ElectricalBossPro Blog — Scheduling & Dispatch

Scheduling Commercial Electrical Work After Hours: Retail, Gyms and Offices

Commercial customers are some of the best accounts an electrical company can have. A retail chain with a dozen stores, a gym with several locations, a property manager with buildings across town. They call often, they pay on a schedule, and one good relationship can mean steady work for years. They also come with a scheduling twist: a lot of the work has to happen when the business is closed.

A Different Kind of Day

The previous guide, Storm Days and Power Outages: Scheduling an Electrical Company Through the Rush, was about the busiest days. After-hours commercial work is the opposite problem: quiet hours, locked doors and a contact who may or may not be there.

One Client, Many Addresses

In ElectricalBossPro, one client can have many addresses. A gym chain is one client with each location as its own address. Each address keeps its own equipment saved on the property, such as the main panel, subpanels, three-phase service details, exterior disconnects, its own access notes and its own job history.

Tags and custom fields help sort commercial accounts. Tag a client as commercial or after-hours, and add custom fields for things like a store number or a facilities contact.

Access Notes Are Everything

After-hours work lives or dies on access. Before the first visit to a new location, get the details and put them in the access notes on the address:

• Which door to use and how to get in
• Who to call if no one is there to meet the crew
• Alarm instructions, if the business provides them
• Where the electrical room or panels are
• Anything the business asks, like parking in the back or signing in at the front desk

Those notes show on the job card in the tech app every time that address is on the schedule, behind the company login and each tech's personal PIN. A tech who has never been to that store can walk straight to the right door.

Building the Route Around Opening Times

Auto-routing does not know a store opens at 10. When commercial work has to be done before opening or after closing, set the route order by hand. A common pattern:

• Before opening. Commercial stops go first in the route, with residential service calls after.
• After closing. A separate evening run, or commercial stops at the end of the route.
• Overnight or weekend. A dedicated day on the board for the crew doing that work.

Put a note on each job, such as “Store opens 10am, must finish before,” so the tech knows why the order is what it is. For more on setting the order, see Setting Route Order by Hand When the Auto-Route Needs a Human Touch.

Service Calls for Commercial Clients

Not all commercial work can wait for closing time. A store with dead outlets at the registers or a gym with a circuit down in the locker room needs someone today, during business hours. Those calls go on the service van like any other same-day call, with a note about where to check in and who the contact is on site. Crew GPS on the office map helps the office pick the van that can get there fastest, and the client's other locations stay on their regular after-hours schedule.

The Right Contact Gets the Alerts

For commercial accounts, the person who needs the on-the-way and arrived texts is usually not the owner. It is the store manager, the gym's front desk, or a facilities contact. Make sure the right person is set up on the account for each location, so the heads-up reaches someone who can open the back door or meet the crew. Replies come back to the office through two-way texting.

Recurring Commercial Work

A lot of commercial work repeats. Lighting maintenance and relamping for a retail chain or a gym can be set as a recurring service at 14 or 30 days between visits. Each location comes due on the Waiting List on its own, and the office can group due locations into one after-hours run. That kind of recurring work is covered in Recurring Commercial Lighting Maintenance on a 14- or 30-Day Schedule.

One Statement for the Whole Account

Commercial clients with many locations rarely want a separate invoice for every visit. In ElectricalBossPro, a client set to Monthly gets one statement each month covering every address, with each line labeled with the address. The property manager or the chain's accounts person sees all the month's work in one place.

After-Hours Work Pays for Good Records

Commercial accounts reward the shop that shows up at the right door, at the right time, knowing what is behind it. That only works if the access notes, equipment and contacts are on every address. To see how commercial scheduling fits with the dispatch board and routing, visit the ElectricalBossPro electrician scheduling software page.