This is video 5 of my Field Nation series where I explain how I close Field Nation tickets for payments and maximize what I’m getting paid. It covers the entire close out process. From how to add expenses, ask for additional labor hours, and how to ensure you are meeting all the buyers / clients requirements so there are no payment delays.
I have worked with Field Nation alternative clients in the freelance IT tech industry since 2000. I’ve been a Field Nation technician since 2010 and on Work Market since 2011.
Field Tech Academy wants to share the secrets of 20+ years of experience and how you can succeed as an Independent IT Field Tech.
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Video Transcript:
Hello, this is Michael with Field Tech Academy. In today’s video, we’re going to be talking about everybody’s favorite thing.
Getting paid!
I’m going to show you the process that I go through to close out my Field Nation tickets.
Make sure that all of my expenses and supplies and time is accounted for
so I maximize what I’m being paid.
All right. For example, this is a ticket from Spencer Technologies.
You can see over here the rate is $55 an hour. We logged 2.63 hours of the three hour pre-approved amount.
Now, I’m going to go through the ticket to make sure I have everything that I need to submit it for payment.
First section that you want to look at is the tasks section. You want to make sure that everything is check marked.
That we set a start time, that we checked in, that we checked out,
that we’ve entered close out notes.
You need be really good with your close out notes to be very detailed to the buyer so they know exactly what you did to account for the time that you spent on the ticket.
if you used any supplies or materials, you want to be very clear in the notes what you used
so that when you go to request reimbursement for those items, it will be documented in your notes as well.
The other thing that you need to watch for is you fill out all these little custom fields.
The buyer has some custom fields that talk about, you know, the site name, different things like that.
But they also have a section for a provider custom field.
And so this particular buyer wants an answer to this particular question,
What is the Spencer release code?
So you’re going to have to answer that question before you can actually close this for payment.
if I attempted to close this without that
closure code,
it’s going to pop up a message and say, hey, this must be done. So you’ve got to do it.
One of the biggest things when you’re doing the tickets to make your life easier is to make sure you’re doing all of these steps
while you’re on the ticket
so that you don’t
come to this point and go, “Oh my God, I forgot to get the close out
number”!
Make your life easier
while you’re doing the ticket by reading really thoroughly through all of these different details
so you don’t miss them.
Because you can’t close it until you get it.
So I’m going to enter that closeout code.
The other thing to do is to look at your time entries.
These are automatically generated when you check in and check out through the app or through the website.
If you got on site and you started working, maybe you called the client and checked in by phone, but you forgot to check in on the app.
Then when you hit the check in button, it’s going to timestamp it at that moment.
If
you had been there for 15 or 20 minutes,
then you need to be able to edit that time.
And so Field Nation allows you to do that.
I know that we actually checked in at 745 and we actually checked out at 1035,
so we’re going to edit that to match what we actually worked.
We’re going to go to edit
I was there till 1035. Honestly, I like the round number aspect of it, so I’m just going to leave it at 745 and 1030.
The next step is to make sure that you have all of your deliverables in place so that the buyer will approve the ticket.
What’s a deliverable?
It is an all encompassing term.
Basically, it means whatever the client
requires to close it.
So that could be a photo, a set of photos, could be documents,
notes,
those provider custom fields, things like that.
if the only field for uploads is labeled as miscellaneous,
then they have not defined specific items that need to be uploaded to be approved.
At least they didn’t define it
here.
If we scroll up on the ticket, you can see a little more detail.
They want photos of the newly installed pin pad and serial numbers of the pin pad.
Have manager sign sign off sheet.
Different parts of the ticket might define what those deliverables are.
You really have to read these with a fine tooth comb.
I’ve done this for 20 plus years and
sometimes the way these are worded is tricky, that I even overlook things.
So you just have to really focus on everything they say.
So in this case, I’ve uploaded 14 different deliverables,
so I know as far as the
requirements, I’ve satisfied those.
The next thing you always want to look for is
did I use any supplies? Did I incur any expenses like parking or tolls, things like that?
If you did incur expenses, then you want to request reimbursement for those.
To request reimbursement,
you’re going to go above the pay column over here on the right hand side.
You’re going to hit this little menu and you’re going to go add expense.
