Settings:
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Enable Guarantee Time via the Admin menu > Company menu > Configuration tab
Check the box for Enable Guarantee Time and check the box for Maximum Hours Guarantee Time
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Rate Zone Business Hours are the hours defined in the Standard rate zone.
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The defined Business Hours can be seen via the Admin menu > Rate Zones > Interpreter (Zones)
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Rate Plan Cancel Fee
Guaranteed time only works if the cancel fee Period is set to 24 and the Period Rule is set to Business Hours. This is so that a cancellation on a Friday with a holiday Monday would result in the time on Tuesday being marked as guaranteed. For more information regarding Period Rule settings, please refer to Rate Plan Period Rules
Define which dates are Holidays via the Admin menu > Company menu > Holidays tab.
What is Guaranteed Time?
When an interpreter is assigned to an appointment that is cancelled with short notice (payable) then the interpreters time is blocked out and guaranteed for other assignments during that time.
The justification for this is to save money as the interpreter is to be reimbursed for the time due to the short notice cancellation and as such agencies want to utilize that interpreter for the time that is to be paid regardless.
Guaranteed time is to be highlighted on the calendar so that the schedulers know to utilize that time to its full extent.
There is currently no way to exclude individual interpreters from the Guarantee Time process if the agency is using this workflow.
How does the system create a guarantee?
When the job ends sooner than the scheduled time or is canceled and is payable, this triggers the guaranteed time slot that encompasses the remainder of the scheduled time for that initial job. The guaranteed time slot displays on the interpreter's Specific Availability Calendar and on the Scheduler page.
Example: Interpreter is scheduled for a 4-hour job which is canceled within 24 business hours. A 4-hour guaranteed time slot is created on the interpreter availability calendar; the interpreter is expected to accept another job to fill that guaranteed time slot (any service type).
Example: An interpreter is assigned to a 3-hour job. The job ends after 30 minutes. The interpreter must close the job in order to trigger the guarantee time functionality. The guarantee time slot displays on the Specific Availability calendar.
The interpreter is then assigned three subsequent jobs to back-fill the guaranteed time slot. In this example, the interpreter is paid for the scheduled 3 hours for the first job, even though the actual duration is 30 minutes. The interpreter is scheduled for three additional jobs to back-fill their guaranteed time; the payment displays the actual duration of the jobs and 0:00 hrs for the paid duration.
What does forfeiting guarantee hours mean?
All hours are guaranteed payment unless the interpreter forfeits their guarantee (payment of the scheduled time) by declining the replacement job(s), indicate that they are not available during the guaranteed time, or are non-responsive within 10 minutes of sending the interpreter the job offer while on guaranteed hours.
Any additional jobs that an interpreter does during the guaranteed time will not be payable, as the interpreter is already being paid for the initial guaranteed time. If the interpreter is guaranteed for a 4-hour time slot but the replacement job runs over to 5 hours, the interpreter will be paid for the additional hour beyond the guaranteed time.
Guaranteed time does not have any effect on customer invoicing.
Troubleshooting Examples
None of the canceled-within-24-hour Face-to-Face jobs are generating the Guarantee Time slot on the interpreter's Specific Availability calendar
Check the interpreter's rate plan for Face to Face service type jobs. If the hourly rate is $0, no guarantee time slot will be created; they must have an hourly rate greater than $0.
A job was canceled within the 24 hours prior to start time of the job. Why isn't the interpreter showing up on Guarantee?
Check the service type. For example:
VRI On-demand does not generate a cancel fee. If job is VRI on-demand, confirm on payment preview the amount shows as $0. If $0, no guarantee slot will be created.
Cancel fee is applicable for Scheduled In-person, Scheduled VRI, Scheduled OPI only.
Interpreter is marked as 'forfeit guarantee" when they should not have been marked as such
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Confirm with the interpreter that they did not mistakenly decline the job.
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Click on the job on the Scheduler page and confirm the status displays as Forfeit Guarantee, a screen refresh may be needed to display Guaranteed instead of Forfeit Guarantee.
Interpreter assigned to VRI on-demand job, job cancels. No guarantee time slot created. The next job that interpreter did the same day, during adjacent time, paid $0.
Check the interpreter rate plan and any rate qualifications. Is there a rate qualification which pays $0/hr?