Navigating Your Preferred Service Provider's Profile
This guide shows property managers how to navigate a Preferred Service Provider’s profile in Latchel to view and manage key work order settings, including invoice collection, detailed invoice requirements, billing type, VIP status, and more.
From your Latchel Portal, navigate to the People menu and select Service Providers.
Click the My Service Provider Management tab, then search for the service provider’s name in the search bar, or scroll through the list to find the service provider.
Save time by using the search bar to find a provider’s name—much faster and more efficient than scrolling through the list!
Once you locate the service provider, click their name to open and access their full profile page. You will then be taken to the Details section of their profile.
Service provider is not yet in Latchel? Check the help guide below.
How to Add & Manage Service Providers
Step-by-step guide for onboarding and maintaining service provider profiles.
When you open the service provider’s profile page, you will find multiple sections of information on the Details tab.
A. Work Order Settings
Invoice Collection: You may disable the workflow in Latchel’s software to collect invoices from preferred service providers. This is the best thing to do if your preferred network does not invoice for work (i.e. supers or onsite techs), or if your preferred network will only be sending invoices to you directly.
Require Detailed Invoices: Service Providers are required to submit invoices with detailed line items and supporting photos, ensuring greater transparency and accuracy in billing.
Service Provider Lock-In: By default, we move on to a different service provider if the initial one fails to respond to our scheduling requests. However, some property managers may prefer to stick with a specific service provider, known as Service Provider Lock-In. We only implement Service Provider Lock-In after receiving an approved quote from the service provider. Otherwise, we respect the property manager’s preferences.
Billing Type: Choose between In-house or 3rd-party. This setting determines how their rate is applied. If set as 3rd-party, their hourly rate must be included in their invoices. If set as In-house, their hourly rate is defined in the PM company settings.
If the service provider will be included in the On-Call Rotation, they must be set as In-house.
VIP Service Provider: This allows the service provider to accept a job without scheduling an arrival time. To know more about this setting, please visit the help guide below.
How to Set Service Provider as a VIP Preferred Service Provider
Prioritize a service provider as VIP among others during dispatch.
B. PrioritizationThis section allows you to control where a service provider ranks across their skill categories, determining how likely they are to be selected for work orders. This company-level setting can place a provider at the top or bottom priority and can optionally be applied across all levels, including property, portfolio, and company.
C. SkillsThis section will list all of the skills the service provider has. Skills refer to the abilities or services a service provider offers their customers. Skills are specific to what needs to be done to resolve the maintenance request and will be grouped into Skill Categories. For example, for Plumbing (this is the Skill Category) related issues, the service provider below has multiple skills such as Clear drain, Repair internal leaking, Repair external leaking, and more.You can add skills categories and skills to your preferred service provider. Once you assign the categories and skills to your preferred service providers, you can remove or add skills already assigned in the service provider profile on the prioritization page.In this section, you can either Edit the existing skills of the service provider, or add more by clicking + Add Skills or + Add “Quick Create” skill set.
Use + Add “Quick Create” skill set to quickly add General Contractor or Handyman skills in bulk!
D. AddressHere you will see the service provider’s main address. This is used to populate invoices.
E. Service TerritoriesTo learn more about adding or updating your service provider’s service territories, please visit the help guide below.
How to Assign Service Provider to a Territory / Zip Code
Map providers to specific regions for more targeted job dispatching.
This tab will provide a list of all work orders that this service provider has been assigned to resolve. You will be able to see the Job Name (or work order title), the property address, and the status of the work order with the time the work order has been in that status.
This tab has the list of staff members, or points of contact, for this service provider company.
A. Set Service Provider as Primary UserIn the User tab, select the person you want to update as a primary contact and click the ellipsis icon. Then, click Make Primary.
To disable a user, select Disable User. This will block their access to the company’s work orders.
Once done you will notice that the person will have the corresponding Check icon.
B. Update User’s Contact InformationTo update a service provider user’s contact information, click the user’s name. This will take you to their profile page.
Type the new contact information in the phone or email field, then click Save.
You can also add secondary contact information by clicking Other Phone or Other Email.
C. Add New UserTo add a new member of the service provider company, click +New User.
Add the new user’s information, then click Save.
Adding a new user within a service provider will assign them the same skills as the primary user in the company.
