Enquiries and Bookings

The enquiries to bookings pipeline is at the core of Engine X. It's the organisational backbone of the platform. This guide will take you through both sections and how to use them.

Enquiries

The Enquiries section is where leads are kept before they are converted to confirmed bookings. Here you'll see enquiries that have come through your form as well as . 

The great thing about Engine X is that the price is calculated for you at this stage of the booking process, so you're able to prioritise reviewing the jobs that are most worth moving on to a confirmed booking.

Reviewing enquiries

Once you've got to your Enquiries screen, you'll see a list with the following details:

• Start and End Postcode

• Date and Time of the potential job

• Staff Requested

• Length of time

• When the enquiry was created

You can view the total number of enquiries at the top of the list, which helps keep track of customer interest.

To see whether an enquiry has been converted to a booking, check for a green box with a white tick.

Search for Bookings: Use the search bar to find specific bookings by ID, customer name, or postcode.

Search and Filter: Use the search bar to quickly find enquiries by postcode or name. Additionally, sort the enquiries using the 'Sort by' dropdown menu for an organised view, such as by the last updated or date added.

Review Enquiry Details: Click on View to open an individual enquiry. You'll see the customer's information, requested services, and any notes or communications attached to this enquiry.

Email Alerts: Toggle the 'Email alerts' button to receive notifications each time a new enquiry is submitted, ensuring you never miss a potential booking.

Adding enquiries manually

As well as viewing and managing enquiries that come in automatically, you're able to add enquiries manually. 

This allows you to keep everything in your pipeline organised in one place, be aware of what might be coming up, and generate quotes for clients that might have called or emailed you directly without filling in a quote form.

Add a New Enquiry: To manually enter an enquiry, click the Add enquiry button. Fill out the form with the customer's details, requested services, and move details.

Quote Generation: Upon saving, a quote will be automatically generated based on the details entered.

Editing the Quote: Click on the Pencil icon and a breakdown of the quote will appear on the right hand side. It's here you can change your pricing structure, straying from your presets. Once happy with your adjustments, click Calculate then Save.

If you've made changes to the Details, your Quote might be affected so make sure to account for this as well by clicking the Recalculate button above the quote.

After making any changes, either in the details or through custom pricing, click Save to confirm them.

Communicating quotes to customers

Now that all the details are there it's time for you to get in touch with your lead.

Although they'll have seen quotes when they fill in the form, you're able to send them a link to quotes yourself so that they can view them at a later date, either via Email or Text. This is also useful if you've made edits to the price due to extra details mentioned in the notes.

Selecting ‘Email quotes to customer’ will send the quote immediately. Selecting ‘Text quotes to customer’ will prompt you with the following pop up.

You're able to customise the short message before the link up to 110 characters. When you're ready to send the client the Text, click Send.

Check out what you've sent to your leads in the Communications box below. To see each message in more detail, click the View button.

Converting enquiries to bookings

Once you’re ready to convert an enquiry to a booking simply go to the Quotes box and find the van size you want to move forward with. Simply click Book and a pop up will appear.

In this pop up you can fill in how much the customer may have paid as a deposit or whether they’ve paid the full amount. Once happy with this number, click Book once again to confirm it.

Now in the top left corner, you should see a green notification letting you know that the booking has been Accepted.

You should now be able to see this converted enquiry in your bookings dashboard. On the enquiries dashboard, it will now be listed with a green tick attached to it.

Bookings

The Bookings section, functions in an extremely similar way to the Enquiries section. You can view, edit and manage and search for all of your confirmed (jobs, past, present, and future) in one place.

This part of the guide will go through the initial Bookings Dashboard, Converting an Enquiry into a Booking, Canceling bookings, and the Individual Bookings Information.

Bookings Dashboard

You'll be able to see all your past, present and future bookings on this dashboard. Sort them, View them, Search for them and Add new ones. You'll do all of that from here.

Using the filters and sorting: The example above doesn't give a great example of an instance where searching for a booking would be particularly necessary but hopefully, in cases where there are a lot of bookings these functions will be extremely useful. 

To Search for a booking enter the Booking ID, Name or Postcode of the job you're looking for and a filter will be applied showing only the relevant bookings.

For a better sense of scheduling you can choose to filter your bookings by:

• Upcoming bookings

• Moving today

• Moving tomorrow

• Past bookings

• All

You also have the option to choose the order in which your bookings appear by using the Sort by tab. You can choose to Sort by the following:

• Move Date (Newest First)

• Move Date (Oldest First)

• Booking Date (Newest First)

• Booking Date (Oldest First)

Adding a booking manually

In some cases you may confirm a booking outside of Engine X and skip the enquiry process entirely. It's important to still update Engine X in these cases to stay organised and prevent conflict between Engine X bookings and the real world.

To add a booking manually, first click on the Add booking button.

Much like when you manually add an enquiry, you'll be presented with a form full of details for you to fill in.

Booking details: This is the Booker details, Helpers required, Van size, Van time, and Date/time.

Addresses:  Here you can fill in the Start Address, Add stops, the End Address, and input Stairs/lift information.

Services: Click on the Change Services button and a pop up will appear where you can apply any of your extra services to the booking. Once you're happy, click Apply and the extras will have been added.

Payment: This part of the booking looks at the financials behind the Booking. These sections can't be left blank so put 0 in instances where you don't want the number factored in.

• Quote total - Total cost for this booking

• Amount due to driver - If you pay your staff per job, this is the total owed to them

• Customer paid - Amount the customer has paid for this booking. If the customer has prepaid some of the cost as a deposit, put it in here.

• Hourly rate - Hourly rate for this booking, after the agreed amount of time for the job has passed

Notes: There are 2 separate fields for this section. The Customer notes can be seen by the customer when they view their booking or are emailed. Your notes are not visible to the customer. Make sure to use these different note types appropriately. You don't want the customer seeing something they shouldn't!

Now that you've filled everything in, it's time to click on the Save button at the bottom

Viewing a Booking

To view the details of a booking, on the Booking dashboard, find the booking you want and click the View button.

Let's go through the different sections of the booking.

Status: Click on the dropdown and choose from one of the options to set the Status of the booking.

Details: Here you can see the Booker details, Van size, Van time (how long the job is), the Booking ID and Location details.

Van and Drivers / Helpers: In this section you can see which of your Staff, and which Vehicle, is assigned to the booking. If you want to change these click on either of the buttons highlighted below.

It's here you'll get an overview of your Staff and Vehicles showing who is assigned to the job and which vehicles are assigned, as well as seeing available alternatives or add ons. You can make edits by way of reassigning or removing by using the checkboxes seen in the below pop ups.

Once happy with any changes you've made, click Save.

Payment: In this box you can see payment details for the booking. How much the customer has already paid, how much is owed and the charge per hour beyond the agreed hours booked.

Send email: We don't automatically email customers when you make changes to their bookings. You can choose to send the customer an email to let them know when something has been updated choosing from the following options:

• Booking updated email - This will let your customer know that there has been an update to their booking

• New booking email - Sending this email will send the customer a confirmation email

• Booking cancelled email - Let your customer know that their booking has been cancelled

Communications: Any emails or texts you've sent through Engine X will show up here and you'll be able to view them as the customer views them.