What's new in Gas Engineer Software

Two changes to the jobs list on the web portal:

Bulk update job statuses. You used to have to open each job to change its status. Now you can tick the jobs you want, open the Action menu and choose Update Job Status.

Export jobs to CSV. There’s a new Export Data button on the jobs list, the same as the one on customers, job addresses and invoices. Choose a date range, or tick Download all of your data to get every job. The export uses the filters you’ve already set, such as job status and date range, and includes outstanding, completed and archived jobs.

The Schedule view of the calendar on the apps now has a new “Hide empty days” toggle to make your booked work easier to view.

Where to find it: Calendar → open the calendar view options (☰ button) → Tap on “Schedule” view → Hide Empty Days.

This is also where you’ll find other options, including hiding weekends, bank holidays, and other people’s events.

It only shows in Schedule view, as Day and Week views already show every day.

Prior to this update, only accepted quotes could be converted into an invoice.

Now there’s a Convert to Invoice button on Pending, Expired and Accepted quotes as well.

• Pending or Expired: GES checks you’re happy for the quote to be marked Accepted, then opens the invoice as normal. The expiry date stays as it was.
• Accepted: goes straight to the invoice.

The button doesn’t show on Declined or Cancelled quotes.

There’s now a notification bell on the Home screen of the app, so we can keep you more in the loop with GES updates, provide helpful tips, and other important notifications.

Notifications come in three types:

• New: new features and improvements. These also send a push notification, so you won’t miss them.
• Tips: quick pointers on getting more out of GES.
• System: things that need your attention, like a problem with your accounts integration.

Unread notifications have an orange bar down the side, so you can see at a glance what you haven’t read yet.

Where to find it: tap the bell on the Home screen.

From this update, you’ll find Tools in the main menu, after Calendar. It gives you:

• Boiler manuals, which you can now use on the web portal as well as in the app
• Quick links to the tools on our website. These are versions of the same tools available in the apps, plus a couple extra. If you find these extra ones useful, let us know!

Note: The Help Centre has moved to make room for it. It’s now the ? icon at the top of the screen, next to settings.

When you add or edit a line item, the Description box now has a formatting toolbar with:

• Bold, italic, underline and strikethrough
• Bulleted lists
• Numbered lists

The formatting shows on the PDF your customer gets. You can give each line item a bold heading and list the work underneath it, so a long description doesn’t end up as one block of text.

Work out installation volume on site, next to the Gas Rate and Pipe Sizing calculators.

Choose the gas type (natural gas, LPG or LPG/air), then enter your copper and steel pipe lengths and the meter type. The calculator gives you the installation volume, the purge volume and the permissible drop. You can show results in m³ or litres.

For the tightness test, pick what’s connected:

• Pipework only / new appliances: no perceptible movement is allowed.
• Existing appliances connected: the permissible drop comes from the Edition 4 tables, based on your installation volume and gas type.

Enter the drop you saw and you’ll get one of three results:

• Pass: no perceptible movement.
• Within limits, retest pipework only: there was some movement but it’s inside the allowance for existing appliances. Isolate the appliances and retest the pipework on its own. If an appliance can’t be isolated, test with it connected and choose the pipework only option.
• Fail: the drop is over the permissible limit.

iOS joins Android and the Web Portal for this update. Chase a quote from your phone without writing the email from scratch.

Tap a Pending quote in your quotes list and choose Follow Up. Or, if the quote is already open, use the menu at the top of the screen. The email opens with your Quote Reminder 1 wording filled in and the quote PDF attached. Edit it if you like, then send.

Follow Up only shows on quotes that are still Pending, so you won’t chase a customer who has already accepted or declined.

How to manually send an invoice reminder or quote follow-up

If you’ve connected Xero, QuickBooks or Sage, you no longer have to open your accounts software to check whether an invoice made it across.

A small icon now sits beside each invoice in the job, job address and customer history lists:

• Green: the invoice synced.
• Red: the sync failed. Hover over the icon to see the error message from your accounting software.
• No icon: no sync has been attempted.

Fix the problem and resync, and the icon updates.

Available on the Pro plan.

Quotes now carry their own status, so you’re not guessing which ones have gone quiet.

• Pending: set automatically when you issue a quote. If you edit and re-approve it, it goes back to Pending.
• Accepted, Declined or Cancelled: set by you. When you mark a quote as accepted, GES offers to create a draft invoice from it.
• Expired: set automatically once the quote’s expiry date passes.

Quote reminders only go out for quotes that are still Pending, so customers who’ve already said yes or no won’t be chased.

On the web portal, filter the quotes list by status. The list now has Status and Expiry Date columns.

In the apps, use the status tabs at the top of your quotes list. Tap a quote to mark it accepted, declined or cancelled, or convert an accepted quote to an invoice. The status also shows on the PDF preview.

Learn more about using quote statuses here. 

Send a customer one document that shows everything they’ve been invoiced, what they’ve paid and what they still owe.

Choose a date range, or pick All invoice data to go back to their first invoice. The statement covers every job address for that customer. For each invoice it lists the number, issue date, job address, amount, VAT, total, paid and outstanding, with totals at the bottom and your bank details included.

Click Send to email it using the new Customer Statement email template, with the PDF attached. Or click Download to save the PDF. Emailed statements are logged in the customer’s history.

Where to find it: Customers → open the customer → Generate Statement.

How to generate a customer statement

Record your air source heat pump services in the same app you use for everything else.

Find the new record under Heat Pump Certificates in the record menu. Indoor and outdoor unit details are pulled from the appliance, and in the apps you can scan serial numbers instead of typing them. Once you issue the certificate, GES sets the next service due date on the appliance, one year ahead by default.

On the web portal, your installer reference number (MCS or equivalent) is added automatically. You can edit the prefix and number in settings.

You can also add heat pumps as an appliance type on job addresses, and send heat pump service reminders. Reminders start switched off, so turn them on in your reminder settings.

Setting up automated service reminders

Make your quotes and invoices easier to read by laying out the work properly, instead of cramming it into one block of text.

When you add or edit a line item on an estimate, quote or invoice, you can now use bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, bullet points and numbered lists. The formatting carries through to the PDF your customer receives.

It works in line item templates too, so set up your standard wording once and reuse it.

Adding and using line item templates

Add your pipe details, section by section, and the calculator will give you the total equivalent length and the pressure drop, green or red depending if its within limits.

Joining the web portal and iOS, you can now draft invoices and quotes using AI before finalising and issuing them to your customers.

AI drafting uses past pricing data in your account and industry-standard figures. You can also reword your own line items with AI to make them sound professional and check for typos etc.

Quotes now display a status that updates automatically after you mark it as accepted, declined, or cancelled.

Along with this change comes easy filter options to find the quotes you need to see.

Learn more.