GarageDoorBossPro Blog — Garage Door Software

Setting Up Garage Door Software: Services, Vans, Techs and Customers

Setting up garage door software does not need to take a week. Most of the work is deciding a few things you already know, like what you sell, who drives which van and how you bill, and putting them in once. Done in the right order, a garage door company can be running real calls from the software within a day or two.

The Customer List Comes Early

Getting your customers in is covered in CSV Import: Bringing Your Garage Door Customer List Into New Software. It fits in the middle of the setup below, after services and people are in place.

Step 1: Company Basics

Start with your company information: name, address of the shop, phone and email. The shop address matters, because auto-routing works Closest First or Furthest First from the shop. Set your sales tax so invoices come out right.

If your vans leave from somewhere other than the office, such as a storage yard or the owner's home, use the place the vans actually start each morning. Auto-routing works from that point, so getting it right means the first stop of the day is really the closest one, not the closest to a desk nobody drives from.

Step 2: Your Service List

Your service list drives estimates, jobs and invoices, so it is worth getting right. A garage door company might set up:

• Service call
• Torsion spring replacement and extension spring replacement
• Cables, rollers and off-track repair
• Opener repair and opener install
• New door install and panel or section replacement
• Sensors, keypads and remotes
• Weatherstripping
• Commercial door repair
• After-hours emergency

Add your own prices, for example a $89 service call, a $295 torsion spring replacement, a $549 opener install. Then set up recurring services: a yearly tune-up plan at 365 days between visits, for example $129, and commercial door maintenance at whatever interval you sell, such as 90 days.

If you price by door count, set up services to price off the property measurements.

Step 3: Vans and Techs

Add your vans, then your techs. Each tech gets a personal PIN for the tech app and an assignment to a van. Techs sign in with your company login plus their PIN on their own iPhone or Android phone, in the browser, with no app store download.

Add office users too, each with their own login and a role that fits what they do. The owner, the person answering phones and the bookkeeper can each have different access. The details are in Office Users, Tech PINs and Van Assignments in Garage Door Software.

Step 4: Customers

Import your customer list with a CSV import. Imported addresses are placed on the map automatically. After the import:

• Add tune-up plans to customers who have them
• Set property managers, HOAs and commercial accounts to Monthly billing
• Add tags, like “HOA” or “Commercial”
• Add access notes for addresses you know well

Equipment can wait. Techs will fill in doors, openers and springs as they visit each house.

Step 5: Customer Communication

Decide how customers hear from you. Turn on the automatic alerts: night before, when they're next and when the tech arrives. Customers can choose which they want. Set up your estimate templates for common jobs, and estimate follow-up emails. Add the website request form and sign-up form to your site so leads land in Form Responses.

If you plan to text, keep in mind the monthly text allowance on each plan: 500, 1,000 or 2,000 texts sent and received on Start, Pro and Crew.

Step 6: A Test Day

Before going live, run a test. Create a job at your own address, use the From House picker, put it on a van, open the tech app on a phone, tap Start, run the door safety inspection, take a photo and tap Complete. Check that the invoice looks right and that the office can print the Garage Door Safety Inspection report.

If you want to see a fully set-up company before doing your own, the live demo at my.garagedoorbosspro.com/demo.html is a sample garage door company stocked with customers, jobs and equipment.

What Can Wait

Not everything has to happen on day one. Custom fields, saved views on the dispatch board and detailed equipment for every house can all be added as you go. The important pieces for the first day are the service list, the techs and vans, and the customers. Get those in and start running calls.

Once you are set up, the first week is about building habits. To see everything you are setting up, visit the GarageDoorBossPro garage door software page.