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Severity and Responsibility Settings and It’s Effect in your Work Orders

When a job needs approval, it will go into the status:
  1. Needs PM Approval (if you are on the Home Assistant or Premium plan)
  2. Otherwise, it will go to Forwarded to PM.
Whenever a work order enters the Needs PM Approval status, the following notifications are triggered:
  1. Latchel will create a task for the assigned user group.
  2. When it is between 8 am - 7 pm (property time), Latchel will send a text to the user group.
  3. After 24 hours, Latchel will send a reminder email to the user group
To know more about managing user groups, follow:

How to Create User Groups

Set up user groups to better organize access and responsibilities across properties or portfolios.
 In addition to pre-approval, you can also configure job severity and responsibility settings from your Latchel portal. Please note, if you mark something as resident-responsible, you are saying that the resident is responsible for these costs and Latchel should bill the resident (this setting should only be used if you are on the Home Assistant program).  If you mark a job as normal, urgent, or emergency, this will indicate the job is the Property Manager’s responsibility.
  • Needs Pre-Approval: Approval of new non-emergency maintenance requests is required before Latchel dispatches a Service Provider
  • Resident’s Responsibility (Home Assistant Plan Only): The tenant will be responsible for paying for this job. Latchel will coordinate these jobs and charge the resident through the Latchel portal if the resident is enrolled in the Home Assistant program
  • Normal: Non-emergency
  • Urgent: Scheduled in 72 hours
  • Emergency: Dispatched immediately
By keeping these settings up to date, you can ensure Latchel is taking the right action for newly created work orders.

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How to Update Severity and Responsibility Settings

A. At the Company Level To modify your pre-approval, severity, and responsibility settings at the company level, click on the drop-down at the top right-hand side of your screen. Select Account Settings from the drop-down.
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Then on the Severity/Responsibility tab, you will see over 100 problems/locations listed on this page. Latchel has applied default settings to get you started, using the dropdown Settings Type, or the Problem Category, you can filter the responsibility you wish to update.
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Click the dropdown of the corresponding problem/location and select the appropriate severity/responsibility. Once selected, the settings will save automatically.
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B. At the Portfolio Level
The settings at the Portfolio Level will automatically be applied to all properties within that portfolio. To learn more about configuration inheritance and how a single property can override Portfolio & Company level configurations, click here.
Changes made at the portfolio level overrides the company settings. Any changes made in the company settings will no longer take effect in the portfolio.
Click the Places dropdown and select Portfolios.
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Search for the portfolio, then click the portfolio name.
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From here, click Severity/Responsibility.
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Search for any settings you wish to update, click Override.
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Then select the appropriate setting for the problem/location. Once selected, the settings will save automatically.
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C. At the Property Level Click the Places dropdown and select Properties.
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Search for the property and click on the address.
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From here, click Severity/Responsibility.
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In the same way as setting up the portfolio, you can override the property’s current severity and responsibility settings.
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Overriding the settings at the property level supersedes the severity and responsibility set at the portfolio and company levels. Any changes made at the portfolio or company level will no longer apply to the property once it has been individually updated.

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How to Save Existing Severity Responsibility Presets

You can save different severity-responsibility settings presets based on weather conditions, seasons, daylight variations, and expected emergencies. And also, to revert a previous settings if you are unsure of the changes you have made. Under the Severity/Responsibility tab, click the ellipsis icon and select Save as Settings Set.
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Then enter a Name and Description for the settings set, and click Group Settings.
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How to Apply Existing Severity and Responsibility Preset

Now that you have Severity settings saved, you can apply the settings at the property, portfolio, or company level. On the Severity/Responsibility tab, click the ellipsis icon and select Apply Settings Set.
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Next on the pop-up window choose a Settings Set from the dropdown and click Apply Settings.
Any changes made to your severity and responsibility settings on your account settings page will only apply to future work orders. If you need to update existing work orders created prior to the change, you will need to modify them individually. For more information, refer to How to Change the Severity Settings on a Work Order.

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How to Set a Severity Settings Fallback

Severity Settings Fallback is used when a work order doesn’t match any existing preset. It allows you to set a default response for how Latchel should handle such cases. From your Severity and Responsibility page, click the dropdown arrow next to Severity Fallback and select either Needs Approval or Emergency.
  • If set to Needs Approval, all new work orders without a matching severity preset will notify the assigned property manager, and the work order will require their approval before proceeding.
  • If set to Emergency, Latchel will automatically treat unmatched work orders as emergencies and take over handling them.
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And that’s how you can manage your severity and responsibility settings!