SolarCleaningBossPro Blog — Routes & Scheduling

Scheduling Solar Cleaning Jobs: From a Due Date to a Day on the Board

Every solar cleaning job goes through the same short trip before a tech ever climbs a ladder. It starts as a reason to clean, becomes a job waiting for a day, gets a truck and a spot in the route, and ends up on a phone in the cab. When that trip is clear, nothing falls through. When it lives in somebody's head, customers who were due in spring get a call in August.

The Big Picture First

The full routing and scheduling picture, from the map to the customer's arrived text, is laid out in Solar Cleaning Route Scheduling: The Complete Guide to Planning Days, Trucks and Routes. This guide zooms in on the first step: how a single job goes from “needs doing” to “on Tuesday, Truck 1, stop 4.”

In SolarCleaningBossPro there are three ways a cleaning gets into the queue. A recurring plan comes due. An estimate gets approved by the customer online. Or the office books a one-time cleaning directly, often from a website request or a phone call. All three end up in the same place, which is the point. One queue, one map, one board.

Recurring Plans Come Due on Their Own

Most of a solar cleaning company's steady work is recurring. Homes on a twice-a-year plan, homes cleaned yearly, and commercial arrays cleaned quarterly. Each plan has a minimum number of days between visits, such as 180, 365 or 90. When a cleaning is completed, the clock starts again, and when enough days have passed, the next cleaning comes due without anyone setting a reminder.

That is the habit that matters most. Nobody has to remember that the house on Elm Street was last cleaned in April. The plan remembers, and the job appears on the Waiting List when it is due.

Approved Estimates and One-Time Cleanings

New customers usually start with a quote. The estimate is built from your service list, such as a price per panel, a minimum charge, add-ons for a second story or a steep pitch, bird proofing per panel, critter guards and an inspection. When the customer approves it online, the approved estimate becomes the scheduled job, so the office does not retype anything.

One-time cleanings work the same way. A homeowner selling a house, a landlord between tenants, or someone who just noticed the panels look grey after a dusty summer can be booked as a single job. If they like the result, they can be moved onto a recurring plan later.

Putting a Job on a Truck and a Day

Jobs that are ready to schedule sit on the Waiting List, a live map and list colored by status. Picking a job and assigning it a day and a truck moves it onto the Scheduled List, the dispatch board. From there it shows on the board by day, and you can filter by truck to see just one crew's work.

The best way to schedule is rarely one job at a time. Look at the map, find a group of due pins in the same part of town, and assign them together to the same truck and day. That is how a day turns into a route instead of a list of errands. The map side of this is covered in The Waiting List Map: Seeing Every Solar Cleaning That Came Due Before You Build a Route.

Ordering the Day

Once a truck has its jobs for the day, they need an order. You can auto-route the stops Closest First or Furthest First from the shop, then adjust the route order by hand for things the map cannot know, such as a customer who asked for the morning or a steep roof you want done before the heat. Whatever order you set is the order the tech sees on their phone.

Because every job shows its panel details under the address, such as “24 panels · Roof · 2-story · Low pitch,” you can sanity-check the day as you order it. If three big steep roofs ended up back to back after lunch, you will see it before the crew does.

What the Tech Sees and What Happens Next

On the morning of the job, the tech logs in with the company login and a personal PIN and sees their stops in route order. Each card has a navigation button, the panel details and the access notes, like the spigot location, which side of the house has roof access, the gate code and whether there is a dog. They tap Start when they begin, and the customer can get an automatic on-the-way or arrived text.

When the tech taps Complete, the invoice is created and a card on file can be charged. If the job is on a recurring plan, its clock resets, and the next cleaning will come due on its own. If the tech had to skip, the job comes back to the office with a note and can be put on another day.

Keeping the Queue Honest

A schedule only works if everything that needs doing is actually in it. That means every recurring customer is on a plan, every quote that gets approved is approved online rather than by a text the office forgets, and every phone booking is entered as a job right away. Once the queue is complete, the map tells the truth, and routing becomes a matter of looking.

To see how scheduling fits with the rest of the routing tools, visit the SolarCleaningBossPro solar cleaning route software page.