New-Brand Experience, How It Works & What’s Next. Assets With Warehouses Go Live

Today is a big day for RemOnline and our distinguished users: we are proudly introducing Assets with Asset Warehouses. 

The update is finished, so right now a new-brand experience just sits around merely waiting for your request. Let’s take a closer look at the Assets for you to make a fully informed decision.

We’ve got so much news for you this time. Below is a table of contents for you to know where you are:

• What’s the key benefit of Assets and their actual value to the business
• Assets Page and available features that might be of interest to you
• Using Forms Editor for Assets, which are now an integral part of Orders
• Assets and their current impact on custom/system fields in Orders
• Asset Warehouses, Product Warehouses, and common use-cases
• How to drive automated Asset transfers based on the Order status
• The Assets Directory to save tons of time from check-in to check-out
• Step-by-step guide for smooth and quick implementation of Assets
• What we’re going to do next, new opportunities and customizations

Well, it’s really hard to fit all into one post. And we did our best to make it as short and concise as possible, so sit back and read on.

Key Benefit Of Assets And Their Value To Business

Assets can be anything of value from devices, electronics, and tools to vehicles or industry-grade equipment that belongs to clients and businesses. Assets in RemOnline are an integral part of Orders, at the same time they are not actually traded or sold. Just like parts, materials, or any other items you have on stock, Assets have a physical location that can be managed and tracked according to your workflow patterns and business logic.

In a nutshell, using Assets makes it possible for business owners and managers to:

• keep property records of the clients and full service history
• check the property for safekeeping at your warehouse, issued to employees or clients
• track physical location and transfers across warehouses, clients, and staff members
• get quality customer service, streamline check-in, and set routine tasks up to speed
• automate a solely physical side of the operation and significantly improve time-efficiency.

That being said, Assets should apply both to customers and companies. Rental shops and service centers having equipment, gadgets, and tools for hire or in temporary use by clients are just a few examples of great potential for Assets. We have been working hard to make them flexible and fully customizable to fit unique business patterns and even the most specific niche services across the industry. 

Assets Page

Once you have them created, all available Assets will be displayed on the "Warehouse > Assets" page. Over there, you will have a full picture view of the Assets you have for safekeeping with quick filtering options. This lat your companyooks fine, but how to use this information in real life?

First and foremost, you can quickly understand which Assets belong to your clients, manage and track your own business Assets. Next, you can easily check them by count and the name of the owner, staying on top of your physical inventories, knowing who currently has assets for safekeeping, which of them were issued to the clients for hire or, for example, lent for temporary use.

Some of our users might as well have already managed their Assets using system fields with different customizations, this is the first major update in RemOnline when the implementation goes through data migration. For now, all information is safe and unchanged. Check out a simple step-by-step guide at the end of this post to get started.

Eventually, you will be able to find all you need to manage Assets on the Assets Page: create new Assets, attach images, assign your business or a client as the owner, choose between different Asset Warehouses, and merely anything you need using custom fields in the Forms Editor.

Assets Forms Editor. Latest Updates In Orders

From now on, you don’t have to invent different ways of Asset tracking, for example using system fields in Orders. No more wasting time on repeated jobs and work assignments when let’s say, managers at your auto repair shop are locked into filling standard forms over and over again

RemOnline makes Assets completely independent and self-sufficient, much like Orders and Leads. Meaning you can create your own form for Assets using the Forms Editor. Check out the Asset Form and system fields with numerous customizations:

1. The "Group > Brand > Model > Modification" master field
2. VIN / IMEI / Serial number (depending on your industry)
3. Color
4. State
5. Cost.

Feel free to customize fields exactly as you need: turn them into mandatory (required), decide what fields to show in the Order form, make edits prohibited after creation. Whatever works best for you and your business.

For example, you may opt to have the "IMEI / VIN / Serial number" field prohibited for editing, to leave no room for possible fraud, or when you would want his data for API integration. Yes, that’s right — you can easily make any field totally safe and secure, as nobody at your company will be able to add/modify data in already existing Asset profiles, regardless of the user access permission.

How To Create And Manage Assets From Orders

Please note that to access Assets directly from the Order profile you will need to take a few steps, in addition to checking the "Show in the order form" checkbox. As soon as you have everything in place with the Asset form, navigate to the Order form. Decide on which types of Orders you’re going to use to check-in your business Assets or the property of your clients, then add the right ones to the "Asset" system field.

The Order form can be rearranged by dragging fields in any way you may need. However, we recommend putting Assets in the first place, even before the client.

Once your Orders receive the "Assets" system field, you can take on the following:

• run a quick search by IMEI / VIN / Serial number
• retrieve data on Assets using the name of a client 
• add new Assets from Orders by pressing "+" or filling out the form.

