We offer the Branches extension to facilitate companies with multiple business units (multiple offices or businesses). This article outlines the use cases and contexts for effective use of Branches. For more detailed information on setting up and assigning Branches see our main Branches article.
How Branches should be used
Branches should be used to organise parts of your business so that when they are assigned to users and properties in Uptick, it is clear which properties each Branch is accountable for. Each user can belong to a single Home Branch (the main branch or office that the user belongs to), which can be filtered for in Timesheets.
Some examples of appropriate Branch use includes:
Different Branches of your business located in different areas
Separating certain types of business (i.e Fire, HVAC). This is useful for when your organisation has acquired another business, and allows you to have all user and property data in Uptick and still be able to determine different segments of your business and the properties they look after.
Branch features and limitations
Features | Limitations |
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Assigning Branches
Assigning Branches to a specific Property
From the Properties page, View a property then click Update
Select the Branch from the drop-down list and then click Save
Assigning Branches to a specific User
Go to People > Users
Click Edit next the User you want to assign to a Branch
Select the Branch or Home Branch from the drop-down list and then click Save
Assigning Branches in bulk
Branches can be assigned to both user and properties through bulk actions.
Either from Properties (Customer data > Properties) or Users (People > Users), search and apply the filters to get the listing for the properties/users to which you will apply the same Branch.
Select all, then click Edit (x) properties
Select a Branch from Branch (Properties) or Add to Branch (Users) from the drop-down list then click Apply changes.
Using Branches with Cost Centres
When the Branch extension is enabled you can have different Cost Centres for different task categories for each Branch. For any Cost Centre enabled as default, the system will look at the Branch on the property as well as the default category of the task being generated and automatically apply the appropriate Cost Centre to the task.
Only one cost centre can be set against a defect quote or task at any given time. For this reason (in order for the cost centre to be automatically applied upon task generation) each different cost centre must:
Have a unique combination of Branch and Task Category (having no Branch and/or no task category are also viable combinations. No category will apply across all categories that have not been specified in other default Cost Centres, with the same being true for Branches)
Have the Default toggle turned on
When 2 different cost centres have the exact same Branch and Task Category, only 1 can be made default at a time. If one of these is already enabled as default, the other cost centre with the same combination will automatically be disabled.
Setting up Branches on Cost Centres
Only the Branch context is covered here - to learn more about creating Cost Centres and how they work, see our article on the subject here.
Go to Control Panel > Cost Centres
For each Cost Centre double-click on the Branch cell and select the cost centre from the drop-down menu.
Click Save changes.
Key differences between Branches and Zones
Branches | Zones |
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Including Branches in document templates
This requires a template change request. Click here to learn about raising a request and the costs associated with changes to your document templates.