ElectricalBossPro Blog — Scheduling & Dispatch

The Waiting List Map: Seeing Every Electrical Visit That Has Come Due

Recurring work is the quiet backbone of a steady electrical company. A homeowner on a yearly safety inspection plan. A generator customer who pays for maintenance every year. A gym or a retail store with lighting maintenance every few weeks. None of these customers call to remind you. If the office does not remember, the visit just does not happen, and eventually the customer stops paying for a plan they never see.

Where Recurring Work Fits

The previous guide, One Van on Service, One on Installs: Splitting Electrical Work Between Vans, suggested filling the install van's open days with inspections and generator visits. The Waiting List is where those visits come from.

How Visits Come Due

In ElectricalBossPro, a recurring service is set by the minimum number of days between visits. Some common setups for an electrical company:

• Yearly safety inspection plan: 365 days
• Yearly generator maintenance: 365 days
• Commercial lighting maintenance or relamping: every 14 or 30 days

When a visit is completed, the clock starts again. Once the minimum days have passed, that property shows up on the Waiting List as due. Nobody has to keep a wall calendar or a spreadsheet of renewal dates.

The Map and the List

The Waiting List is both a live map and a list. The map shows a pin for every property with a recurring visit. The list shows the same visits with the client, address and service.

Pins are colored by status:

• Not due yet — the visit is on the plan, but its minimum days have not passed.
• Due now — the visit has come due and is ready to schedule.
• Overdue — the visit is past a 7-day grace after coming due.

The colors make the office's job visible at a glance. A cluster of due-now pins in one neighborhood is a full day for the maintenance van. A scattering of overdue pins is a list of customers who need a call this week. The pin colors are covered in detail in Not Due, Due Now, Overdue: Reading the Pin Colors on the Electrician's Waiting List.

Scheduling From the Map

The map is what makes recurring work efficient. Instead of scheduling each due visit as it comes up, wherever it happens to be, the office looks for groups:

• Find a cluster of due visits in one area.
• Assign them to the same van and the same day.
• Auto-route that van from the shop.

One van, one part of town, five or six visits in a line. Once assigned, a visit leaves the Waiting List and shows on the dispatch board for its day. When the tech completes it, the cycle starts over, and it will come back on the Waiting List next time it is due.

How Customers Get on the List

Every pin on the Waiting List starts with a customer on a recurring plan. Some are added by the office, often right after a service call when the homeowner says yes to a yearly inspection. Others sign up on their own. The customer app lets homeowners sign up for services at the prices you set, such as a yearly generator maintenance plan, and a website sign-up form with the card captured lands in Form Responses, where one click turns it into a client.

Imported customers count too. A CSV import places each address on the map automatically, so a shop moving its existing plan customers over from spreadsheets and paper sees them on the Waiting List from day one.

Telling the Customer

Recurring visits are usually inside work, at least in part. A safety inspection means walking through the house. Generator maintenance may be outside, but the homeowner often wants to be around. The customer's alert preferences handle the heads-up: a reminder the night before, a text when they are next and a text when the tech arrives. Customers in the customer app can see the route on the day.

If a customer cannot be home that day, a quick two-way text moves them to another date. The visit stays due until it is completed, so it does not fall off the list just because one day did not work.

What the Tech Sees

On a recurring visit, the job card shows the equipment saved on the house: the main panel, any subpanels, the generator and transfer switch with their brand, model, rating and fuel type, and the access notes. For a safety inspection, the tech works through the safety inspection checklist on the phone. For generator work, past notes from last year's visit are right there. The office sees the results on the job when the tech taps Complete.

Recurring Work You Can Actually See

Plans are only worth selling if the visits happen. A live map of every due and overdue visit turns recurring work from something the office has to remember into something the office can see. To see how the Waiting List fits with the dispatch board, routing and the tech app, visit the ElectricalBossPro electrician scheduling software page.