Scheduling an Assessment and Handling Its Fee

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You schedule an assessment from a Job. It records the customer, the Property, a time and an optional fee taken from your pricebook. After the visit, the fee is either invoiced on its own, waived, or credited on an estimate. This guide covers scheduling, editing, the fee choices and cancelling.

Before you start

Scheduling, editing and cancelling need permission to create assessments. Invoicing needs permission to invoice assessment fees, and waiving needs permission to waive them.
The Job must have a linked Property. Without one the form says This job does not have a linked property. Add a property to the job before creating an assessment.
To charge a fee, at least one pricebook item must be flagged as an assessment fee on the Pricing page.

Steps

Open the Job and select Add Assessment. (On the Assessments list, the same button appears only when you reached the list from a Job.)
On Schedule Assessment, check the Job Context card, then confirm the Customer.
Set Scheduled For, using the date and time picker.
Choose the Assessment Fee from the list. "No assessment fee" is always a valid choice. The fee is the selected item's price; you do not type an amount.
Optionally open Intake notes and write what the technician should assess in Intake Notes.
Select Create Assessment.

Editing before the visit

Open the assessment and select Edit. On Edit Assessment you can change Scheduled For, Assessment Fee and Intake Notes, then select Save Changes. The fee can be changed only while it is still pending. After that the page says to use the fee actions instead. Once the assessment is locked, the page shows Editing is locked and Save Changes is disabled.

Handling the fee

On the assessment page, Fee Actions appears once the visit has started. While the fee is pending or reinstated you can:

Select Invoice Assessment Fee to bill the fee on its own. The page then shows the Invoiced Amount, Invoiced On and a link to the invoice.
Enter a Waiver reason and select Waive Assessment Fee to forgive it. A reason is required.

Once the fee is invoiced or waived, those two actions disappear and the panel states the fee status.

Cancelling an assessment

Cancel this assessment ends it without an outcome. Findings already captured are kept, but no estimate can be generated from it. If an open fee exists, you must say what happens to it: Waive it (needs a Waiver reason and respects your waive limit), Invoice it, or Decide later. Select Cancel Assessment and confirm.

Tips

A customer who ordered the fee when booking cannot have it changed; the form shows that fee as fixed. To forgive it, waive it after the visit.
To charge less, add a discount to the estimate instead of changing the fee.
Whether the fee is credited on the estimate is decided when you generate the estimate, by your answer to Credit the assessment fee if the customer accepts this estimate. The company setting Credit Assessment Fees by Default only sets how that question starts; see the estimate guide.

If something goes wrong

If the fee list is empty, flag a pricebook item as an assessment fee first.
If invoicing or waiving fails, the page shows the reason from the system; the fee may already be settled.

How Assessments Work — An assessment is a visit to look at the work before a price is committed to. It belongs to a Job, is carried out by a technician on site, and can carry a fee. When the visit is finished the technician…
Recording Findings and Choosing an Outcome — On site, the technician starts the assessment, describes what they found, adds photos, and then completes the visit by choosing a result. Walter AI can help draft structured details and a diagnosis…
Turning an Assessment into an Estimate — Once an assessment is complete, you can generate a draft estimate from it. The technician's findings and recommended work carry over as text for the customer, and only the assessment fee is added as a…
Schedule an Assessment — ServiceVisit lets you add an Assessment to a Job. An assessment is a visit to look at the work before it is quoted, and you would add one when a customer needs someone on site to size up the job…
Invoice an Assessment Fee — ServiceVisit lets you bill a customer for the fee on an Assessment by generating a standalone invoice for that fee. You would use it when the visit is chargeable and you want to bill it on its own…
Waive an Assessment Fee — ServiceVisit lets you waive the fee on an Assessment. You would do this when you have decided not to charge the customer for the visit, for example because they went ahead with the work.
Record an Assessment Fee Payment — ServiceVisit lets you record payment against the invoice for an Assessment fee. You would use it once the customer has paid for the visit, so the fee shows as settled.