Fill in a job sheet

A job sheet is the bit of paper your engineer used to fill in at the door and hand over. Mucka's version fills itself in.

Everything on it is already on the job: the job number, who the customer is, where the work was, who attended and when, any parts, any time logged. Your engineer isn't re-typing an address the system already knows. All he adds is what he did.

You'll need the Job Sheets & Reports skill switched on. Add it from the Skills page.

When you add it, Mucka asks what you want out of a job: the job sheet you keep, the customer's own copy of what was done, or both. Tick just the sheet and everything below is all there is to it. Tick both and your engineer still fills in one form at the door, it just comes out as two documents. You can change your mind later in Settings.

Starting one

Open the job and tap Job sheet in the row of buttons. That's it, there's nothing to set up first and nobody needs to switch anything on for him.

The sheet opens as a wizard, one page at a time:

1. Check the details. The job, the customer, the site address and who attended, all filled in.
2. What did you do? The one thing he actually writes.
3. Get it signed.
4. Finish.

On a computer the sheet shows a live preview beside the wizard, so you can see the document taking shape as you go.

Talking it instead of typing it

On the write-up page there's a microphone. Hold it, say what you did, let go.

Mucka transcribes it, tidies the punctuation, and drops the text in the box for you to read before it goes anywhere. Ten seconds of talking beats two minutes of thumb-typing in a loft with cold hands, and that difference is usually what decides whether the write-up happens at all.

It never adds anything you didn't say. It puts in full stops and takes out the ums. It won't mention a part you didn't fit. The text lands in an editable box and there's a line under it telling you Mucka's been at the words, so you can change anything you don't like.

This one needs a signal. If the transcription fails it says so rather than losing what you said, and if the tidy-up fails you get your words back exactly as you spoke them.

Getting it signed

The signature page works the same way as job sign-off, because it is job sign-off: same wording, same full-screen signing pad, same offline queue. If the job's already been signed off, the sheet picks that signature up and doesn't ask again.

Type who's signing first. The box stays locked until you do, which is deliberate: handing a customer a phone that then asks them to type their own name into someone else's app is a bad look.

Nobody in? Tap Nobody was here to sign. The sheet records that, with the time, and can be issued without a signature. That's an honest answer, which an empty signature box isn't.

You only write it up once

You don't do the sheet and the job notes.

When you issue the sheet, whatever's in the write-up goes onto the job's own timeline as a note, tagged from job sheet JS-0005 so anyone in the office can tap through to the document it came off. The "This job finished with nothing written up" prompt disappears on its own, because it's been written up.

On a phone, that prompt now takes you straight to the sheet's write-up page rather than offering you a second microphone. From a desk it still offers to nudge your engineer for it, because you can't write up a job you weren't on.

It only goes one way. Your own job notes never get pulled into the sheet: those are your running commentary on a job, and they weren't written for a customer to read.

If you make a correction later, Mucka rewrites that same note rather than adding a second one, so nobody has to read two near-identical entries to work out what changed.

Issuing it

Tap Issue and three things happen:

• The sheet gets its own number, JS-0001 and on
• Everything it says is frozen exactly as it reads at that moment
• You get a PDF to hand over, print or send

Frozen means frozen. Move the job to next Tuesday, rename the customer, put a different engineer on it, add a note. The sheet the customer signed doesn't change a word. That's the whole point of issuing it: before that it's a live view of the job, after it it's a record of one.

Until you issue it, it's a draft. It has no number, and a draft PDF is stamped as a draft, because a printed draft that looks finished is a document nobody's stood behind yet.

Empty boxes never print

If there are no parts on the job, there's no Parts section. No time logged, no time section. Nothing written up, no heading sitting over a blank space.

That sounds obvious and it isn't. Most job sheet software prints the heading anyway, so a customer gets a sheet with Parts: Blank and Order number: Blank on it. Ours leaves them out.

One that does now print when you've got one: the customer's own order number, if you put a PO on the job.

If something's wrong on it

You can't edit an issued sheet, and that's deliberate: it's the record of what somebody signed.

What you do instead is tap Make a correction on the sheet. Mucka copies it into a fresh draft with its own number, carries over the write-up and the signature, and re-reads everything else off the job as it now stands, so whatever you fixed on the job comes through.

The original stays exactly as it was and stays the current sheet until you issue the replacement. If you change your mind and never finish the correction, nothing's happened. Once the replacement is issued, the old one is marked Superseded and says at the top which sheet replaced it. It stays readable, because it's the record of what was signed on the day.

Choosing what's on your sheets

Go to Settings → Work → Job paperwork. The Job sheets card is the one you want.

What's on the sheet is a list of tick boxes: customer, site address, work requested, work carried out, job notes, attendance, parts, time on site, signature. Untick anything you don't want your customers seeing.

Work requested is what you typed into What's the job? when the job was booked — the customer's own words for what they asked for, printed directly above what your engineer says he did. The two read as a pair, which is the point. Leave the box blank on a job and the heading doesn't print at all.

It never shows your Internal notes. That box is for gate codes and anything else you wouldn't want read out, and no document Mucka produces prints it.

Job notes are off to start with. Those are your own running commentary on a job, and they weren't written with a customer reading them. Have a look at a few before you switch them on.

Changing this only affects new sheets. One already started keeps what it started with, so an owner ticking a box doesn't reshape a document an engineer is stood in front of a customer with. An issued one never changes at all.

Getting asked automatically

By default Mucka doesn't ask, and the button's on every job either way.

Tick Start a job sheet when a job's completed and marking a job done opens the sheet by itself.

If that's too much on every job, use the job types instead:

• With the setting off, the row reads Always ask on. Pick the job types worth the paperwork, like a bathroom install or landlord work, and Mucka asks on those and leaves the rest.
• With the setting on, the row reads Never ask on. Pick the ones that aren't worth it, like a twenty-minute callout, and Mucka skips those.

If you've also got sign-off asking automatically, the job sheet wins. You won't get asked twice for the same signature, because the sheet has the signature in it.

Finding one afterwards

Issued sheets are filed with the job's other paperwork, alongside the quotes, invoices and certificates. Open one to read it, download the PDF, or see who started it and who issued it at the bottom of the page.