Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or... – Operations research or analysis
Reexamination Certificate
1997-08-11
2001-04-10
Hafiz, Tariq B. (Department: 2166)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Operations research or analysis
C705S400000, C705S500000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06216108
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates to a computer-based management system for a service contracting business which quickly and easily generates written contract proposals, invoices and reports on profitability. The invention also relates to a service business management system that is readily transportable, permitting business to be effectively conducted from virtually any location.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Written contracts help protect both contractors and their clients by reducing misunderstandings, clarifying terms and setting mutually agreed upon prices.
Service contractors, such as those involved in any form of the many property maintenance, repair and building trades, are faced with certain problems. They can greatly benefit from the advantages of having written contracts with their clients, however, the nature of these businesses creates logistical problems. Most service contractors need to view a job site or property at a remote location in order to prepare a contract proposal. They also tend to work in the field or have employees who work in the field. In a typical day many contractors will work at a number of locations—at an office, in the field, from a vehicle, and at home. Thus organizing and managing a service business involves challenges often not associated with other businesses.
Computers are an effective tool to help organize information and manage a business. Most businesses use them; however, most service contracting businesses only realize a fraction of the potential benefit because of limited availability of software programs written specifically for them and the mismatch between common computer systems—desktop PCs or larger computers—and the mobile nature of their work.
Some of the conventional methods that service contracting people use to conduct business are:
giving verbal quotes and invoices;
submitting nothing other than a price written on a business card;
preparing hand written contract proposals and invoices; and
viewing a job or completing work in the field, returning to the office to use a computer system to generate a contract proposal, change order, or invoice, and then mailing, faxing or delivering the documents to the client.
Some of the drawbacks of these common practices are as follows: verbal contracts or prices written on business cards result in no documentation or historical records. If there are any problems or misunderstandings, the contracts may be unenforceable. Hand written paper work is often poorly organized and difficult to read. Any changes to original copies are cumbersome at best. When any of these methods are used, job estimates are often largely guess work, or based on rule of thumb generalizations that may or may not be based on sound management and accounting practices. In order to be successful, businesses using these methods often use only seasoned individuals with years of work experience for bidding.
Better organized service businesses often have a computer system in a central office. Some of the disadvantages with this arrangement are the time delays that occur due to the distance between work sites and the office, and the lack of access to important information while in the field or away from the office for any reason. For example, it typically takes several days to a week for a mailed contract proposal to reach a client after the initial visit to review work to be done. Furthermore, most service businesses use a word processor or spreadsheet computer program to generate contract proposals and invoices. These are very inefficient systems in this context because critical information is either not captured at all, or stored in many separate files making it difficult to extract and utilize it in a meaningful way.
Conventional methods for conducting business away from an office include using standard brief cases and perhaps file boxes to transport written documents or records. More recently business people have employed a laptop or notebook computer, a carrying case and possibly even some related organizers or gadgets for their vehicles.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,570,291 is a system for quickly estimating and ordering the custom manufacture of an item wherein a remote computer with general customer and delivery data, is linked to a central computer with a database of product details for creating price estimates, which in turn is linked to a third computer at a manufacturing plant for accessing scheduling and delivery data as well as immediate order placement. This system is geared towards the manufacture of a product.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,317,503 is an apparatus designed for calculating the repair cost of a damaged car. It is specifically designed for insurance applications.
Tree Management Systems, Inc. of Bloomington, Indiana, provides a tree service industry system for both a hand held computing device and standard desktop computers. The desktop system allows the operator to organize client and job information, generate invoices and itemized proposals, schedule work, track employee and inventory data, and generate reports for receivables, jobs and sales. The portable hand held system is limited only to maintaining customer information and generating proposals.
Contractor's Management Systems of Langdon, N.H., provides a system for the plumbing, HVAC and electrical industries that includes general ledger, financial statements, check writing, point of sale processing, bar coding, inventory tracking, and service scheduling as well as estimating and establishing set prices for common tasks. The system apparently requires an operator to factor in an overhead margin and a profit margin on top of labor costs and materials costs to determine prices for specific tasks to be included in a “price book”. Reference is also made to generating estimates by creating and combining several assemblies of parts. Thus, it appears that this system is geared towards setting standard prices that will repeatedly be charged for specific tasks such as changing a hot water heater or installing a bath tub. There is also reference to comparing actual hours and materials to “defined” hours and materials in order to examine a task for profitability. It appears that this is an attempt to check that the average amount of actual time and materials used in a specific task over time is commensurate with the time and materials allocated when the price for that task was set. There is a reference to a portable system, but the capabilities are apparently limited to generating proposals and invoices.
The Roofer's Database of Garland, Tex., provides a software program for the roofing industry that organizes customer and job information, generates proposals and invoices, tracks employees, suppliers, sales leads and sales performance. Reference is made to “job costing” for job estimates where the operator inputs “profit and overhead percentages” in addition to labor and materials. It also refers to measuring productivity by tracking the history of “squares” (of direct material) bid versus “squares” (of direct materials) used.
Evergreen Technology of Seattle, Wash., provides a system specifically for the painting and wall covering industry that includes labor rate calculation, bidding, invoicing, work scheduling and employee motivation. In the labor rate calculation, overhead is based on monthly expenses. Depreciation for equipment or other capitalized expenses doesn't appear to be accounted for. Profit is a flat percentage markup on an operator's “desired profit”, and there are no guidelines for establishing what an appropriate profit percentage should be. Time and materials are used to generate itemized prices in an estimate worksheet, but actual proposals don't have itemized prices or a job discount, and an operator doesn't have the ability to use discretion to override a price that the system calculates. There are job cost reports that compare actual to estimated labor, materials, overhead and profit for a job.
What is desired, therefore, is a computer-based system specifically designed to help service contracting people in a var
Hafiz Tariq B.
Harle Jennifer Ione
St. Onge Steward Johnston & Reens LLC
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