ElectricalBossPro Blog — Commercial Accounts

After-Hours Commercial Electrical Scheduling: Night and Weekend Work on the Dispatch Board

Some commercial work cannot happen while the business is open. A store cannot lose power to its registers on a Saturday afternoon. An office floor full of people on calls does not want a ladder in the hallway. A restaurant kitchen in the middle of dinner service is no place for an electrician. That work gets pushed to nights, early mornings and weekends, and it has to be scheduled just as carefully as the daytime routes.

After-Hours Work Is Still Regular Work

Recurring visits that come due are covered in The Waiting List for Relamping Visits: Which Buildings Are Not Due, Due Now or Overdue. Some of those visits can only happen after hours, and so can plenty of one-time jobs.

In ElectricalBossPro an after-hours job is a regular job. It lives on the dispatch board on its day, assigned to a van, with the same address, access notes, equipment and job card as any other. There is no separate system to keep track of. What makes it after-hours is the timing, and that timing gets written down where everyone can see it.

Put the Building's Hours on the Address

Every commercial address can carry access notes that say when work is allowed:

• “Shutdowns only after 10pm or before 6am.”
• “Weekend work preferred, building is empty Saturday and Sunday.”
• “Security on site after 7pm, call the guard station from the front door.”
• “Alarm is set at close, manager will meet the tech.”

Because those notes are on the address, they show up on every job at that building, not just the first. A new tech sent to the building for the first time sees the rules on the job card before they leave the shop.

Placing Night Jobs on the Board

On the dispatch board, the office puts the job on the right day and assigns it to a van. Then route order does the rest. Auto-route sorts the van's day Closest First or Furthest First from the shop, and the office can move any stop by hand. A night job goes at the end of the list, after the daytime stops, so the tech's phone shows it last.

For a crew that works an after-hours shift on its own, the office can give that van a day with only the night jobs. Saved views let the office pull up just the after-hours work when planning the week, and printed route sheets give the tech a paper copy if they want one.

It also helps to think about the night before. A tech who works a late job at an office building should not be first on the list at 7am the next morning. Looking at the board for the week, not just the day, lets the office spread after-hours work across the crew so nobody burns out on back-to-back late shifts.

Letting the Account Know

After-hours work usually means someone from the account has to let you in, or at least know you are there. Automatic on-the-way and arrived texts tell the manager the tech is heading over and when they arrive, so they can meet the tech, alert security or simply know the work is underway. If the plan changes, the office can text the manager through two-way texting.

The customer app also shows the day's route, so a manager waiting at a building can see where the tech is.

Hours and Location

Night and weekend shifts are where owners most want to know where their people are. Crew GPS shows techs on the office map, and the time clock in the tech app records when each tech clocked in and out. When the owner wants to see how long the Saturday job at the office building took, the hours are already recorded.

Billing After-Hours Work

Many shops charge more for after-hours work, and that is a pricing decision for you and the account. In ElectricalBossPro, you can set up after-hours versions of services on your own service list, so the price on the job and the statement matches what you agreed to. For accounts on Monthly billing, the after-hours job shows up as a line labeled with the address, right alongside the daytime work.

If the after-hours job started as a bigger project, it may have begun as an estimate the account approved online. That approved estimate becomes the scheduled job, so the line items carry through. For more on that, see Getting a Commercial Electrical Estimate Approved Online and Onto the Schedule.

Making Night Work Routine

After-hours work goes smoothly when it is treated like any other job: hours on the address, the job on the board, the route in order, the manager in the loop. The accounts that need it notice when an electrician handles it without fuss. For the rest of the commercial tools, see the commercial electrical software page.