The Signoffs module can be used by auditing companies to obtain confirmation by your contractors to verify if certain essential safety measures have, and are being maintained for annual maintenance. This drastically reduces the need for back and forth emails, calls and adds ease when sending reminders.
Setup
Once enabled and permissions applied, the Signoffs module can be found in Tools > Signoffs.
The Signoff module is based off a field called the Property Certification Date. This field sits on every property and NEEDS to be filled out in order for signoffs to have any sense of a due date. The property certification date is the day and month in which the property needs its certification. Edit any property to find the Certification Date field.
Properties that have a certification date and are needing to use the signoff module need to also have their ESMs setup correctly so contractors are assigned to those ESMs. The signoff module is based off a per ESM functionality which means the module will pick up all ESMs that are assigned to a company, group them and then send them on one signoff to each contractor. Any ESMs assigned to your own company will not be picked up, change the Contractor field on the ESM to something other than your own company to allow the signoff module to work correctly.
Lastly, the contractors in which you have setup to use the Signoff module will need an Uptick account. This can be added easily by VIEWING their profile on Uptick and clicking the Send Invitation button (found under the Contractor portal section) Contractors will need to log into this account to submit signoffs back to you.
How to use
Issuing Signoffs
To bulk issue your signoffs each month, which needs to be done in order to give enough notice to your contractors to get back to you, you will go to the page above (Tools > Signoffs) and click Bulk Issue Signoffs button.
This will take you to a page in which you need to pick, which due month you're sending your signoffs off for, certification year, and which contractors you would like to send the signoff to - you don't need to fill out this last field if you would like to send to all. You will then send your signoffs from this page.
Issue signoffs will send each contractor a list of all the properties and ESMs that they are assigned to. This email that is sent out is editable and can be changed.
All the ESMs assigned to that contractor and sent in a signoff will be influenced by that contractor, meaning that contractor can edit and update the ESMs compliance and the date in which it was last serviced in your system. Read below to find out more on what the contractors see and interact with.
Processing Signoffs
The Signoff dashboard (Tools > Signoffs) will show you all the properties which have outstanding Signoffs that still haven't been processed or are waiting for review.
The statuses in which a signoff can sit are as follows:
Pending - Has been sent to your contractor.
Submitted - Signoff has been submitted by your contractor with the appropriate information filled out.
Accepted - Someone in your company as reviewed and accepted the signoff for that property.
Expired - Contractor has not submitted the signoff for that property, yet the signoff is past it's certification date.
Disclaimed - Contractor has ticked that they have disclaimed the signoff for that site and are no longer servicing the site.
Trashed - You have trashed the signoff
The 'Process submitted signoffs' button will take you to a page that shows you all the signoffs that have been submitted back to you by your contractors. It is an easy page to filter and find all the signoffs you are looking for.
When you find the signoff you are looking for or just want to start processing your signoffs at the end of the month, you have the option to 'Accept' or 'reissue' your signoff back to your contractor for further information.
Reissuing the signoff back to the contractor will keep it open for 7 days. I also recommend clicking the 'Send Reminder' button after you've reissue the signoff so another reminder email is sent to your contractor.
Once you Accept a signoff, the ESM information that your contractor has updated will become live in your system.
If a signoff has expired without a contractor submitting anything, you will have to 'reissue' the signoff, which will once again, keep that signoff open for 7 days before expiring again.
Bulk send reminders to contractors
You can also bulk send reminders to contractors by going to the main signoff page, highlighting all the signoffs you want to send a reminder to on the left and bulk editing those signoffs.
Contractor view
ESMs sent to a contractor by the signoff module will be edited and updated by that contractor. The great part about the Signoff module is it cuts out the process of internal staff having to update the ESM data to reflect what your contractors have told you about the ESM compliance and the last service date of that ESM. Any documents added to the signoff by your contractor will add itself to a 'Signoff' folder on the Documents tab of that property.
Contractors are sent an email that will tell them which properties are requiring confirmation of service and to log onto their portal in order to fill out this information when you Issue Signoffs.
Once they log onto their portal, they are greeted with a very similar setup to the above image.
They can search for certain properties, they have a progress bar, can flick through their properties on the left-hand side and can upload documentation when required. Clicking the 'Submit Signoff' button on the bottom-right will submit the signoff back to your company for review. They need to submit each signoff before it's expiry date otherwise the signoff will become uneditable. If the signoff does become uneditable, you can change the expiry date to a future date on your end so the contractor can continue doing work.
Things to note:
- They cannot edit a signoff once it's submitted or expired unless your staff changes something on their end.
- Contractors have the ability to download a spreadsheet of all their signoffs (seen in image below)
Manually submitting a signoff due to multiple contracts in the same 12 month period
Note down the information of the signoff you'd like to split up due to multiple contractors being engaged in a 12 month period.
Trash the automatically issued sign offs
Issue unscheduled sign off from the relevant property
Change the period start and finish date (make sure these dates do not cross over, eg. one ends on the 15th of December and the next starts 16th of December [or similar])
Issue
Repeat for as many other contractors that were engaged during the period.
The reason we have to follow this process in this instance is due to the system automatically creating the 12 month window. Unfortunately at this time is no way around this other than to do an unscheduled sign off.