GarageDoorBossPro Blog — Billing & Payments

Adding a Second Van Without Doubling the Billing Work at a Garage Door Company

The day you put a second van on the road is a big one. More calls get answered, installs stop waiting behind repairs, and the business can finally grow past what one person can do. It is also the day billing can quietly fall apart. Twice the jobs means twice the tickets, twice the invoices and twice the chances for something to get missed, unless billing is set up so the second van adds work without adding office time.

Where Billing Breaks With Two Vans

Currency and international billing were covered in Billing Garage Door Customers in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK in Their Own Currency. Wherever you work, growing to two vans raises the same billing problems.

With one van, the owner is the tech and knows every job. With two, the owner may not be on half the calls. Paper tickets from the second tech come back with different handwriting, different shorthand and different ideas about what to charge. The owner ends up calling the new tech at night to ask what a ticket means. That is exactly the work a second van was supposed to free up time for.

A Common Two-Van Setup

Many garage door companies split the vans by type of work: one van on repairs and emergency spring calls, one on installs and tune-ups. In GarageDoorBossPro, the dispatch board shows jobs by day and lets you filter by van. Each tech is an employee with their own PIN and van assignment, and each one sees their own day in route order on the tech app.

This split helps billing too. The repair van produces lots of smaller invoices that are mostly charged at completion. The install van produces fewer, bigger invoices, often with deposits. Each pattern is easy to keep an eye on when it lives on its own van.

One Service List, Two Techs

The biggest billing fix for a second van is that both techs work from the same service list. Every job's lines come from your services with your prices, so the second tech's spring replacement is the same price and the same line as yours. There is no second set of prices living in a new hire's head.

When a tech finds more work on site, they note what the customer approved and let the office know, and the office adds the lines from the same list. Both vans produce invoices that look the same and read the same.

Complete Means Invoiced, on Both Vans

On either van, when the tech taps Complete, the invoice is created from the job with sales tax, and the card on file can be charged on the spot. The office sees every completed job from both vans, with photos, notes and invoices attached, without waiting for tickets to come back at the end of the day.

That is what keeps billing work from doubling. Two vans complete twice as many jobs, but each job bills itself. The office reviews instead of retyping.

Keeping Track of Who Did What

With two techs, it matters who did each job. Because every tech logs in with their own PIN, each completed job, each photo and each time clock entry is tied to the right person. If a customer questions an invoice, the office knows which tech was there and can see their notes and photos. Crew GPS on the office map also shows where each van is during the day.

Office Help

A second van often means adding office help too, even part-time. Office user roles let you give that person what they need, such as booking, texting customers and handling billing, without handing over the owner's login. A simple daily billing routine, covered in Who Handles Billing: Office Roles and Daily Billing Habits in a Small Garage Door Company, keeps everyone clear on who handles what.

Plans and Pricing as You Grow

GarageDoorBossPro plans are Start at $59, Pro at $89 and Crew at $199 per month, with a monthly text allowance of 500, 1,000 or 2,000 texts sent and received on each plan. As you add vans and techs, compare plans on the pricing page to see which fits. Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial with no credit card.

Grow the Work, Not the Paperwork

A second van should double what you can do, not double what you have to type. When both techs work from the same service list and every job is invoiced at completion, billing grows with the business instead of against it. For the rest of the billing system, visit the garage door invoicing software page.