Asset profiles are displayed in Orders in a similar way to Clients. The Assets owned by a business are labeled with orange, the property of the clients will be labeled with green.

Assets And Their Current Impact On Orders

As mentioned before, the implementation of Assets in RemOnline needs a request from your side. If you’re in, then we will help you change the way of managing Assets. Deal with Asset profiles independently, having full transfer history and service log always at hand. So you can forget about those good-old system fields and customizations that you have been using so far.

At this point, let’s quickly review the latest changes in Orders that are already in force for all users. 

The following system fields are now custom fields: "Device type/vehicle type", "Brand", and "Model". As a result, your RemOnline experience has been updated as listed below:

1. The Order Table has a column for Assets that will stay null and void until your implementation (of Assets) is complete. 
2. Order filtering no longer works for these custom fields
3. To retrieve data by these fields, start your search query with "+"
4. In reports, the "Assets" column will be null and void until the process of data migration is complete.

Asset Warehouses. Common Use-Cases

A lot of users wanted a new, better Inventory Management so that they can keep track and manage not only their own products but the property of their customers as well. Unlike others, the service business got to deal mainly with items that belong to clients and, therefore, has to take assets for safekeeping.

And now there are two different features in RemOnline found on the "Settings > Warehouses" page: Asset Warehouses and Product Warehouses. Having much in similar, they should not be something completely new for users:

• both can serve as a global storage for the whole business, or split by location
• every location can have just as many Asset Warehouses as necessary
• with available address storage, multiple bin locations can be created.

The main thing about the Asset Warehouses is that the property you keep over there is not for sale. Keep in mind that now all your clients and employees have their own Asset Warehouses in the RemOnline system available by default, yet they are not displayed. 

Here are the commonest use-cases to illustrate that. Given that the company is providing cell phone repairs, there will be at least two separate warehouses. Following check-in, a gadget goes to the "Pending repair" Asset Warehouse. When the job is done, the Asset goes to the "Ready for pick up" Asset Warehouse. At the same time, however, the company may involve contractors, having third-party specialists for specific repairs. That’s why another local Asset Warehouse or global Asset Warehouse is the right thing to help easily track Assets outside the company.

And it works all the same for other businesses across the industry. For bike rental, it will make sense to have these two Asset Warehouses for each location: "Ready for ride" and "Arrived after ride". Well, everything must be self-explanatory.

We recommend that you have a well-thought and consistent scheme for routine events so that you can easily express the physical side of your workflow with a custom set of Order statuses. Check out this article to learn more about Asset Warehouses and how to make them tailored to your needs.

How To Drive Asset Transfers Using Different Order Statuses

Once a physical side of the process is finally in place, you can unlock some new-brand opportunities in RemOnline. Navigate to the "Settings > Statuses > Orders" page. Try to create or modify the existing status with a new checkbox labeled "Move asset for safekeeping". 

Let’s see how it works using a very simple example below.

For every device issued to the client, the RemOnline system has a separate Client Warehouse created by default. But when a device that needs repair is received from the client, it means that right after check-in the Asset goes to your inventory for safekeeping. Therefore, we can update the "New" Order status as follows: (1) check the new checkbox, (2) specify that the Asset should go to the "Pending repair‘ Asset Warehouse.

When the job is assigned to a tech or service specialist, the employee (himself) will be responsible for safekeeping during repairs. Therefore, we can set up the "In work" Order status so that it triggers the automated transfer of the Asset to the personal Asset Warehouse of that employee.

Let’s have the "Ready" status configured in the same way so that the Asset automatically goes to the "Ready for pickup" Asset Warehouse. Next, we are going to set up the whole group of statuses labeled "Won" to trigger the automated transfer of the Asset back to the personal Asset Warehouse of that employee.

Once the setup is complete, every time the Order status receives an update a new dialog window will be created for you to make sure the Asset transfer is correct and press Enter to proceed.

Now let's finally navigate to the Asset profile to see whether we really have a complete log with all transfers on the "History" tab. Here it is! Click on the next tab labeled "Orders" to check the full list of documents that involve that Asset.

Using Assets Directory For Better Timing

The "Group > Brand > Model > Modification" master field in the Asset form is set up to work together with the Asset Directory found on the "Settings > Directories > Assets" page.

The Assets Directory can help you achieve greater time-efficiency during Order check-in. For example, you can take the Group of Assets labeled "Smartphones", then select major brands you are commonly dealing with, and put a corresponding list of models for each of them. When the Assets at your company are, let’s say, automotive parts and vehicles, you might as well create a brand labeled "Mazda" followed up with a related line of models.

