Field service schedule and field service dispatch: the week that is planned and the day that is not
- Service order total
- $312.25
- Travel
- $12.60
- Labour on site
- $142.50
Every figure on this page is computed from the inputs entered, by the method stated below it. Jobcardo publishes no tax rate, no wage figure and no trade standard: the rate, the markup and the tax on the parts line are yours, and the defaults are a worked example to replace with your own figures.
A field service business runs two things that are often called one. The schedule is the week: booked work, recurring visits and committed installs, planned days ahead and mostly stable. The dispatch is today: who goes where next, changing hourly as calls arrive and jobs overrun. Products that collapse the two into a single calendar make the week fragile, because every emergency edits the plan rather than being absorbed by it.
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Plan the week with slack in it
Book the committed work and deliberately leave capacity for what always arrives. A week planned to a hundred percent is a week that will be rebuilt, and the rebuilding is paid for in broken promises to the customers who booked first.
Dispatch the day from the same record
Field service dispatch should be a view of the same jobs, not a second system. When today's board and the week's plan are separate, the reassignment made at ten is invisible to whoever books at eleven, and the day is double-sold.
Measure what the week actually did
Booked hours against worked hours, first-time fix, and how many promised windows were missed. Three numbers, read weekly, tell you whether the slack is right; without them the answer is somebody's impression of how busy it felt.
Field service schedule: common questions
How much of the week should be left open? Measure it rather than guess: count the same-day work you took over the last month and hold that much. For most service businesses it is between a tenth and a quarter of capacity, and it varies by season.
Should recurring maintenance be on the same schedule? Yes, as obligations with windows rather than fixed appointments, so they can be placed into the week that has room. Held as fixed appointments they are the first thing moved and the first thing forgotten.
What is the difference between a schedule and a dispatch board? Time horizon and volatility. The schedule is days to weeks and changes slowly; the board is hours and changes constantly. One record, two views, is the arrangement that works.
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