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Quick Start: Your First Work Order in 30 Minutes

This chapter runs the entire BigWave loop once. Customer in, work order created, technician assigned, job done, invoice out. Every step links to the chapter that explains it in detail.

The scenario is Beacon Electric’s first residential call. The Okafor family wants their panel looked at.

Before you start

You need a BigWave login with internal access, and your company needs at least one project to put the work order in. Chapter 9 shows how to create one, which takes about two minutes for a basic project.

Step 1: Create the customer

  1. Log in. You land on the home page.

  2. In the left panel under Manage, click Customers.

  3. Click Add Customer.

  4. Enter the Okafors: last name, first name, address, phone and email. Leave Company Name blank.

  5. Save.

If BigWave suspects the customer already exists, matching on address, name or phone, it shows the possible duplicates and asks you to confirm before saving. Chapter 8 covers that check.

Saving the customer can also create their first Site at the same address. For a homeowner, customer and site usually share an address. They’re still two different records, as explained in chapter 1.

Step 2: Create the work order

  1. From the home screen, click Create Work Order in the left panel.
  2. Pick the project (Beacon uses Residential Service), the customer (the Okafors) and the site (their house).
  3. Give it a short description: “Panel inspection, flickering lights in kitchen.”
  4. Save.

You now have a work order with an ID, sitting in your project’s first status. The work order screen you land on is the most important screen in BigWave. Chapter 15 walks it panel by panel.

Step 3: Assign a technician

  1. On the work order, open Schedule and Assign in the left panel.
  2. Add a schedule entry for the visit date.
  3. Assign Tom, or any technician, to it.

Tom now sees this job under My Assignments when he logs in, and it appears on the resource calendar. Dispatch at full speed, with nine technicians and a drag-and-drop calendar, is chapter 16.

Step 4: Complete the job

After the visit, move the work order forward:

  1. On the work order Details panel, change the status to your work-complete status.
  2. Add a comment describing what was found: “Loose neutral at breaker 14, re-terminated. Recommended full panel replacement.”

Statuses are how BigWave knows where every job stands, and they drive billing and automation. Designing a good status flow is chapter 7.

Step 5: Invoice it

  1. On the work order, open Quote / Invoice.
  2. Add a line item for the service call. Enter it ad hoc: description, quantity, price.
  3. Generate the invoice and email it to the Okafors’ address on file.

Chapter 19 covers real invoicing: contract rates, the materials database, purchase order numbers, and exporting to your accounting system.

What you just did

Customer, site, project, work order, assignment, status, invoice. That’s the whole machine. Everything else in BigWave, custom fields and templates and alerts and assets and portals and imports, exists to make that loop faster, more consistent, or more automatic at scale.

Now go read chapter 1. It explains what these pieces are and how they fit, it’s short, and every other chapter leans on it.