It's Sunday night at the kitchen table. You're texting each crew member tomorrow's addresses, one at a time. By 7:15 Monday, one truck is at the wrong house and another is waiting on a part.
A small crew doesn't need a dispatcher. It needs a week set ahead, jobs sized honestly and one clear message each morning. Here's that routine, step by step.
Step 1 of 7 Set the week
Build next week on Thursday or Friday afternoon, while this week is still fresh. Start with the fixed pieces: installs, inspections and recurring visits. Then fill the gaps with service calls and small jobs.
Leave half a day open around midweek. Callbacks, a job that ran long and the urgent call all land there. A week with no slack breaks by Tuesday.
Keep a separate list for work that's sold but not dated. When a gap opens, you pull from it instead of digging through old texts.
JobsiteBooked's schedule shows the day or the week. Drag a visit to move it or hand it to another crew. Sold work with no date waits in a schedule-later list beside it. See how scheduling works.
Step 2 of 7 Size each job
Most schedules fail on the length of the jobs, not their order. A "two-hour" repair turns into four once you count the supply house and cleanup.
Size jobs from your own past hours, not from memory. Look at the last three similar jobs and use the middle number. Add setup, cleanup and the drive.
Give customers an arrival window instead of a set time, like "between 8 and 10". A window soaks up a slow first job without a string of late arrivals.
Put two people on any job that needs four hands, and book both of them. A helper borrowed the morning of the job leaves a hole somewhere else.
Step 3 of 7 Route by area
Drive time is unpaid time. A thirty-minute drive to a ten-minute fix costs more than the fix brings in.
Split your area into zones, like the north side, downtown and the lake towns. Give each crew one zone a day where you can. Book new calls into a day when that crew is already nearby.
Look at the day on a map before you lock it. Start at the far end and work back toward the shop. The last drive of the day is then the short one.
Step 4 of 7 Send the morning text
One message to the crew before they leave the yard settles most questions. Send it at the same time every day, like 6:30.
Keep it to what's different today: who rides together, the first stop, materials to grab and site quirks. The addresses and notes are already on their phones, so the text stays short.
Customers need a heads-up too. A reminder the day before cuts down on no-shows and locked gates. A text when the crew heads over saves the call asking where they are.
Visit reminders go to the customer by text the day before and an hour before. From the crew app, the crew picks an arrival time and sends an on-my-way message.
Step 5 of 7 Handle a rained-out day
Make the weather call at a set time. The night before works when the forecast is clear. On a maybe day, decide by 6 and stick to it.
Have a rain plan before you need it. Indoor jobs, shop work, estimates and small service calls can fill a wet day. A crew with work on a rain day keeps its hours, and you keep the crew.
Move each lost job to its next open slot, in the order those customers were booked. Don't stack every rained-out job onto tomorrow, or tomorrow breaks too.
Then tell everyone whose day moved. Drag the visit to its new day on the schedule, and the customer gets a "visit rescheduled" text. Send the crew one message saying the day is off. When they open the app, the new day is on their list.
Step 6 of 7 Know what the crew sees on the phone
A good crew phone answers the questions that used to come in by call. Each crew member's phone should show:
Today's stops in order, with tomorrow and the week a tap away.
Directions to each address.
Gate codes, notes and the work done at that property before.
One tap to call the customer or send a text.
The checklist for the job.
Before, during and after photos, saved to the visit.
Costs and markup stay off the crew's phones. The crew needs the work, not the margin.
Crews in JobsiteBooked use the crew app on Android, or the crew page in any phone's browser, iPhone included. The customer's signature and the visit notes go in there too. See the crew's day.
Step 7 of 7 Wrap up the day
Ten minutes before the trucks head home saves an hour the next morning. Before leaving the last job, each crew member finishes four things:
Each visit marked done, or marked not done with a note saying why.
Photos of the finished work.
A note about any extra work the customer asked for.
Clocked out of the last visit.
Then take your own ten minutes. Anything left unfinished goes back on the schedule-later list or gets a new date tonight. Tomorrow's first stops get one last look.
Once a week, check the hours. Each crew member clocks in and out of every visit, so you see the real hours behind each job. Approve the timesheets, then use the notes on long jobs to size next week. How time tracking works.
The rhythm
Set the week on Friday, then size and route it. Send one text each morning and wrap up every evening. The first few weeks feel slow. After a month, Sunday night is yours again.
JobsiteBooked
From the JobsiteBooked setup team, for owners who plan a crew's week. Try one step this Friday and build from there.
