ElectricalBossPro Blog — Estimates & Quotes

From Approved Electrical Estimate to Scheduled Job Without Retyping a Thing

Every time someone retypes a job, there is a chance they get it wrong. The panel size becomes 150 instead of 200. The surge protector the homeowner approved disappears. The charger location turns into “garage” with no detail. In a lot of electrical offices, the approved quote gets retyped at least twice, once into the calendar and once into the invoice. ElectricalBossPro does it zero times.

Picking Up Where Approval Left Off

The homeowner's side of saying yes is covered in Online Approval: Letting Homeowners Say Yes to an Electrical Estimate From Their Phone. This guide covers the office's side: what happens the moment that approval comes in, and how the work gets onto a van.

The Estimate Becomes the Job

When a customer approves, the estimate becomes the scheduled job. The services, quantities and prices on the estimate are the services on the job. The equipment details filled in on the estimate, like the new main panel or the generator and transfer switch, are on the job too. So are the notes written during the walkthrough.

Nobody opens a calendar and types “Smith panel job” with a phone number. The job already knows the customer, the address, the work and the equipment, because it was all on the estimate.

Onto the Dispatch Board

The office gives the job a van and a day on the dispatch board. Many residential shops run one van on service calls and another on installs, inspections and generators, so approved estimates usually land on the install side. The Scheduled List shows jobs by day, filters by van, and lets the office set route order by hand or auto-route Closest First or Furthest First from the shop.

If a bigger job needs a particular tech, assign it to the van that tech drives. Saved views make it easy to look at just the install van's week when you are deciding where an approved panel upgrade fits.

The Customer Hears About It

Once the job is on the schedule, the customer side runs on its own. Depending on the alerts the homeowner chose, they get a reminder the night before, a text when they are next, and a text when the tech arrives. On the customer app, they can see the route on a live map, something like “You're stop 3 of 5 — the crew is 2 stops away.”

That matters for electrical work. A panel upgrade means the power is off for a while, and a homeowner who knows when the crew is coming can plan around it.

On the Tech's Phone

The tech opens the tech app and sees the day's calls in route order. The approved job shows the services sold, the equipment going in and the access notes on the card, with a navigation button to the address. The tech does not need to call the office to ask what the homeowner agreed to. It is right there.

During the job, the tech can take before-and-after photos and record details like a serial number. Those details flow back to the house when the job is done, so the property record stays current.

The Invoice Matches the Estimate

When the tech taps Complete, the invoice is created from the job, and the card on file can be charged. Because the job came from the estimate, the invoice lists the same work in the same words the homeowner approved. A customer who reads “Panel upgrade, whole-house surge protector, dedicated circuit for garage” on the estimate reads the same three lines on the invoice.

If something changed on site, the office can adjust the invoice before it goes out. That keeps the paperwork honest without starting over. The line-item side of this is covered in Line Items That Hold Up: Electrical Estimates That Turn Into Clean Invoices.

Recurring Work From an Approved Quote

Some approved estimates lead to more than one job. A generator install often comes with a yearly maintenance plan, and a safety inspection quote can turn into a yearly safety inspection plan. Recurring work in ElectricalBossPro is set by the minimum days between visits, 365 for a yearly plan, and each visit comes due on the Waiting List map when it is time. The first job comes from the estimate; the ones after it come due on their own.

What You Get Back

Skipping the retyping saves minutes per job, and it saves the bigger cost of a mistake that sends the wrong panel to the wrong house. It also means the person who quoted the job and the person who installs it are working from the same record. For more on how quoting connects to the rest of ElectricalBossPro, visit the ElectricalBossPro electrical estimate software page.