One board for who is going where, and when
Scheduling breaks in a specific way: the plan exists, and then it changes, and the change has to reach five people by phone. The plan on the wall and the plan in reality separate at about nine in the morning.
What it looks like today
- The schedule is a whiteboard, a printout, or a sheet that is emailed each evening.
- A change means a round of phone calls, and one person does not get it.
- Nobody can see where the work actually is right now.
- The same route gets rebuilt by hand every week.
What replaces it
- One schedule everybody sees, that updates when it changes.
- Recurring routes and appointments that repeat without being retyped.
- A record of what actually happened, not just what was planned.
- The office and the road looking at the same thing.
See what this would look like in your business.
Tell us how the work runs today. We'll show you where it leaks and what we would build first, at a fixed price. The first conversation costs nothing.
Routes that repeat, with exceptions that do not
A bus company running daily school routes plus charters, a same-day courier, a distributor with refrigerated delivery rounds — the base schedule is stable and the exceptions are the work. Software earns its place here by making the repeat free and the exception quick, rather than by trying to be clever about the routing itself.
Appointments with a physical constraint behind them
Gown fittings against a rotating rental inventory with cleaning and alteration turnaround; wig orders with measurements, deposits and reset appointments; dental recall across three offices. These look like calendars and are not — the appointment is only valid if the thing behind it is available, and that constraint is what a general-purpose calendar cannot hold.
The season problem
Several of these businesses do a large share of their year in a few weeks — a Passover production run, a simcha season, a camp intake. A system that is comfortable in February and falls over in Nisan has not solved anything. Designing for the peak rather than the average is usually the difference.
Questions
Questions about Scheduling & dispatch
Something else? Ask in the form below, or call (848) 285-5243.
What is scheduling and dispatch software?
Scheduling and dispatch software keeps one live board of who is going where, and when. When the plan changes, the change reaches the driver, the technician or the crew on their phone, and the office sees the same board, so nobody has to make five phone calls to move one job.
Can it handle routes that repeat every week?
Yes. Standing routes and recurring appointments are set once and repeat on their own, and the exceptions, such as a holiday, a canceled stop or a vehicle in the shop, are handled on the day without rebuilding the whole plan.
Does scheduling connect to billing?
It should, and in our systems it does. A completed job or a finished route is the record the invoice is built from, so the work that was dispatched is the work that gets billed, without anyone rebuilding it from notes weeks later.
Related
Start a conversation
Tell us how your business runs. We'll show you what we'd build.
We'll look at how you work, show you where time and money leak, pick the first piece worth building, and show you what it would look like. A first conversation costs nothing. A real person replies within one business day.