Setting Up a Contract Services Provider

For companies that send people and equipment out under contract and get paid for it: wildland fire contractors (engines, hand crews, water tenders, dozers), private fire-protection and standby companies, private ambulance and event-medical providers, and specialized rescue or safety contractors. The operational side (calls, units, personnel, statuses, checklists, records) follows the fire, EMS or security guide; this guide covers the business side that runs on the Workforce & Business Ops modules.

In Resgrid a customer or agency is a contact with a billing profile, a resource order or event is a bid, the work is a deployment with a call, each day is a daily time report, and payment is an invoice with a packet.

What you will end up with

Piece	You will have
Certifications	Every crew member's qualifications with expiry, enforced on the roles that seat them.
Rate schedules	Your rate tables per season / customer, explicit dollars per band.
Contracts	One per agency or client, with document requirements and compliance documents kept current.
Bids → deployments	A quote that becomes the call, the deployment and the roster in one step.
Time and expenses	Crews file daily time reports and receipts from the apps; an approver signs them off.
Invoices	Generated from approved time, sent with the packet, paid by cheque, ACH or online.
Costs	What each job cost you and the margin it made.

1 — Department settings and add-on

Setting	Value
Time zone	Your home base; deployments carry their own incident time zone.
Modules	Shifts, Checklists, Inventory, Records on; Business Operations on.
Add-on	Subscription and Billing → Business Operations → Buy (managing member). Certifications and Deployment Finance are free; everything else here needs it.
Flags	Operations.Deployments, Business.Operations, Invoicing.CustomerInvoicing, Invoicing.ContractorBilling (and Invoicing.OnlinePayments if you want pay links) — hosted customers ask support; self-hosted operators use Resgrid.Console --FeatureFlags.
Permissions	Manage deployments and Approve time reports → operations managers; Manage bids / Manage contracts / Manage invoicing → the office; View invoicing → owners.
Billing settings	Invoicing → Billing settings: legal name, remit-to address, tax registration(s), SAM UEI / CAGE / workers' comp account, invoice footer.

2 — Certifications

• Types from the template gallery: wildland — NWCG FFT2/FFT1/CRWB/ENGB/DIVS, Red Card, RT-130, WCT, First Aid/CPR; private fire — FF1/FF2, DO-Pumper, Hazmat Ops; ambulance — NREMT + state licences, BLS/ACLS; all — CDL where drivers need it, DOT medical, MVR review. Units: DOT inspection, registration, insurance, pump test.
• Role requirements: Crew member = FFT2 + RT-130 + WCT; Crew boss = CRWB; Engine boss = ENGB; Paramedic = NREMT-P + state licence. Enforce with a short grace — an agency will refuse an unqualified seat and the deployment wizard flags it in red.
• Settings: notify holders 60/30/14/7 days and the office with the nightly digest; Certification Expiring workflow → training coordinator.

3 — Customers, contracts and compliance

• Contacts: each agency or client as a Location or Company contact with the AP e-mail; billing profile with terms (net 30–45), tax treatment (GST + PST components for Canadian agencies), the default rate card for ad-hoc work and the default rate schedule.
• Compliance documents: COI (annual, 30-day alert), workers' comp clearance, SAM registration and CAGE code, business licence, bonds — the contracts list warns before they lapse.
• Contracts: one Standing arrangement per agency (VIPR region, BCWS, state forestry, municipality) with the season's rate schedule, terms, invoice submission e-mail, max deployment days, response time and point of hire; document requirements: COI + WCB at Deployment start, signed DTR at Daily time report, packet at Invoice submission. Activate it.

4 — Rate schedules

One schedule per season or per agency rate agreement (clone last season's and change effective on):

• Policy: 30-minute rounding, overtime basis consecutive hours, 4-hour cancellation minimum, unsafe stand-down 8 h, travel cap 12 h/day, no-clear-8 carry-over on, portal-to-portal only where the contract says so, fuel deduction per litre if the agency supplies fuel.
• Premiums: Night, Hazard, Lead as flat hourly adders per band.
• Entries: personnel per certification code (FFT2, FFT1, CRWB, ENGB, EMT, PARAMEDIC) with deployment 0–8 h, OT1 8–14 h, OT2 14 h+; crew family type2-crew sizes 4/6/8 with daily tiers and required certifications; vehicles (engine, tender, dozer, ambulance) daily + mileage with free km; equipment (chainsaw, pump, monitor) daily; service lines (mobilization fee).

5 — Bids and deployments

1. Bid per resource order or event: customer, contract, lines from the schedule (crew × hours/day × days, engine, mileage), valid until, requested window, delivery location; Send bid as PDF.
2. Mark as accepted → Schedule deployment call: the wizard sets the call, ticks the units, seats the crew (certification colours and overlapping deployments visible), equipment, rates & premiums, and creates the call + deployment + roster + calendar item.
3. Agency-ordered work without a bid: Deployment Finance → New Deployment (Billable, contact, contract, identifiers) or Create from external order when the order came through Records.

6 — Time, expenses and approval

• Crews use the Responder app (own row) or the Unit app (whole crew) to file the daily time report each day — deployment / standby / travel entries, breaks, km, no-clear-8 and stand-down flags — and to log usage (odometer, engine hours, fuel) and expenses with receipts (per diems with meal codes, accommodation, fuel, ferry).
• The crew boss signs as contractor and records the customer signer name from the paper DTR.
• An operations manager with Approve time reports approves each report (or voids it with a reason); Time Report Submitted workflow → approver channel.
• Files: signed service requests, agency forms and manifests on the deployment's Files tab; File manifest PDF at mobilization.

7 — Invoicing and collection

• Billing tab → Charge preview weekly (or at demobilization): fix anything listed as unpriced, then Generate invoice; review the draft, Send with packet to the contract's submission e-mail.
• Ad-hoc jobs: Invoicing → New invoice → Add call with the rate card.
• Record payment for cheques / ACH; connect Stripe under Billing settings → Online payments so private clients pay from the link.
• Aging weekly; workflow Invoice Overdue → owner; the deployment-finance digest lists approved time unbilled for 21 days.

8 — Costs and margin

• Workforce: employee compensation profiles (hourly base, OT multipliers, per-OT-hour components, employer costs) or a department default for estimates; resource cost profiles for every engine and tender (acquisition cost, life, fuel per mile, maintenance from work orders).
• Cost runs: Estimate bid cost before quoting; Calculate deployment cost with revenue source Customer invoice before sending the invoice — the Internal cost tab on the deployment shows estimate vs. actual.

First-week checklist

• Business Ops add-on active; billing settings filled in
• Certification types added; role requirements enforced; every crew member's cards entered
• Compliance documents uploaded with alert leads
• One contract active with its rate schedule; a second schedule cloned for the next season
• Bid → accept → wizard → deployment tested; crew filed a DTR from the app; report approved
• Charge preview checked; invoice generated and sent with packet to yourself
• Stripe connected (if collecting online); a test pay link opened