Workflow Steps Involving Equipment: Update Cost & Update Equipment

🔁 Workflow Steps Involving Equipment: Update Cost & Update Equipment
 

📘 Overview

Ontraccr supports powerful workflow automation involving equipment, triggered by form submissions. Two key workflow blocks related to equipment are:

1. Update Cost
2. Update Equipment

These steps allow you to automatically adjust job costing or update equipment profiles based on form data—especially from Equipment Tables.

🔧 1. Update Cost Workflow Step

📌 Purpose:

Automatically update job cost budgets or progress pages based on equipment usage selected in a form.

🛠️ How It Works:

• Form must include an Equipment Table
• The Update Cost block:
  • Pulls selected equipment from the table
  • Calculates cost or billing impact
  • Applies the updates to job costing modules (Budget or Progress page)

✅ This enables passive cost tracking without needing manual entries after form completion.

⚙️ How to Use It:

1. Add an Equipment Table to your form
2. Build a workflow using the Update Cost step
3. Configure it to reference:
   • The relevant equipment table in the form
   • The fields you want to update (e.g., budget categories)

🔄 Cost values are pulled from the cost code or equipment profile, depending on which has precedence (see earlier article on cost code logic).

🔁 2. Update Equipment Workflow Step

📌 Purpose:

Automatically update equipment location or project based on form submissions.

🛠️ How It Works:

• The form must include an Equipment Table with a To Location column
• The Update Equipment workflow block:
  • Reads the new location/project value
  • Updates the equipment profile accordingly

⚙️ How to Use It:

1. Include a To Location column in your Equipment Table
2. Add a Update Equipment step in your workflow
3. Configure the block to:
   • Reference the correct equipment table
   • Use the To Location value to update the profile

🔄 Effect:

The equipment’s project or physical location is updated automatically in Ontraccr after the form is submitted.

🧠 Use Case Example

Scenario: A foreman submits a relocation form indicating that 2 compressors are being moved from Site A to Site B.

• The form includes an equipment table with those compressors
• The To Location column is filled out with "Site B"
• The Update Equipment block moves those items in the database
• A parallel Update Cost step logs their billing rate for the day

Result:

• Accurate costing
• Up-to-date equipment tracking
• Zero manual data entry