ElectricalBossPro Blog — Electrical Contractor Software

The Dispatch Board: Putting Each Electrical Call on the Right Van in the Right Order

Every electrical shop with more than one van has the same morning puzzle. Which tech takes the panel upgrade? Who gets the four service calls on the north side? Where does the generator visit fit? The dispatch board is where that puzzle gets solved once and then shows up on every phone.

What Feeds the Board

Recurring visits from the plans in Recurring Electrical Work: Yearly Inspections, Generator Maintenance and Relamping Plans are one source. The rest is the one-time work that comes in every day.

In ElectricalBossPro, the board is called the Scheduled List. It holds every job that has a day: service calls booked from the phone, approved estimates that became jobs, website requests the office converted, and due visits scheduled from the Waiting List. Each job carries its customer, address and the equipment picked from the house.

Jobs by Day, Filtered by Van

The board shows jobs by day. Filter by van to see just one tech's day, or look at everything together to balance the load. If Van 1 has nine service calls and Van 2 has one install that will take all day, that is fine. If Van 1 has nine and Van 3 has two, something should move.

A common setup for residential shops is to split by type of work. One van runs service calls: outlets, GFCI, breakers, fixtures, fans, troubleshooting. Another runs installs, inspections and generators. The service tech gets good at moving fast through short calls, and the install tech gets good at long jobs and generator work. More on that in Residential Service Calls vs. Install Work: Setting Up Electrical Contractor Software for Both.

Auto-Route From the Shop

Once each van has its jobs, put them in order. Auto-route sorts a van's stops from the shop in one of two ways:

• Closest First. Start near the shop and work outward. Good when you want the van close to home for anything that comes up early.
• Furthest First. Drive out to the far stop first and work back toward the shop. Good when the day should end close to home.

Auto-route gives you a sensible order to start from. You can still set the route order by hand.

Set the Order by Hand When It Matters

Electrical work has constraints a map does not know about. A homeowner can only be there after 2pm. A panel upgrade needs to start first thing. A property manager wants the gym done before it opens. Drag the jobs into the order that works, and the tech's phone shows that order.

The customer side follows the order too. The customer app shows homeowners their place in line on a live map, and alerts go out when they are next and when the tech arrives. A sensible route means those alerts arrive at sensible times.

Saved Views and Route Sheets

Most shops look at the board the same few ways every day: all vans for today, one van for the week, just inspections and generator visits. Saved views keep those filters ready so nobody rebuilds them each morning.

Some techs and some owners still like paper in the truck. Route sheets print from the board with the day's stops in order. The phone is the live version, the sheet is the backup, and they show the same thing.

During the Day

The board is not just for the morning. As techs tap Start, Skip and Complete on their phones, the office sees the status of each job. Crew GPS shows on the office map, so when an emergency call comes in at 11am, the office can see which van is closest and add the stop to that tech's list.

Skipped jobs come back with the tech's note: nobody home, panel blocked, wrong part on the van. The office can text the customer through two-way texting and move the job to another day. Completed jobs show their invoice and, for inspections, the checklist.

One Plan, Every Phone

The point of a dispatch board is that the plan lives in one place. The office does not text the route to each tech, and techs do not keep their own lists. When the office moves a job, the phone follows. When a tech completes one, the board shows it.

For a shop running a few vans, that alone ends most of the morning phone calls. To see how dispatch connects to the Waiting List, the tech app and billing, visit the electrical contractor software overview.