ElectricalBossPro Blog — Electrician App

Start, Skip, Complete: The Three Buttons That Run an Electrical Service Day

An office manager at an electrical shop spends a surprising part of the day asking one question: where are we? Is Van 1 still at the troubleshooting call? Did the inspection on Elm Street happen? Is the panel upgrade done, and can we invoice it? Three buttons on the tech's phone answer all of that without a single phone call.

Three Buttons, Three Answers

Photos are part of every good call, as covered in Before-and-After Photos From the Electrical Tech's Phone. The buttons are what tie the photos, notes and checklist to the moment the work happened.

Every job card in the ElectricalBossPro tech app has the same three buttons:

• Start — the tech is on site and working.
• Skip — the call did not happen today, and the tech says why.
• Complete — the work is done.

That is the whole vocabulary. Every call on the list ends as either Complete or Skip, and the office sees each change as it happens.

Start: The Call Is Underway

When the tech arrives and taps Start, the office sees the call underway on the schedule. If the customer has chosen the arrival alert, they get the arrived text so they know the electrician is at the door. That small text cuts down on the “is someone coming?” calls that interrupt the office every morning.

Start is also the right moment to take before photos and open the checklist if the job is an inspection or a generator visit. Getting into the habit of tapping Start first keeps everything in order.

Complete: Done, Invoiced and Ready to Charge

Complete does more than mark a box. When the tech taps it:

• The office sees the call done, with its notes, photos and any checklist and readings attached.
• The invoice is created from the job's line items.
• The card on file can be charged, so the job can be paid before the van leaves.
• Equipment changes made on the job flow back to the house.
• For recurring plans, the next visit is set to come due on the Waiting List based on the plan's minimum days between visits.

Then the next call on the list moves to the top, and when the tech heads there, the on-the-way text goes to that customer. One tap closes one call and opens the next.

Skip: Not Today, and Here's Why

Not every call happens. Nobody is home. The garage is locked. The panel is buried behind boxes. The homeowner changed their mind at the door. Skip lets the tech close out the call honestly and move on, with a note that tells the office what happened.

A skip without a reason is a mystery the office has to solve with phone calls. A skip with a reason is a to-do item. The details are in Skipping a Call When Nobody Is Home or the Panel Is Blocked, and Noting Why.

Why Fewer Buttons Work Better

Some field apps give techs a dozen statuses: en route, arrived, diagnosing, waiting on parts, waiting on customer, paused, resumed. Every one of those is a chance to tap the wrong thing or tap nothing at all. Electricians are busy with the work; a long status menu is the first thing they will ignore.

Three buttons are hard to get wrong. Anything beyond them belongs in the notes, where the tech can say it in their own words. “Started troubleshooting, need to come back with a second tech” is clearer to the office than any status code.

Multi-Day Work and Return Visits

Electrical work does not always finish in one visit. A panel upgrade might need a return trip. A troubleshooting call might need a second look. The simplest approach is to treat each visit as its own call: complete today's visit with a clear note about what is left, and the office schedules the next one on the dispatch board.

That keeps the record clean. Each visit has its own photos, notes and time on site, and the customer sees each one on the schedule.

What the Office Sees

From the office, the three buttons turn the dispatch board into a live picture of the day. Calls not started, calls underway, calls completed, calls skipped with reasons. The owner can glance at it and know exactly where things stand without calling a single van.

That is the real payoff. The tech spends three taps per call, and the office gets a day that runs itself. To see the buttons alongside the rest of the tech app, visit the ElectricalBossPro electrician app page.