A call-out at 7.30 in the evening costs more than one at 10 in the morning, and one at 2am costs more again. If you have been keeping separate "Daytime", "Evening" and "Overnight" items and picking the right one by hand, time bands do it for you.
Optional. Set none up and nothing changes.
Set up your bands
The quickest way: tap Set up how you charge on Settings → Money → Price list, go to Evenings and nights and pick Yes, my own prices. Mucka adds Evening (17:00 to 22:00) and Night (22:00 to 08:00) every day, and you fill in your prices for each.
To add another band, like weekends, or change a band's times, open the same step, or tap Evenings and nights under How you charge at the bottom of the price list:
- Tap Add a time, like weekends, or Times on a band.
- Name it. It goes on the customer's document, so Evening reads as "Evening call-out". Mucka suggests Evening and Night.
- Set the times, like 17:00 to 22:00. A band can run past midnight: 22:00 to 08:00 is a night band, and 2am on a Tuesday counts as Monday night.
- Tick the days it applies on.
Your normal working hours are your standard prices and need no band.
Give your items their band prices
Open an item charged by the hour, like your call-out, and you will see a row for each band. Fill in only what changes. For example:
| | Call-out | First hour | Each hour after | |---|---|---|---| | Standard | £40 | £80 | £80 | | Evening | £60 | blank | £120 | | Night | £100 | blank | blank |
A blank box means "same as standard", so the first hour above stays £80 in every band.
An item with no band prices of its own can take a percentage instead: set Add to labour on the band (50% is time and a half) and every time-charged item without its own figures goes up by that much in that band.
Once you use bands, they replace each item's own out-of-hours percentage, so an evening job is never charged the evening price and time and a half on top.
On a quote or invoice
Pick a time-charged item and Mucka asks how long the job took, as before. It now also shows When is the work?, already set from the job's time: a job booked for 19:30 opens on Evening. Change it if it is wrong, and Mucka leaves your choice alone from then on.
Each line says which band it is: "Evening call-out", "Additional time (evening)".
Mucka does the same when you ask it to quote or invoice: it reads the time off the job. If there is no job time to go on, it prices at your standard rate and asks you when the work was.
Same-day call-outs
If you charge more to come out the same day, open your call-out item, tick Charge more for the first hour and put in a Call-out fee. Then set Same-day call-out: a quarter more, half as much again, double, or My own amount for any other figure, like 5%. The box stays greyed out until there is a call-out fee, because the extra only ever goes on the call-out.
- It goes on the call-out fee only. The first hour and the time after stay the same price.
- It adds to the band. A night call-out of £100 with 25% same-day is £125, and the first hour is still £80.
- It is ticked for you when the job was booked on the same day as the visit, and you can untick it on the quote or invoice. The line reads "Call-out charge (same-day)".
Customer rates and pricing areas
Band prices are the starting figure. A pricing area or a customer rate adds on top, the same way it always has, and the percentages add rather than multiplying.
What the receptionist tells callers
The AI receptionist can say your band prices, because they are about the time, not the caller: "£40 to come out in the day, £60 in the evening, £100 overnight".