GarageDoorBossPro Blog — Tune-Ups & Maintenance Plans

Routing a Full Day of Garage Door Tune-Ups From the Waiting List

Repairs are scattered by nature. You go where the broken spring is. Tune-ups are different, because you choose when they happen. That makes them the one kind of garage door work you can route tightly, and a tightly routed tune-up day is one of the most efficient days a van can have.

From Due to Scheduled

The weekly habit of catching late visits first is in Due Now or Overdue: Working the 7-Day Grace Period on Garage Door Maintenance Visits. Once you know which visits are going out this week, the next step is building the day.

On the Waiting List map, pick a cluster of due visits in one part of town. Assign them to a van and a day. They move from the Waiting List onto the Scheduled List and dispatch board, which shows jobs by day and lets you filter by van.

Pick the Right Van

Many garage door companies with two vans split the work: one van on repairs and emergency spring calls, one on installs and tune-ups. The repair van stays free to react. The tune-up van runs a planned day with few surprises.

If you only have one van, tune-ups still work. Plan a morning of tune-ups in one area and leave the afternoon open for calls, or slot two or three tune-ups around a planned install. Splitting work between vans is covered in more depth in One Van on Repairs, One on Tune-Ups: Splitting Garage Door Maintenance Work.

Auto-Route From the Shop

Once a van has its tune-ups for the day, GarageDoorBossPro can put them in order for you. Auto-route uses your shop as the starting point and offers two options:

• Closest First. Start near the shop and work outward. Good when the tech needs to stop back at the shop midday or when the far visits are flexible.
• Furthest First. Drive out to the far end first and work back toward the shop. Good for ending the day close to home.

Either way, the route order is set and the tech's phone shows the same order. No one has to sort addresses by hand.

Adjust by Hand When It Matters

Auto-route gets you most of the way. Real days have quirks, and you can set route order by hand when you need to:

• A customer asked for the first visit of the morning because they leave for work at nine.
• A commercial account can only be reached before the loading dock gets busy.
• One house is a two-door tune-up plus a detached shop, so it takes longer and should not be stuck at the end of the day.

Drag the stop where it belongs and the tech's list follows. If dispatch moves a job during the day, the phone updates.

Saved Views and Route Sheets

If you look at the board the same way every day, such as only the tune-up van, or only this week, save it as a view so it is one click away tomorrow.

Some techs still like paper on the dash. Print a route sheet for the van with the day's stops in order. The tech app on the phone stays the source of truth, but a printed sheet is handy for a quick glance at the whole day.

A note on how many tune-ups to put on one day: it depends on your techs, your area and how many doors are at each house. Start conservative for the first couple of weeks, see how long visits really take, and adjust. A day that ends early can always take a nearby not-due-yet visit or a small repair. A day that runs long means the last customers get a late tech and a rushed inspection, which is the opposite of what a plan customer is paying for.

What the Tech Sees

The tech logs in to the tech app with the company login and a personal PIN, and the day's tune-ups are there in route order. Each card has a navigation button, the access notes, past notes, and the equipment saved on the house, such as “Garage Door · 16x7 · Insulated Steel · Bay 1” and the opener under it. The door safety inspection checklist is right on the job.

When the tech heads to the next stop, the customer gets an automatic on-the-way text. When the tech gets there, an arrived text. Crew GPS shows the van on the office map the whole time, so if a repair call comes in near the tune-up van, the office can see whether it makes sense to pull it over.

The next guide is about the visit itself and why the inspection is what the customer is paying for. For routing alongside the rest of the tune-up program, see the garage door maintenance software page.