The "Modification" is an optional level, meaning you don’t necessarily have to check the "Required" checkbox. But if the Assets at your company may be of the same model but with different modifications, for example, automotive repair shops, bike repair, or rental service, you will certainly benefit from this.

The Asset Directory can be configured directly from the Settings menu, or when creating a new Order. Should it happen that you need to select the items within the master field which are not found in the Assets Directory, the RemOnline system will suggest you add them for future reference.

For all items that belong to the Group of Assets, you can set custom icons to visualize the Asset profiles in Orders. You can also upload images or logos on the next level of the Asset Directory labeled "Brand" and "Model", having different customizations that are truly yours.

Also, elements of any directory can be shown both for all locations and for individual ones. For example, if one of your locations is engaged in servicing Mazda cars, and the other is Nissan, then you can delineate the directories accordingly.

Learn how to use the Assets Directory on multiple levels in this detailed instruction.

Step-by-step Guide To Implementation Of Assets

At this point, it’s time to choose:

Forget about Assets

You may keep using your good-old fields in the Order profiles. Note, however, that they are now custom fields. That’s why some basic features, such as search, filtering, and reporting will work for you differently, as mentioned before.

Embrace the Change

Please contact RemOnline Support so that our tech team can carefully transfer your data from system fields to work properly with Assets. As a result, every type of property you have been dealing with so far will be relocated to the "Warehouse > Assets" page. You may also require a multilevel Assets Directory, just let us know exactly what you need and we will make everything accordingly.

You must recognize that the implementation of Assets is an important decision that will take some time and effort from your side too. To get started with the initial user setup, follow these steps:

Step One. Go to the "Settings > Forms editor > Assets" page to set up the fields you need. Not sure where to get started? Check out this step-by-step instruction.

Step Two. Add the "Asset" system field to the Order forms of every type you find appropriate.

Step Three. Pay attention that old-style variables in your document /notification templates ({Device Brand}, {Device Model}, etc.) were automatically updated to look as follows: {Order Brand}, {Order Model}, {Order SN}

Now your next step is to add new variables from the "Assets" group to your templates once again.

Step Four. Take your time to consider what Asset Warehouses you may need, then carefully put them into the system.

Step Five. When your Asset Warehouses are already in place, it’s time to set up the automated Asset Transfers using custom Order statuses for automated. Remember, every employee and client has an individual Asset Warehouse available in the system by default.

Step Six. Here is exactly when RemOnline Support comes into play. Please provide clear information on what fields need data migration for Assets. Don’t hesitate to ask for help. 

Once our tech team has a full picture, we’ll be able to proceed with data migration. And this will certainly take some time. Be patient, as we will follow up promptly and immediately let you know once the process of data migration is complete.

Step Seven. Time to make everything clean and clear! Once migration is complete, you can simply remove unnecessary custom fields in the Order and merge duplicate / similar elements you may come across in the Asset Directory.

Let’s face it — even if your good-old system fields are always clean, neat, and functional, there are still many things worth double-checking. Different spelling variations and typos, not to mention simply irrelevant data you may have shelved in the Directory and never take up again. Learn how to quickly get rid of all unnecessary stuff in this guide.

That’s all! Every setting and preparation is done, and now you can feel free to embrace the change.

Now What?

And looking ahead, we are in for a new chapter of development using Assets. Quite soon RemOnline will further expand your experience with:

1. API Support for Assets. Eventually, you will be able to create and edit Assets, and even get a full list of Assets via API.
2. Built-in Stocktake for Assets. At this point, you can already export a list of Assets to take an inventory of all physical locations. But we want to make your RemOnline experience seamless.
3. Logistics Module. Now with Assets, we can expand across the whole industry. We don’t plan to try — we take on logistics to put every product or asset, and their movements under control. Any suggestions or ideas? Tell us how you would like to see this in action. Just leave your comments, or drop a few lines in support chat.
4. Temporary-Use Assets. Unfortunately, this time we had no opportunity to deliver another well-polished feature within a single update. But we keep working hard so that you can easily manage devices issued to the clients through the period of repair.
5. Smart Address Storage. RemOnline will analyze your bin locations, providing suggestions, and offering only free bins.
6. Service Categories. With different categories of works and services connected with the Asset Directory, we can further streamline job assignments, pricing, and routine tasks for you and your people.

Here, at RemOnline, we have been working hard to introduce a new productivity-enhancing tool to help you run a simply better business. We hope you would appreciate the Assets for safekeeping as well as quality customer experience to make a good name for you and your company. Looking forward to your comments, ideas, and suggestions.

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