PlumbingBossPro Blog — Dispatch & Scheduling

Plumbing Dispatch Software: The Complete Guide to Scheduling Service Calls and Running Your Vans

Every plumbing company has a schedule. Very few plumbing companies have a day that matches it. The faucet that was supposed to take forty minutes turns into a corroded shut-off valve. The water heater swap runs long because the venting needs work. And at 10:15 a homeowner calls with water coming through the kitchen ceiling. Dispatch is the job of turning that mess into a day your techs can actually work.

This guide walks through how plumbing dispatch works when it is done well, and how the pieces fit together in PlumbingBossPro. If you want the short version first, the plumbing dispatch software page covers the highlights.

What Plumbing Dispatch Really Is

Dispatch is three decisions made over and over: which day a job goes on, which van takes it, and what order the van runs its stops in. Everything else, the texts to customers, the route sheets, the GPS, supports those three decisions.

Plumbing makes those decisions harder than most trades for a few reasons:

• Job lengths vary wildly. A toilet flapper is a short stop. A repipe is a day or more. Both land on the same board.
• Emergencies are normal. Burst pipes, no hot water and backed-up sewers do not book a week out.
• Different work needs different vans. The drain machine and the water heater dolly do not always ride together.
• Equipment matters before arrival. A tech who knows it is a 50-gallon gas tank in the garage brings the right parts the first time.

The Dispatch Board

In PlumbingBossPro the center of dispatch is the Scheduled List, the dispatch board. It shows jobs by day, and each job is assigned to a van. Pick a day and you see every call on it. Filter by van and you see exactly what one tech has in front of them.

The board is where you answer the question every customer asks: “When can you come out?” Before you promise a day, filter to the van that does that kind of work and look at the load. A van with six short repairs can take a seventh. A van with a water heater swap and a repipe estimate probably cannot.

You can save the views you use every day, such as “Van 1 today” or “Water heater van this week,” so they are one click away instead of rebuilt every morning.

Booking Service Calls

Service calls come in from the phone, from the website request form, and from customers using the customer app to request service. Each one needs an address, a description of the problem, a day and a van.

Because each property keeps its own equipment list, booking a call at a house you have been to before is quicker. If the customer says “no hot water,” the water heater on file already shows its type, fuel, size, location and the year it went in. That information carries onto the job and onto the tech's phone.

Larger jobs often start as estimates. When a customer approves an estimate online, it becomes the scheduled job, so a water heater replacement or a softener install goes from “yes” to a spot on the board without retyping anything.

Routing the Day

Once a van's jobs are on a day, auto-route puts them in order from your shop address, either Closest First or Furthest First. Closest First starts near the shop and works outward. Furthest First drives out early and works back toward the shop, which some owners like because the tech ends the day close to home base.

Auto-route is a starting point. You can set the route order by hand whenever you know something the map does not: the customer who is only home after noon, the restaurant that needs its grease line done before the lunch rush, the water heater swap that should start first so it is not finishing at dark. The tech's phone shows the same order as the board.

Splitting Work Between Vans

Once a shop has two vans, most owners split work by type. A common setup is one van on repairs and drains, running many short calls a day, and one van on water heaters and maintenance, running fewer, longer jobs. The repair van stays loose enough to absorb emergencies. The water heater van can book a morning swap and a couple of yearly flushes without being yanked across town for a clog.

In PlumbingBossPro this is just the van assignment on each job plus a filter on the board. Each van is auto-routed separately, and each tech sees only their own list.

Same-Day Emergencies

An emergency call is a dispatch decision under pressure. The practical steps:

1. Ask whether the customer can shut off the water at the main. A burst pipe with the water off is urgent. A burst pipe with the water running is an emergency.
2. Check crew GPS on the office map to see which van is closest.
3. Add the call to that van's day and move it up in the route order.
4. Decide what gets bumped, if anything, and text those customers.

The tech sees the new stop in their list, with the address and navigation button. The emergency customer can get on-the-way and arrived texts like anyone else. Whether you charge more for same-day or after-hours calls is your policy, not a software setting.

Keeping Customers in the Loop

The phone call a plumbing office gets most is “when will the plumber be here?” PlumbingBossPro answers it with automatic texts. Customers choose their alerts: a reminder the night before, a text when they're next, and a text when the tech arrives. The on-the-way and arrived texts go out from the tech's phone as they work the route.

The customer app also shows today's route on a live map with their position: “You're stop 12 of 20 — the crew is 5 stops away.” Customers who can see their place in line call less.

Arrival windows and call-ahead are operator practice. Many shops promise a morning or afternoon window and let the texts and the live map narrow it down on the day.

Recurring Work and the Waiting List

Not every job is a phone call. Yearly water heater flushes, softener service, backflow tests and restaurant grease-line jetting all repeat. In PlumbingBossPro they are set by minimum days between visits, such as 365 for a yearly flush or 14 or 30 for grease-line jetting.

When a visit comes due it appears on the Waiting List, a live map and list with pins colored by status: not due yet, due now, or overdue past a 7-day grace. Dispatch pulls from that map to fill gaps around service calls, putting due visits that sit near the day's route onto the same van.

When Things Change

Jobs move. A customer cancels, a part is on back order, a tech calls in sick. Moving a job to another day or another van on the board takes it off one list and puts it on the other, and the tech's phone follows.

On site, the tech can tap Skip and note why: nobody home, no access, customer wants to reschedule. The office sees the skip with the reason and rebooks it. Crew GPS on the office map shows where each van is, so you are not phoning techs to ask.

Paper Backups and Route Sheets

Some techs like paper on the dashboard, and some offices like a printed day on the wall. You can print a route sheet for any van and any day straight from the board. It is a backup, not the system: the phone is always current, while the sheet is current only until the next change.

A Simple Daily Routine

• Before the vans roll: open your saved views, check each van's load, auto-route, adjust the order by hand, and look at the Waiting List for due visits near today's routes.
• During the day: watch crew GPS, slot emergencies into the closest van, and handle skips as they come in.
• End of day: rebook skips, confirm tomorrow's board, and make sure no job is stranded on a past day.

Where to Go Next

Each piece of this guide has its own article in this series, starting with The Plumbing Dispatch Board: Every Van, Every Day and Every Call on One Screen. If emergencies are your biggest headache, jump to Same-Day Plumbing Emergencies: Dispatching Burst Pipes, No Hot Water and Backed-Up Sewers. To see all the dispatch and scheduling tools in one place, visit the PlumbingBossPro plumbing dispatch software page.