Running your business
How to schedule a trade crew without the daily phone calls
What's the best way to schedule tradies?
Use one live calendar instead of a whiteboard, a group chat and memory. When the schedule changes, the worker's phone updates straight away, and the office can see who's where.
Five scheduling habits that save hours
- Put everything on the job. Address, access codes, customer's number, photos, materials and safety forms. If it's on the job, nobody calls to ask.
- Group by area. Cluster jobs geographically to cut travel time between them.
- Leave buffer time. Jobs run over. A small buffer each day absorbs overruns and urgent callouts without moving everything.
- Have a rain plan. Pair outdoor jobs with an indoor backup so a wet day isn't a lost day.
- Tell customers you're coming. An on-the-way text cuts no-one-home callouts.
How do you handle emergency callouts?
Decide in advance who covers emergencies each day and keep some flexibility in their schedule. When an urgent job comes in, drag it into their day and move the lowest-priority job. Software that notifies both the worker and the affected customer makes this a two-minute job instead of five phone calls.
What about recurring work?
Maintenance contracts, servicing and regular rounds should schedule themselves. Set the frequency once and let the software create the visits, so they never depend on someone remembering.
How do you track time on site?
Have workers clock on and off at each job on their phone. That gives you accurate timesheets for payroll and real labour costs for each job, without paper time sheets at the end of the week. Employers must keep records of employees' hours worked, so digital timesheets also help with record-keeping.