Enabling Equipment History Tracking

From the Tools menu, select Options to open the Options window.
Note: E-automate should automatically display Company Options in the right pane upon opening the Options window.

Click [Edit Company Settings] to open the Edit Company Settings window.

Under the Details tab, do ONE of the following:

If you have created yourself as a customer in your database, in the Company Customer field, use the Lookup icon to select your company from the list. If you have not identified a Technician or a Territory on the customer profile, e-automate opens the selected customer and requires you to identify both Technician and Territory prior to allowing the use of the selected customer as the company customer.

If you have not created yourself as a customer in your database, you will need to do so by clicking the drop-down menu in the Company Customer field and selecting New to open the New Customer window. For more information on setting up a new customer, see the Creating Customers topic.
Note: You use yourself as a company customer so e-automate knows to whom to assign ownership of in-stock equipment. E-automate assigns ownership to the company customer for all newly received, configured equipment, whether by PO, Inventory Increase Quantity, or Sales Credit Memo.

In the Bill Code field, use the Lookup icon to select a time and materials bill code for auto-generated equipment profiles.
Note: Although bill codes are not required on equipment profiles, best practice recommendation is a time and materials bill code on all equipment profiles. If you choose to use Equipment History Tracking, e-automate requires a default bill code for auto-generated equipment profiles.

Click [OK] to save the company settings and return to the Options window.

In the left pane, select Equipment to display equipment options.

Check Enable Equipment History Tracking to open a window asking permission to examine compatibility issues.

Click [Yes] to verify your system is compatible with Equipment History Tracking.
Note: If e-automate finds incompatibility issues, you are requested to resolve them before Equipment History Tracking can be enabled. Equipment History Tracking requires that all equipment have serial numbers and that all equipment based on the same item have a unique serial number. e-automate displays the Equipment [with Serial Numbers to Resolve] window.

If the Equipment [with Serial Numbers to Resolve] window displays, do the following:

Click [OK] to acknowledge that you must resolve the duplicates.

Double-click on the equipment with the unresolved serial number to open the Edit Equipment Profile window.

In the Serial number field, enter the appropriate serial number for the equipment.

Click [OK] to save the edited serial number information for the equipment.

Repeat Steps a through d until the equipment list is empty.

Click [Close] to return to the Options window.

Repeat Steps 2 through 4 until you have resolved all serial number issues in your e-automate database.
Note: If the Equipment [with Serial Numbers to Resolve] window does not display, continue to Step 5.

To allow end users to skip Equipment History Tracking screens if the attributes are not required, check the Skip tracking information screen if no required fields need to be filled out checkbox.

To reduce the number of times you have to enter information for multiple pieces of equipment with the same settings, check the Forward information from one piece of equipment to the next upon collection checkbox.
Note: For example, when you receive equipment, you may want to set the status to Available. If you receive numerous pieces of equipment, you can simply set the first one with this checkbox checked and e-automate then assigns the Available status to all equipment received. When you check this checkbox, enabling this feature, the system displays a Forwarding enabled checkbox on the Equipment History Tracking window.

When equipment is sold to a customer that happens to be a location (child) of another customer, checking the Treat the customer attribute as the equipment's location and set the equipment's customer to the location’s parent customer checkbox assigns the customer’s parent to the equipment and the customer to the location.
Note: For example, say you have a parent customer, Ogden School District and a child customer, Ogden High School. Ogden High School purchases a new piece of equipment. When the equipment record is created, e-automate would make the Customer field on equipment be Ogden School DISTRICT and the location be Ogden High School.

In the Next Equipment Number field, enter the number to be used for the next piece of equipment automatically generated by e-automate. e-automate uses this number and then increments the number for each piece of equipment created.

Click [OK] to save the Equipment History Tracking options. e-automate opens a window notifying you that each user must restart e-automate for Equipment History Tracking to be enabled.

Click [OK] to close the Attention Required window.

You must close the e-automate program and then re-start it for the Options changes to take effect.