What Planny can do for your business

If you work with the business module, Planny is more than a help desk: he can look up and update your customers, quotes, projects, scheduling and maintenance. Just ask in your own words.

Who is allowed to do what

These options are there for administrators and employees. An ordinary member gets no customer details, not even if they ask for them.

Beyond that, what Planny can do depends on which parts are switched on for you. If you don't use maintenance, the maintenance questions don't exist for Planny either — he'll simply tell you that branch isn't switched on.

Everything Planny changes or creates is recorded in your environment's log, with his name against it. So you can always look back at what happened through the assistant.

Looking things up

Customers

• "Find customer Jansen" · "How many customers do we have?"
• "What do we know about Bakery De Molen?" — including the linked appliances, with a link to the customer file.
• "Which customers are in Venlo?" — may also be by postcode area, for instance 5911.
• "How much have we invoiced Jansen?" · "When was the last contact with Jansen?"
• "Do I have any open leads?"

Scheduling

• "What's in my calendar next week?" · "Where is Ahmed going tomorrow?"
• "Who is available tomorrow?" — Planny shows who has no appointments at all and who has how many.
• "Give me the addresses of today's appointments."

Quotes and revenue

• "Which quotes are open?" · "What's in the quote for Jansen?"
• "Which customers have been waiting a long time for an answer on a quote?"
• "What's our revenue this month?"

Projects

• "Which projects are running?" · "What did we win this month?"
• "How is project Bathroom Jansen doing?" — with the progress and the open tasks.

Maintenance

• "Which customers haven't had any maintenance yet?"
• "What do I still need to schedule in week 33?" — active contracts that are due and for which nothing is booked yet.
• "When is the next maintenance at Jansen?"

Watch out with revenue figures: Planny counts the approved quotes, on the date they were approved. So that is not the same as what has been invoiced or paid.

Getting things done

• Customers — create or update a customer, attach an appliance to a customer ("add a boiler in the attic at Jansen"), record a contact moment ("note that I dropped by Jansen this afternoon"), or file a lead.
• Quotes — draw up a draft quote, including lines and prices based on your earlier quotes; or set a status to sent, approved or rejected. See Drawing up a quote with Planny.
• Projects — create a project, update the status or progress, add and tick off tasks. Through Planny you can also assign a task to an employee and add a note to it; that isn't possible in the screen itself.
• Scheduling — book, move or cancel an appointment. For a customer, Planny fills in the address automatically.
• Maintenance — schedule a visit for a running contract, or complete a visit with your findings.

A draft quote always stays a draft: you check and send it. And an appointment Planny schedules sends no email to the customer — that tick box only exists in the screens themselves.

What Planny can't reach

Fair is fair, these are beyond him:

• A project's materials — Planny can't read or add them in the chat. There is a separate button on the Materials tab; see Materials in a project.
• Work orders and timesheets — he can't look them up, create them or have them signed. He can point you to them.
• Invoices — he has no access to those.
• Deleting — Planny won't throw away a customer, project, quote or task.
• Calculating a route. He can give you a day's stops with the full addresses, roughly in geographical order, but he doesn't work out the shortest route and takes no account of travel time or roads. The actual navigating you do in your own map app — from the customer map you open an address in Google Maps with one click.

Frequently asked questions

• My colleague gets different answers than I do. What Planny may show depends on your role and on which parts are switched on for your environment.
• Planny says a part isn't switched on. Then that branch (quotes, projects or maintenance) is disabled for your environment. An administrator can switch it on in the settings.
• Can I see what Planny changed? Yes, every change is recorded in your environment's log.
• How do I get Planny to make better quotes and material suggestions? The more earlier quotes and material lines you have for that customer, the better he fits — he only learns from your own data.