Congratulations on becoming part of the Engine X community! 🎉
This first guide will run through the basic setup of the platform.
We'll run through the first few modules in your dashboard, filling in the key details required to get a basic set up running.
After going through this guide take a look at our other lessons so that you can get a full understanding of what this platform can do and how to best take advantage of it.
Logging in
In your initial onboarding email you should have received your login details. Please make a note of these and follow the link below to head over to the dashboard.
Once in, you'll see all your EngineX modules.
Booking Settings
In the Booking settings module you can set restrictions for start times, choose which booking form you want to display, and set up any terms and conditions your clients need to read through before booking a job with you.
Start time restrictions
In order to stop potential customers springing jobs on you without warning, you’re able to decide the minimum amount of notice required for someone to book your services. This will prevent form submissions from coming through if the time violates your set limit.
Clicking the drop down, choose from the following:
No limit
1 hour
3 hours
24 hour
Click save to confirm your Start Time Restrictions.
Booking form
Depending on the service you’re offering, choose the form you want your users to fill in.
In the Man and Van form, users fill in:
Move addresses
How many helpers they need
How long they want the van for,
Date / time they want the van
Extra services they require
Contact details.
The Courier form requires users to fill in only their:
Move addresses
Contact details
We'll assume they need the drivers help and that the move will last for the driving time between the addresses (although the customer can change this)
Click save to confirm your Booking Form type.
Terms and conditions
If you have Terms and Conditions for booking your services, go ahead and paste them in here.
If you want users to be required to agree to your Terms and Conditions, just flip the switch above the text box.
Once done, click that Save button again and your Terms and Conditions will show up on your form.
Best practice
When setting up your Booking Settings we recommend that you:
Set realistic start time restrictions to avoid operational stress.
Make sure your terms and conditions are clear, fair, and comprehensive.
Make sure that you’re using the right type of form for your customer base. Using a Courier form when your customers are mostly looking for removal type jobs will have you missing out on key details of the job.
Staff setup
When a customer makes an enquiry we'll check that you have enough staff available on that day / time to accommodate the booking.
You should be sure to keep your availability up to date so that we only accept bookings for you when you have enough staff.
The names of your staff won't be shared with the customer. The details you save here are just for your use.
Head back to your dashboard and click on the Staff module.
Inputting Staff lets EngineX know who you have on on your roster to assign jobs to. You'll be able to fill in a number of their details and set whether they are active taking on jobs.
Add a new member
To add a new member of your team to Engine X, pop their Name into the text field at the top, set their Active/Inactive status, and click Add.
You should now see them in your roster.
Add staff details
Next click the little Pencil Icon on the right of the row, and the below pop up will appear.
Try to fill in all of the details to keep as organised as possible.
In the notes section it's a good idea to put in any special skills or important information about a staff member that might be useful to refer back to in the future.
Vehicle fleet setup
The Vehicles section works in a similar way to the Staff section in that you can register your fleet on the system to once again keep things organised behind the scenes.
Do this and you won't have to worry about double booking vehicles, knowing whether you have the right vehicle for the right job, or worry about a vehicle that's out of commission being booked for a job.
So let’s select the Vehicles module and get started.
Add a vehicle
To add a vehicle, fill in the Vehicle description and Registration number (optional) input fields, and select its Size from the drop down menu.
You can choose from the following:
Small van
Medium van
Large van
Giant van
7.5 Tonne Lorry
Once these details are complete, click the Add button.
You should now see your new vehicle added to your fleet.
Use the Description to make a vehicle easily identifiable. This is especially useful if you have a larger fleet to stay on top of. And although optional, it is highly recommended that you fill in the Registration Number.
Edit vehicle details
You should see your new vehicle now added to your fleet. However, if you have any extra notes you wish to put in, or if you make edits later down the line, click on the little pencil on the end of the row.
In the pop up that appears will be your vehicle's details as well as a box for any notes.
Once happy, click that Save button and head back to the main dashboard.
Pricing setup
A great feature of Engine X is its ability to calculate accurate quotes for your clients based on your predefined pricing structure.
This part of the guide will go through all of the variables that you’ll input to have an effect on the final price.
These pricing variables are split into three different sections:
Van Related Charges
Journey Related Charges
Surcharges
Let's head over to the Pricing module now.
Van related charges
Separated by van type, charges per hour of use are input here. We want you to have as much control over your pricing as possible. Choose how much you charge per hour depending on the number of your Staff involved, and whether its a Weekday or Weekend.
Set Prices per Hour for all of the Vehicle Types in your fleet.
Journey related charge
A majority of your pricing variables come from your Journey Related Charges. Filling these in is an opportunity to add a whole lot more variety to your pricing structure and quoting system.
If you don't want to have a certain variable affect the price, simply leave it blank.
Minimum time charge | Although a customer may only want to use one of your vehicles for a short period of time, this option sets a minimum time that the customer will be charged for. E.g. A customer only wants to use one of your vans with a driver for 30 minutes. If your charge is £40 per hour for this option, setting your minimum time charge to 2 hours means the customer will pay £80, not £20. |
Your fee for stopping at each additional address on route to destination | Some customers may wish to stop off and pick or drop things off somewhere before the final destination. This takes time and adds another organisational bump in the road, hence you may want to charge extra. |
Your charge per flight, per helper at each address | Stairs add extra strain and risk to your staff. Make sure you reflect this in your pricing. |
Your mileage charge per mile | Does what it says on the tin. Longer distances cost more thanks to fuel, and vehicle wear. You might want to pass some of that cost onto your customers. |
Free miles | Instead of charging for every single mile, you can choose to apply your mileage cost, only after a certain distance is traveled. |
Out of hours charge | If you don't normally offer your services before 07:00 and after 19:00, but are willing to for a price, you can add a surcharge for the inconvenience. |
London congestion charge | If the job requires you to enter the Congestion Charge Zone, this charge will be added. |
London Ultra Low Emmission Zone | If the job requires you to enter the ULEZ, this charge will be added. |
Surcharges
Finally, we have a couple of extra charges you could attach to your quotes. These are added on after all other variables are taken into consideration.
You can choose to increase your total price by a percentage to cover the costs of marketing as well as choose whether to charge VAT, which add an additional 20% to the total.
Click Save to confirm your Pricing and head back to the Dashboard.
Service radius
Last thing to do in your setup is to go to the Radius module on your dashboard so we can set how far from base you’re willing to go for your bookings.
Setting your radius
When we set up your account, we put your Radius as 100 miles by default. However, it’s really up to you to determine wide you want to go.
If you only wish to do jobs within a single city, set the Radius so that it only covers your city. If you plan on offering long range moves from one end of the country to the other, whack it up to around 1000 miles to cover the whole of the UK.
Once you've done that, click Save.
This time however, you won't be heading back to the dashboard...
Set up the form on your website
You've done it!
You've set up your Engine X dashboard but how do we start giving potential customers access to your quote form so that the automatic enquiries can start rolling in?
Onto your website
In your welcome email you’ll have received a URL for your quote form. Check it out to make sure you're happy with everything and then head over to your own website's back end.
We've made sure to make things as simple as possible with no APIs, no iframes, no embedding of code and no plugins. Simply grab that link URL and pop it anywhere on site.
Have it stand out in a button, blend in subtly as an in text hyperlink, or maybe even feature it in your navigation bar. This bit is up to you.
(Struggling to find the link? It should be in the format “your-company-name.enginex.online”)
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