GarageDoorBossPro Blog — Technician App

Running Yearly Tune-Up Visits From the Garage Door Tech App

Emergency calls pay the bills today. Tune-ups build the business for next year. A homeowner on a yearly tune-up plan is a customer who already trusts you, who calls you first when something breaks, and who pays on schedule. Running those visits well on the tech app is what keeps them signed up.

Tune-Ups Come Due on Their Own

Emergency calls, covered in Broken Spring at 10am: Sliding an Emergency Call Into a Tech's Route, show up without warning. Tune-ups are the opposite: you know exactly when they are coming.

In GarageDoorBossPro, recurring work is set by minimum days between visits. A yearly tune-up plan uses 365. When a house's tune-up comes due, it shows on the Waiting List, a live map and list where pins are colored by status: not due yet, due now, or overdue past a 7-day grace.

Nobody has to remember that the Hendersons were last seen in October. The visit appears on its own.

Grouping Tune-Ups Into Good Routes

Because the Waiting List is a map, the office can see clusters of due tune-ups and book them together. A street with four houses due this month becomes one morning instead of four separate trips.

The office drops them onto the install-and-tune-up van's day on the dispatch board and auto-routes Closest First or Furthest First from the shop. On the tech's phone, they appear in that order. Tune-ups fit nicely around installs: a couple in the morning before a new door goes in, a couple after.

Night-before reminders help tune-ups the most. A customer who booked a year ago may have forgotten. The reminder gives them time to clear the garage.

On Site: The Card First

Tune-up customers are repeat customers, so the card has history. The tech sees:

• The door, opener and springs saved on the house, with years installed.
• Access notes, including which bays and any codes.
• Past notes from last year's visit, including any recommendations the customer declined.

A tech who reads last year's note (“Bottom seal worn, customer declined for now”) can open with it: “Last year we noticed the bottom seal was getting worn. Let me check it today.” That is the kind of continuity that makes a tune-up feel worth paying for.

The Checklist Is the Tune-Up

On a repair call, the checklist backs up the fix. On a tune-up, the checklist is the product. Every item gets attention: springs, cables & drums, rollers, hinges & brackets, tracks, door balance, auto-reverse safety test, photo-eye sensors, opener force & limits, lubrication, bottom seal & weatherstripping, emergency release, and keypad & remotes.

Then the readings: door size, spring turns, balance, door age, opener age, estimated spring cycles used and issues found. Then a condition and recommendations. The full list is in The Door Safety Checklist in the Garage Door Tech App, Item by Item.

Before-and-after photos matter less on a tune-up than a repair, but a photo of anything recommended is still worth taking.

After the Visit

When the tech taps Complete, a few things happen at once:

• The inspection is saved with the job, and the office can print a Garage Door Safety Inspection report for the homeowner.
• The invoice is created, for example a $129 tune-up, and the card on file can be charged.
• The next tune-up will come due on the Waiting List after another 365 days.
• Any Needs attention or Repair recommended rating is there for the office to follow up with an estimate.

That last point is where tune-ups quietly grow revenue. Repair and replacement work can start as a tune-up recommendation, and the customer is already primed because they read it on the report.

Tune-up visits are also a good place to fill gaps in the equipment list. If last year's visit never recorded the opener model or the door size, the tune-up is the time to add it. The readings help: door size, door age and opener age on the inspection all point to what belongs on the house. A tune-up customer whose house record is complete is a customer the office can quote quickly when something does break.

Keep tune-up visits consistent from tech to tech. A customer whose visit is done by a different tech each year should still get the same checklist, the same kind of report and the same care. That consistency is what the customer is really paying for.

Selling the Plan in the First Place

Customers can sign up for a yearly tune-up plan in the customer app, with pricing you set. Techs can mention it at the end of a repair call: “If you want, we can come out once a year and check everything. You can sign up in the app.”

Commercial accounts work the same way on shorter cycles, such as door maintenance every 90 days, and property managers on monthly account billing get one statement covering every address.

For more on everything the tech app does, visit the GarageDoorBossPro garage door technician app page.