ElectricalBossPro Blog — Generator & Maintenance Plans

The Waiting List Map: Seeing Every Generator Visit That Is Due or Overdue

A list of names and dates tells you who is due. A map tells you where they are. For an electrical contractor running generator maintenance and safety inspection plans, the “where” matters as much as the “who,” because a visit across town costs more in drive time than the visit is worth. The Waiting List in ElectricalBossPro puts both on one screen.

Where the Waiting List Comes From

Visits land on the Waiting List because of the minimum days setting described in Every 365 Days: Setting Generator Maintenance to Come Due on Its Own. When a plan's days are up, the visit appears. Nobody has to add it by hand, and nobody has to remember it.

The Waiting List is both a live map and a list. Every visit that has come due shows as a pin on the map and a row on the list, with the customer, address, service and how long it has been waiting.

Three Colors, Three Decisions

Pins on the map are colored by status, and each color tells the office something different:

• Not due yet. The visit is coming up. Useful when planning a route a week or two out, or when a van has an open afternoon near those houses.
• Due now. The plan's days are up and the visit is ready to schedule. This is the main working pile.
• Overdue. The visit has passed a 7-day grace after coming due. These are the customers most likely to wonder whether you forgot them.

Glancing at the map on a Monday morning, the office can see right away whether things are under control or slipping. A map full of overdue pins is a signal to add a maintenance day. A map with mostly not-due-yet pins means the plans are on track. How to handle the overdue ones is covered in Due Now vs. Overdue: Working the 7-Day Grace Window on Maintenance Plans.

Building a Day From the Map

The real value of the map is grouping. Instead of scheduling visits in the order they came due, the office can look for clusters: six due generator visits in one subdivision, three safety inspections along the same highway, a few overdue pins near a house where a van already has an install on Wednesday.

From the Waiting List, visits go onto the dispatch board for a van and a day. The dispatch board, or Scheduled List, shows jobs by day and lets you filter by van. Auto-route orders the stops Closest First or Furthest First from the shop, or you can set the route order by hand. Saved views let the office come back to the same layout each week, and route sheets can be printed for techs who like paper in the truck.

Generators and Inspections on One Van

A common setup for a small shop is one van on service calls and another on installs, inspections and generator visits. The Waiting List makes the second van easy to fill. On a slow install week, that van can run a full day of due generator maintenance. On a busy install week, it can pick up two or three due visits near the install site.

Because generator maintenance and safety inspections share the same Waiting List, the office can also see when one house is due for both, and put them on one trip. That saves a drive and gives the customer one visit instead of two.

Seeing It From the Tech's Side

Once visits are on the board, they show up on the tech's phone in route order. Each card has the address with a navigation button, the generator and other equipment on the house, access notes, and past notes from earlier visits. The tech taps Start, works the visit, and taps Complete.

When the job is completed, it leaves the Waiting List, and the count to the next visit starts again. Meanwhile, crew GPS shows on the office map, so the office can see where each van is during the day and, if a customer calls asking about their visit, give a real answer.

Before Storm Season and After Outages

The Waiting List is especially useful at the two busiest moments for generator work. Before storm season, the office can look at the map, see which plan customers are due or coming due, and pull them forward so every generator on the books gets its visit before the weather turns. After an outage, the map shows every generator customer you maintain and where they are, which helps the office sort calls and plan routes when the phones are ringing.

The map does not decide anything for you. It shows the work. Your office decides which van goes where, and your techs do the visits. To see how the Waiting List fits with generator records, inspection reports and billing, go back to the ElectricalBossPro generator maintenance software page.