An enquiry is somebody asking whether you can take their waste, before anything is agreed. Somebody rings up, or fills in the form on your website, and you want it written down rather than on a sticky note on the desk.
Once it is in LoadSnap you can price it as a quote, or turn it straight into a job if the customer is ready to book. Either way the customer, the address and the waste come across, so nobody types them twice.
How to do it
In the sidebar, under Operations, click Enquiries.
Click New enquiry, at the top right.
Under Customer, choose Business or Householder, then put in the name, the contact name, the email and the phone.
Under Waste Description, describe the waste in your own words, and add the container, how many of them and an estimated weight if you know.
Add any Photos they sent you. A picture of the pile settles more arguments about price than a paragraph does.
Under Details, set the Timing: ASAP, This week, This month or Flexible. Add a preferred date if they asked for one, then put in the site address and postcode. That is where the waste actually is, which is not always where the bill goes.
Put anything about gates, hours, parking or weight limits into Access Notes.
Click Save Enquiry.
Turning it into work
Open the enquiry.
Click Create Quote to price it, or Convert to Job if they have already said yes.
If this customer is not on your system yet, LoadSnap offers to create them as a producer from the enquiry details. Say yes and it carries straight on, with the producer already filled in on the quote or the job.
If you would rather set them up yourself, use Create producer in the actions menu. That lets you put them on as a Householder rather than Commercial.
Worth knowing
The Enquiries page shows how many are open and what proportion you convert, so you can see what is going stale. The tabs across the top split them into New, Quoted, Accepted and Declined, with a count on each.
Mark the ones you lose as Not interested, from the actions menu, rather than deleting them. The list stays honest, and Reopen Enquiry brings one straight back if the customer changes their mind.
An enquiry needs a company or a contact name on it before Create Quote and Convert to Job will do anything, because there has to be somebody to make the producer from.
Enquiries can arrive on their own from a request form on your website, so they do not all have to be typed in by hand.
Related: How to create a quote. How to create a job. How Producers work in LoadSnap.