The Call That Comes Back

Three weeks after you closed a service call, the customer opens a warranty claim. The compressor you replaced is making the same noise. The question is whether what they are describing is a recurrence of the original fault or a new failure mode — and the answer is in the detail of what you wrote in the service description field at the time, what parts you logged, and what the photo of the installation looked like when you left.

If you wrote "compressor replaced, unit running" and took no photos, you have no position. If you wrote the brand and spec of the replacement part, the control board firmware revision you checked against, and the ambient temperature at the time of the test run, you have a complete record of the state you left it in. The difference between those two records is the difference between absorbing a warranty cost and defending your work.

The Window Between Time Onsite and Time Complete

Time Onsite and Time Complete are the two fields that create the billable-hours record without requiring separate timesheets. A service call logged with arrival at 09:15 and completion at 11:45 gives you 2.5 hours on-site for that call number — directly, without reconstruction. Across a week of calls, those times aggregate into actual field hours that you can compare against your dispatch schedule, your quoted time, and your invoiced time.

The CALL# field ties every record to the dispatch system. Whether your dispatch runs on a ticket system, a work order platform, or a whiteboard in the shop, the call number is the link that connects the mobile record to the back-office record. When the office calls asking about the status of Call #4471, you pull the record by call number, check the Done boolean, and have the answer in three seconds.

Done as a boolean is clean because field completion has exactly two states: finished or not finished. A call that is partially done is not done. The boolean forces clarity that a status field with five options would not.

Parts as the Record Your Procurement Team Needs

The Parts field as free text handles the range of what field engineers carry and use better than a structured inventory field could. "Capacitor 45/5 MFD 440V, contactor 40A 24V coil, 10ft 1/4 copper line set" is a specific, useful parts record. A structured parts field that required you to look up part numbers from a dropdown while standing in front of a unit in a July attic would not get filled in accurately, if at all.

The parts log is not just for warranty defense. It is the data source for restocking decisions. If you pull the same 45/5 capacitor from your van on six out of twenty calls in a month, you should be carrying more of them. That pattern is visible in free-text field data if you search for it, but only if the field was actually used.

Six image slots per call record is the documentation layer that separates a defensible field report from a note. Image 1 is the condition on arrival — the unit before you touched anything. Image 2 is the specific fault, whether it is a burned contactor, a cracked heat exchanger, or a refrigerant leak at the service port. Images 3 through 5 capture the repair process. Image 6 is the unit running at the end of the call, ideally with the thermostat display visible showing the system is actually conditioning.

When the same customer calls back six months later and claims the unit has never worked correctly since your visit, Image 6 — timestamped by the camera, tied to the service record by date and call number — is the evidence that it was working when you left. The Issue and Service Description fields provide the narrative. The images provide the proof.