Table of Contents
Purpose 🧠
Within the clean industry, it is common that consumable goods, also known as consumables, are provided to your clients and are billable.
Consumables are things such as:
toilet paper
waste basket liners
hand soaps
and more!
In this article, we will discuss whether you should use consumables, how to setup consumable items, and how to estimate them within Aspire.
Should You Use Consumables in Aspire?
🤔 Here are a couple questions to consider if you should setup and manage consumables in Aspire:
Do you invoice your customers for consumables?
In your current estimates and proposals, do you job cost a consumables service with material items?
Using Consumables: Inventory or Purchased As Needed?
If you purchase consumables into inventory and distribute them as needed, you will need to add them to your item catalog and indicate that they are inventory items.
If consumables are purchased upon demand, you do not necessarily need to add them to your item catalog; these can be managed as one-time items during the purchasing process and allocated to either inventory or a direct job ticket.
Please reference our Creating a Purchase Receipt from the Quick Menu video for more information on the one-time item process.
Estimating Consumables
In this section, you'll go through setting up service types, services, and items. Then, you'll discover how to add those services and items to your estimates in contract and work order opportunities!
Adding Consumables to the Service Catalog
📌 Note: You should have already read Creating a Service for Commercial Clean article before reading this next section!
Here are some additional considerations where consumables may require unique service setup:
Service Types and Service Naming: Service Types are used to classify services and tie each service with a division. If consumables will additionally be reported to different Divisions, it will be necessary to create multiple service types and services. Some examples are “In Contract” or “Out of Contract”.
Taxable Items / Service Tax Overrides: Taxable items indicate which item types are taxable on this service, such as materials and labor. If you sell consumables in multiple tax jurisdictions, it is best to leave this field empty and rely on tax overrides. Service Tax Overrides can be set through the three dot option menu at the top right corner of the Service screen.
Requires Approval Checkbox: The Requires Approval checkbox should be checked. When checked, consumable supplies work tickets will first move into a Pending Approval status after the initial work ticket is marked Complete. This means they can be additionally reviewed for accuracy by a specific user role before being available in Invoicing Assistant.
Here is an example of a “JAN - Consumable Supplies” service:
🧠 Remember: If you will manage consumables under multiple divisions, create a consumables service for each division and service type.
Adding Consumables to the Item Catalog
📌 Note: You should have already read our Adding a Material Item to the Item Catalog for Commercial Clean article before reading this next section!
Here are some additional considerations where consumables may require unique Item setup:
Category: Category should be “Consumable Supplies”. This will be useful for list and report building in the future.
Material Item ID 1, Material Item ID2, EPA Name, EPA Number, and Takeoff Item fields should be left blank.
Purchase Unit Cost should reflect the current cost to purchase this consumable. Purchase Unit specifies the unit by which the consumable is purchased. For example, if paper towel rolls are purchased by the case, then the Purchase Unit would be “Case”).
Allocation Unit specifies the unit by which the consumable is provided to the customer, and Allocation specifies the conversion factor for Purchase to Allocation Units. Allocation Item Cost will automatically populate based upon the Purchase Unit Cost and the conversion rate to the Allocation Unit. For example, if paper towel rolls are purchased by cases of 12 rolls, but provided to the customer by the individual roll, then the Allocation would be 12.
Inventory Item shows whether the item should be available to purchase to inventory. This box should only be selected if the item is purchased and kept in storage until needed.
Allocate from Mobile should not be checked.
Here is an example of a Consumable Material Item:
The next task to decide before estimating consumables is deciding whether consumables should be in a Contract or a Work Order opportunity.
Deciding on Contract or Work Order Opportunities
🤔 Here are questions to consider when estimating consumables in Aspire:
How Frequently Will the Customer be Invoiced?
If the customer will be invoiced for consumables monthly, include the service in their Contract opportunity.
If the customer will be invoiced for consumables not in a consistent way (depending on demand), you may want to set up a Work Order opportunity.
Are Prices Guaranteed?
If customers are guaranteed specific pricing for consumables, it makes sense to include the service in their Contract opportunity with override prices specified on each consumable item.
If customers are not guaranteed pricing for consumables, and your costs might change, it might make sense to include the service in a Work Order opportunity and pull the most recent costs from your item catalog.
Are Consumables Provided As Needed?
If your consumables are provided as needed, the best way to manage this is through a Time & Materials service on a contract or a Time & Materials on Completion service on a work order.
For information on how to create a T&M estimates for Contracts or Work Orders, please take a look at our Estimating section here.
