How to improve your completed vs. invoiced jobs KPI

Completed vs. invoiced jobs (or invoiced jobs as a percentage of completed jobs) is a crucial financial metric for field service organizations. It means what you might think: you have a number of jobs completed (services rendered), but some of those jobs haven’t been invoiced (you have not been paid).

In a perfect world within your FSO, this ratio of completed to invoiced would always be 1:1. Whenever a technician completes service, he or she would invoice the client on-site. The client might not pay right away, but at least the invoice is out there.

Unfortunately, in many FSOs, the ratio between completed jobs and invoiced jobs is much more skewed.

If that is happening in your field service organization, there are a few things you need to consider:

• Improve your processes: You might need a better process for technicians to follow in all on-site job situations. If the work has been completed (first-time fix rate ideally, but even on the second or third visit), the work should be invoiced. If that is not incorporated into your process, it might be time to adjust that aspect of your process. Otherwise your payment cycles will be very off, which makes financial reporting harder.

• Use FSM software tools: If you are having a problem with invoicing because you are using an older, more traditional paper invoice model, it might be time to shift over to FSM software tools. These tools allow for different parts of your business (for example, dispatch and scheduling, or sales and invoicing) to be integrated. Not only do they help keep your employees and technicians on the same page, but they can streamline a lot of processes for your organization.

• Embrace mobile: Today, an FSM software tool is not that helpful unless it has a strong mobile component. After all, your technicians are in the field. They are going on-site to clients and completing jobs. If they cannot do invoicing from their mobile devices, you will not solve this problem of completed jobs not being invoiced quickly.

Overall, the completed vs. invoiced jobs KPI is important to your business as a reflection of (a) how frequently and effectively you are getting paid for work and (b) how effective your processes are overall. It is one of a set of important KPIs for your FSO. We wrote an eBook detailing eight such KPIs to monitor in real-time as you grow your business. You can download it now.

If you have another questions about this or other valuable field service KPIs, do not hesitate to ask.

Written by Shloma Baum