The dropdown is going to depend on what your expense is. So if it was materials that you used on this site like Velcro, cable,
you’re going to see real material costs attached to the building.
if it’s a travel expense like parking or tolls, things like that,
and you want to scroll down and select travel expense. So in this case, the only expense we had on this ticket was tolls. So I’m going to say $2 tolls,
save changes.
Before you close the ticket you want to make sure that the hours that you worked did not exceed the pre-approved hours on the ticket.
So you’ll see right here: 3 hours max.
If I had worked 4 or 5 hours on this site, then I would need to ask for additional
labor.
Since
I only logged 2.75 hours of the 3 hours,
I know that I’m good. So that you can see it,
I’m going to select this and I’m going to go request pay change. If you had worked additional hours and you would simply add in the hours here
and you would explain
why the call took longer than they preapproved.
Sometimes there’s delays. You may sit on hold
to get to tech support, or once you get to tech support, there might be a problem with the equipment.
Maybe it wasn’t preconfigured correctly.
So there are some logical reasons why a call may go over.
Again, making your life easy on the front end, you need to be communicating with your buyer during the process so that they know
what is going on, why it took longer.
Since I have got everything in, I’ve got my expenses in, my labors
right, I’m ready to close the ticket.
I scroll up near the top of the ticket and you have an option to “Mark It Complete”.
So if everything is satisfied as far as the platform is concerned, it will allow you to close it. Mark complete. Once it’s marked complete, blah blah blah. Now they’re going to ask you for some private feedback and for some public feedback.
If you want to get reviews from your buyers
to strengthen your profile,
you need to take the time to fill this out.
I’m going to say that I was satisfied. That’s the private feedback. And then it pops up another thing that asks you for public feedback. Five stars is the best. And were the expectations clear? Were they professional? Save rating.
I think it’s very important you take the time to review your buyer. That’s going to give you a higher probability of your buyer reviewing you.
And the reviews are critical.
When a buyer is looking to assign a ticket, they’re going to be looking.
Have you
completed tickets? And the tickets you’ve completed, what kind of ratings did you get?
So you want to make sure you’re doing these things.
Now you can see that the button has changed to “Mark Incomplete”.
If I realized, “Oh man, I forgot to add something else in”,
then you could go up here and you can mark it incomplete.
It would pull it back out where you can make edits to it.
But once you’ve submitted this, in theory, at any moment now, the buyer could approve the ticket and release it for payment.
Brings up a great payment question.
Once the buyer approves it,
how long before I get my money?
Well, you’ll notice here in the pay column, it tells you 14 day terms.
So once that ticket is approved by the buyer, by the client,
then it’s going to take 14 days for that money to be released. Many Field Nation alternative clients also have net payment terms.
Field Nation has a payment queue system
and I’ll show you that here in a little bit.
But basically whatever the terms are, you’re going to have different line items that will show you when you’re getting paid for what tickets.
So I’m done with that ticket. I’m going to move on to the next one.
Again, the first thing I want to look for is
are my times right? Do I have my expenses in?
Is my labor right?
So the first thing I’m going to do is I’m going to look at the tasks to make sure I have
completed all of the tasks.
All right, so all of my tasks are complete.
Now I want to look at the deliverables to make sure that I’ve uploaded everything that I’m going to need to have uploaded to be paid.
Just like the previous ticket.
There are provider custom fields,
so these all had to be answered for me to get paid.
Those have all been filled out.
The deliverables on this one are more defined
than they were on the other ticket. The other ticket just
had
the miscellaneous section
with no details.
This ticket gives me some specific
items that it wants me to upload.
Those are part of the tasks that we saw up above.
So this ticket needed to have
photos of the worksite before beginning work,
parts that were actually replaced and worked on,
and work site after work is finished.
I like these better because you know that you’re uploading the right things.
It’s also nice when the buyer doesn’t have a custom work order and you can just use the Field Nation digital signature. It makes life easier because you just have them sign here
and you don’t actually have to download a PDF, and edit it, or print out a piece of paper, and have them physically sign it and then scan it and upload it.
This is much simpler.
The next thing I want to do is look at my time entry. I want to make sure that that is correct, that I did log in
when I meant to log in, when I actually got to the site and then I logged out at the time that I meant to log out.
So I logged basically a little less than an hour on this site.
Most Field Nation buyers are going to pay you an hour by default.