As a quick review, Aspire calculates T&M based upon a hierarchy of rules:
If the item is in the Item Catalog AND item prices are contractually guaranteed, you can override a set unit price in your estimate to match the contractual price. Aspire will charge that price multiplied by the allocated quantity.
Note: This is the recommended approach if you have set pricing established with your customer.
If you did not override prices on your estimate and the item is in the Item Catalog, Aspire will use the item’s catalog purchase unit cost with your T&M pricing table markup multiplied by the allocated quantity.
If no item or catalog purchase unit cost is present in your Item Catalog and you used a one-time item on a Purchase Receipt, Aspire will use the actual cost on the purchase receipt with the estimated T&M pricing table markup multiplied by the allocated quantity.
Note: This is the recommended approach if your customer is flexibly billed based on the cost of items at the time you purchase them.
Estimating Consumables Using a Contract
For more information on how to create a contract, please reference our Commercial Clean Estimating - Contract Setup video.
Add the consumable supplies service into the estimate.
Enter the number of occurrences. How many times will the customer be billed for consumables? For example, if billing monthly, add 12 occurrences.
Click into the service to open the Service Details Screen and select the Invoice Type as T&M.
Update the Pricing Table within the Service Details Screen. The Labor Rate should be $0.00 unless you’re additionally charging for your employees’ time to replenish or deliver consumable items. Material and Other type items should have a markup specified.
Save the Service Item Details screen to return to the estimate.
If item prices are guaranteed, add consumable items under the service and override the price accordingly. If prices are not guaranteed, no items need to be estimated.
Estimating Consumables Using a Work Order
For more information on how to create a work order, please reference our Commercial Clean Estimating Work Orders.
To start:
Name the Work Order opportunity “Consumable Supplies.”
Select T&M on Completion as the Invoice Type on the front page of the opportunity.
Add the consumable supplies service into the estimate.
Click into the service to open the Service Details screen and update the Pricing Table. The Labor Rate should be $0.00 unless you’re additionally charging for your employees’ time to replenish or deliver consumable items. Material and Other type items should have a markup specified.
If item prices are guaranteed, add consumable items under the service and override the price accordingly. If prices are not guaranteed, no items need to be estimated.
After you have finished creating your estimate, you can go back to your Opportunity and select Complete Estimate in the three dot menu.
However, if you want to be able to use these same markups for the same customer, or other customers, on an as-needed basis, it's best to create a template. Instead of going back to your opportunity, read the instructions below! 👇
Creating a Work Order Template for Consumables
Creating a template will help you avoid spending a lot of time on building the same estimate repeatedly when a customer needs consumables restocked.
On the front page of the opportunity, go to the three dot menu and choose “Save As Template.”
Choose which branches the template will be available to and click Save.
Scheduling For Consumables
Creating a Consumables Route
If you deliver consumables to your customers, you can use the Schedule Board to manage and track when you deliver.
To do this, create a Consumables Route as shown in the example below.
📌 Note: Since this route will only be handling Consumables, you can attach specific consumable services to it under the Services section.
📄 For more information on how to create Routes, view our Creating and Managing Routes article.
Allocating to Work Tickets & Scheduling Delivery
⚠️ This is only necessary if you deliver consumables to your customers!
If you included items in your estimate, allocate inventory items to the Work Ticket by clicking the Estimated dollar value hyperlink in blue in the needed Work Ticket.
Then select Allocate Items.
After allocating, select the blue plus sign icon to schedule a visit.
Select the needed scheduled date.
Next, select Consumables as the assigned route and then select Save.
This ticket will now show up in the consumables route schedule in the mobile app on the day it was scheduled.
Before driving to the property, the crew leader will clock in (if not already on the clock) and start time against the ticket.
After the supplies are delivered, the crew leader will stop time against the ticket and mark it Complete.
When the manager reviews time entry the following day, the Complete box will be checked next to the ticket. Upon saving the time entry, the ticket will go into Pending Approval status.
Requesting Consumables from Mobile
Cleaners can request consumable supplies from the field through the Mobile app, using Issues.
Creating a Consumables Request Issue Category In Administration
By creating a Consumables Request Issue Category in Administration, it will show Consumables Request as an option in the drop-down menu when employees create an issue on the mobile app.
Go to Administration ➡️ Application ➡️ Lists
From the drop-down menu, select Issue List.
Select the New button to create a new issue type where the Issue Type Name is “Consumables Request".
