In many businesses with fitters, service technicians or crews, one person plans the jobs. They know the customers, the people and the vans. The planning happens on a whiteboard, in an Excel sheet or in the Outlook calendar. The fitters hear about their appointments in the morning by phone or via WhatsApp.
That works as long as this person is there and nothing changes. When a fitter falls ill, an emergency comes in or a spare part is missing, the replanning starts: phone calls, new messages, the eraser. Whoever stands in during the holidays cannot make sense of the board. And the office only learns what was actually done once the paperwork comes back.
What scheduling has to do
Jobs and people at a glance
Open jobs on the left, fitters and their days on the right. A job is dragged onto a fitter and a date. You can see straight away who is already fully booked. It is the planning board, just without the magnets.
Who can do what
Not every fitter can do every job. One has the training for gas installations, another the licence for the big van, a third has known the customer for years. Scheduling should know this and suggest suitable people instead of relying on memory.
Absences
Holidays, sickness, training courses, college days. Anyone who is not there must not be booked. Absences belong in one place, not in a second list as well.
Materials and vehicles
Is the spare part in stock? Is the van with the lifting platform free? A job often fails not because of the fitter but because of what they need to bring.
Replanning without a chain of calls
When an appointment changes, the fitter sees it on their phone. Where possible, the customer gets a message with the new date. Nobody has to ring five people.
Feedback from the job
After the job the fitter reports back: done, not done, follow-up visit needed, materials used. Then the office knows the same day what is still open. What that looks like on a phone is described in capturing orders on a phone.
The link to job and invoice
A planning board that sits next to job management creates new double work. The job is created in one system, the appointment in another, and the report comes back on paper. The benefit only comes when everything runs together:
- The job comes from your job management into scheduling.
- Scheduling assigns a fitter and a date.
- The fitter sees the job on their phone.
- The report with times and materials goes back to the job.
- The invoice is created from it.
Whether this works with your existing software depends on whether it can hand out jobs and take reports back, where possible through an interface. Settle this before you choose a scheduling tool. More in stopping double data entry.
Recurring jobs
Servicing, inspections and checks come round every year. They should not be created by hand each time. Good scheduling generates them from the contracts and suggests a period in which the visit is due. How this fits together is covered in maintenance contracts and inspection dates.
Standard solution or your own scheduling
| Standard solution | Your own scheduling | |
|---|---|---|
| Start | immediately | after concept and development |
| Workflow | the program’s | yours |
| Skills, vehicles | often basic | as detailed as needed |
| Link to jobs | to the systems the vendor knows | to your system, where possible |
| Fits when | your jobs are typical for your trade | your rules are particular |
There are good standard solutions for many trades and service companies. First check whether your job management software includes a planning board. That is usually the easiest route, because job and appointment are then already linked.
Your own scheduling pays off when your rules are particular: crews that have to travel together, jobs spanning several days at changing sites, inspections with fixed records, or customers with their own time windows. Or when your job management software was custom-developed and no standard solution knows it.
Why rollouts fail
- The planner is not asked. The person who plans today knows rules that are written down nowhere. They belong in the project from day one.
- The fitters get a second app. Jobs in one, reports in another: that will not be used for long.
- The board stays on the wall. If planning carries on at the board in parallel, there are two versions of the truth. Set a date from which planning is done digitally only.
- Everything is meant to be automatic. Scheduling that works out routes and assignments by itself sounds good. In practice the planner decides with knowledge no program has. Suggestions help; decisions stay with the planner.
Questions before you decide
- How many jobs do you plan per day, and how often does something change?
- Which skills, vehicles or equipment have to match when planning?
- Does your job management software have scheduling, or can it pass jobs to another tool?
- How do your fitters learn their appointments today, and how do they report back?
- Who plans when the planner is on holiday?
Take a photo of your board on a normal day and on a bad one. Those two photos show better than any requirements document what digital scheduling has to do.
