the Occur column for the month. This is used to enforce terms of contracts.

Here is an example of what a weekly service schedule (with 52 occurrences) may look like:

Here is an example of what an “every weekday” service schedule (with 260 occurrences) may look like:

Under the Total Occurrences field, you can specify the number of service occurrences for this schedule. For the Recurring Type field, you can choose different options to specify how Aspire will schedule recurring visits for the service:

The Hours field in each column allows you to set a percentage that Aspire should adjust the number of hours to perform the service in a specific month.

21. The Visit Checklist section allows you to attach checklists to services that will appear in Aspire's Mobile application. This helps your team make sure specific tasks are carried out before a work ticket is completed.

22. When finished, click Save in the upper right.

Once a service is created in the system, it is not able to be deleted. However, it can be deactivated using the yellow toggle at the top of the service’s screen.

Use the radio button to make the service Active or Inactive.

This especially applies when copying estimates to new opportunities.

Deactivation of a service on an opportunity with active work tickets can be done, as changes are not retroactive to services in progress; it’s a good idea to wait to deactivate services after an opportunity is Complete, if possible.

If you copied an estimate with a deactivated service, when you complete the opportunity the system will populate a box with the name of anything that is inactive.

You'll be notified there are inactive items or services on your new estimate and require you to confirm you want to proceed with creating the estimate.

You can switch services to a different Branch, but not a Division. You would need to create a new Service Type to assign markups to your new division.

🧠You would need to change the Division on the Service Type. Because a Service Type was created, this allows you to fill in this field for your desired Division. The same service can be used across all Divisions, but note that they will be marked up differently in Pricing Markups in Administration.

If you’re using the service on a template, you would need to remove and re-add the service that was moved to any template since the old service would have had the old assigned Division on it.

No! Existing opportunities that were estimated with the original service tax set-up will not be changed with your new tax service settings. No future invoices will be affected either.

Changes to the Service Catalog do not affect existing opportunities and their estimates. Any change made today would affect any newly created opportunities and their estimates.