Requesting from the Field
While logging time against the Property’s work ticket, cleaners/employees will select “Open Issues” in the mobile app.
Select the “New” button at the bottom right corner of the screen.
From the Issue Type drop-down menu, select “Consumables Request.”
In the Comments section, type out the consumable supplies needed at the property.
📌 Note: When issues are created from the mobile app, Aspire will automatically assign (and email) the Property Account Owner, Property Ops Manager, and Route Manager.
Managing Consumables Requests
🧠 Determine who within the company should be responsible for managing these requests by reviewing the metrics and lists created. Those individuals should have access to the list and metrics mentioned below!
Create a List of Open Requests
Go to the Activities module.
Add the following filters to the list.
Save the list as Open Consumables Requests and share with relevant users.
Create a Metric for Open Requests
We can also create a metric dial that will show us any new consumables requests from the list we created.
In the Element Type, choose [Select Advanced Search].
In the Search View, choose "Activities | Open Consumables Requests".
The Display Type should be Number Only.
Share the dial with any relevant users and Save.
Managing Request Issues for Contract Opportunities
Click into the Open Consumables Requests metric to review open requests.
Click into the issue to see details.
Screenshot or copy/paste the description into a document with the requested items.
Navigate to the needed contract.
Select the Work Tickets tab to review the opportunity's work tickets.
Select the needed work ticket. If billing monthly, find the ticket with an anticipated start date in the current month.
Allocate the requested supplies (either from inventory or through a purchase receipt) to the work ticket.
If your company delivers the supplies: Schedule the work ticket to the Consumables Delivery Route as mentioned above and return to the Issue.
📌 Note: If the vendor handles deliveries, complete the ticket.
In the “Notes” field indicate the work ticket number where the items were allocated (e.g. “allocated requested supplies to WT# 10065”) and Save.
Select Complete at the top right corner of the issue page.
Managing Request Issues for Work Orders
Click into the Open Consumables Requests metric to review open requests.
Click into the issue to see details.
Select Create New Opportunity.
Select the Consumable Supplies work order template you created in the above section.
📌 Note: The supplies requested in the issue description will automatically populate in Proposal Description 1.
Copy/paste the requested supplies from Proposal Description 1 to the Estimator Notes.
Update the Start Date as the date when the supplies are ordered or pulled from inventory.
Create the Estimate
The requested supplies will appear on the estimate screen in the Estimator Notes on the right side. Add those items to the estimate.
Complete and Win the estimate.
Allocate the requested items to the resulting work ticket (through the Purchasing Assistant, either from inventory or creating a purchase receipt).
Schedule the work ticket to the Consumables Delivery Route (only if your company delivers the supplies – if your vendor handles delivery, complete the ticket)
Return to the Issue.
In the Notes field, enter the work ticket number where the items were allocated (e.g. “allocated requested supplies to WT# 10065”) and click Save.
Select Complete at the top right corner of the issue page.
Reviewing Completed Consumables Work Tickets
Consumable work tickets that have been marked completed will be first put in Pending Approval status based on the services that we set up in the Services section. This is because we checked the Needs Approval checkbox on the Service record.
Now, it's time to build a couple of lists that will help review these completed consumables work tickets.
Build a “Pending Approval - Consumables” Work Ticket List
Go to the Work Tickets module.
Add the following filters:
Save the list as Pending Approval - Consumables and share it with the user(s) in your organization who will be reviewing consumables tickets before they go to Invoicing.
Build a “Pending Approval - Consumables” Metric
Create a new Metric.
In the Element Type, choose [Select Advanced Search].
In the Search View, choose “Work Ticket | Pending Approval - Consumables”
Make the Display Type as Number Only.
Share the metric with any other users and select Save.
Review “Pending Approval - Consumables” Work Ticket List
⚠️ This should be a daily task!
If you are using monthly tickets, they should not be completed until the end of the month in case additional consumables will be provided before invoicing.
Check the T&M Calculation to ensure that the pricing is calculated correctly. If everything looks correct, go to the three dot menu at the top right corner of the ticket page and select Approve.
Invoicing Consumables
Once the Consumable Supplies tickets have been completed and approved, they will show in the Invoicing Assistant.
They can be batched along with the customer’s monthly invoice and be merged into a single invoice (if Separate Invoices has not been selected on the Property).
Certain Invoice Layouts can also provide needed information to your customers such as itemization of the supplies as well as, units, unit price, total item price, and total service price. You will need to submit a layout request to AspireCare if you do not already have this type of invoice layout.