SolarCleaningBossPro Blog — Routes & Scheduling

Setting Solar Cleaning Route Order by Hand When the Auto-Route Needs a Nudge

Auto-routing is good at one thing: distance. It knows where the shop is and where each stop is, and it orders the day to keep the truck moving in a sensible line. What it does not know is that the customer on Maple asked for the morning, that the 3-story roof needs to be done before it gets hot, or that the commercial site only lets crews in after eight. That is where the route order you set by hand comes in.

Auto-Route First, Then Adjust

The two auto-route options are covered in Closest First or Furthest First: Choosing Solar Cleaning Route Order From the Shop. The best habit is to run one of them first, so the bulk of the day is in a sensible geographic order, and then move only the few stops that need to move.

Building a whole route by hand from scratch is slow and usually worse. Starting from the auto-route and making two or three changes is fast, and the changes are the ones that carry your local knowledge.

Steep and Tall Roofs Early

The most common reason solar cleaning operators reorder a route is roof difficulty. Many prefer to do steep-pitch and 2-story or 3+ story roofs first thing, while it is cooler and the crew is fresh, and leave low-pitch single-story roofs, ground mounts and carports for later.

Because every stop on the board shows its panel details, such as “36 panels · Roof · 3+ story · Steep pitch,” finding the hard ones is a quick scan. Move them to the top, then let the rest of the route follow the auto order. The reasons for starting early are covered in Starting Early: Building Solar Cleaning Routes Around Cool Morning Panels.

Customer Time Requests

Some customers need the crew at a certain time. A homeowner who has to open the back gate before work. A landlord meeting the crew at a rental. A business owner who wants the carport done before staff park for the day. Note the request on the job so it is visible, then move that stop to the right place in the order.

Keep these requests to the ones that matter. If every customer gets a time window, the route stops being a route. Most homeowners only need to know the day, and the automatic texts and live route map tell them when the crew is getting close.

Commercial Sites and Access Windows

Commercial arrays often come with rules: sign in at the office, only after opening, never during a delivery window, escort required on the roof. If a commercial stop lands on a mixed route, set its spot by hand to match the site's hours, and keep the site rules in the access notes so the tech sees them on the card.

If commercial work is a regular part of the business, a dedicated truck for arrays makes this much easier, because that truck's route can be planned around site hours from the start.

Water, Supplies and Lunch

A pure-water system has limits. If the truck needs to refill or swap filters partway through a big day, it helps to put a stop near the shop or near a known refill point at the right point in the order. The same goes for lunch on a long day. These are not jobs on the board, but they shape where you want the truck at noon.

A Closest First route with one far cluster moved to the end, or a Furthest First route with a near stop pulled to the middle, can give the crew a natural break point without adding miles.

What the Tech and Customer See

Whatever order you set is the order on the tech's phone. They work the list top to bottom, tapping Start and Complete, and the automatic texts follow the same order. Customers who chose a “when they're next” alert get it when the stop before theirs is done, and the customer app shows their stop number on the live map.

That is a good reason to finish your changes before the day starts. Moving stops after the crew is rolling is fine when it has to happen, but the earlier the order is right, the more accurate every text will be.

Keep the Changes Small

The best hand-set routes look mostly like the auto-route, with a handful of stops moved for reasons you could explain in a sentence. If you find yourself reordering every stop every day, the problem is usually upstream: the wrong jobs grouped onto the truck, or two neighborhoods mixed into one day. Fix the grouping and the auto-route will do more of the work. For the rest of the routing tools, visit the SolarCleaningBossPro solar cleaning route software page.