Now, I should be able to put in my expenses.
Again, I’m watching to make sure that my hours don’t exceed the pre-approved amount. This was pre-approved for 2 hours, but it only took
little less than an hour.
So I’m going to select this and just add my expense of tolls. So again, that is travel. $2 dollars. It’s tolls. Save.
Now I just need to mark it complete. Are you sure? Mark complete. Do our rating.
Now we’ll see that it has “Mark Incomplete” as the option.
That tells me that it is
submitted for payment.
This buyer,
Staley, is the same way. They are 14 day payment term.
Some of the buyers will have 30 days, some of them have zero days.
It just depends on the buyer.
Now we’ll move on to the next one.
All right. Our next one is Spectrotel.
Going to check all of our tasks and deliverables.
All of our tasks are complete.
Now we’ll look at my deliverables, make sure I fulfill all those, and make sure there aren’t any custom fields that I need to fill out.
So in this case, there are no custom fields for the provider side.
And, we as the techs, are the providers.
So there’s nothing there to worry about.
On the deliverable side,
this buyer also had specific requirements, so that was nice.
They told us exactly what they wanted,
so we were able to go and take those photos and make sure those photos were uploaded.
Again, there wasn’t a custom
work order by the buyer, so we were just able to use the regular digital signature from Field Nation.
Now I want to look at my time entry.
I notice that my time entry was a little off.
I had
forgot to check out right when I left the site, so I went in and edited the time
to reduce it to the amount of time that was actually on site.
Now I’m going to check to see if my 2 hours was within
the pre-approved range to see if I need to ask for additional time.
I can see that it was pre-approved for 2 hours. I worked 2 hours, so I don’t have to worry about asking for additional money on this one. This one is ready to close.
I’m going to “Mark It Complete”. Mark complete. Do my rating.
Save it. And now I’m complete.
This buyer is a zero day terms,
so once they approve it,
it will immediately be available in my Field
Nation payment withdrawals.
That doesn’t mean I get it
immediately. Field Nation only does pay runs
once a week on Fridays.
So zero days is really a few days, but nonetheless, it’s going to be fast.
One little tip for you.
You’re being paid to do the job,
and part of the job includes
doing
these tasks.
So while you’re on site,
while you are on the clock, you need to be doing these deliverables.
You should not
do the job and then go home at night and spend 2 hours closing all of your tickets, because that is time
for which you should be paid.
Since the client requires it,
you need to stay on the clock and stay on the job until these items are done.
If you wait till the end of the day,
you’re giving away time for free.
Earlier, I was talking to you about the payment screen and how these queued payments look.
For example, this is a 14 day payment term.
If you select on your
dollar signs up here.
By the way, this will always show zero unless you are a buyer.
This zero represents
the money that you have on the platform available to pay technicians.
As providers,
this is always going to show zero.
So to see my payments, I’ll go to this, select it.
This loads your payment screen.
At the time of this recording it’s Saturday.
So Friday was yesterday.
Friday was the day that Field Nation released payments.
So you can see that the day before we got over $1,000.
Then you can look ahead to see that there are transfers scheduled for October the sixth, which is a week from now, and then October 13th, which is two weeks from now.
Based on whatever tickets we closed, and those buyers requirements, and their payment terms.
Your payments will accumulate, as buyers are approving those tickets that we just closed.
As each one gets approved,
then this amount will increase until that date arrives, and then that money will automatically be transferred to your bank.
That’s the process that I go through to request additional time, request reimbursement for expenses,
and actually review the tickets to make sure that they’re right so that when I submit them for payment, I’m being paid for my time
and getting them to the buyer
so that they will actually approve them.
If this was helpful to you, please like the video and subscribe to the channel
and be sure to check out my website.
at fieldtechacademy.com. I have some downloads available that can help you with your Field Nation and other companies profiles
and I have one on one coaching available. If you would like to speak with me directly
and get some insight on how to improve your income and improve your standing with these platforms.
I also have a Field Nation alternative client list available for purchase on my website. If you are a
quality tech
and you have a lot of experience and you’re
making a living at this, or close to making a living, or you’re ready to make that jump,
then this client list can really help add
new income to your portfolio so that you can really be successful as an independent
field tech.
As always, let’s get you out in the field making money. I’ll see you in the next video.