ElectricalBossPro Blog — Scheduling & Dispatch

Scheduling Yearly Generator Maintenance Without a Wall Calendar

Every whole-house generator an electrical company installs is a customer who should hear from you every year. Generators sit idle most of the time, and homeowners tend to forget about them until the power goes out. A yearly maintenance plan keeps the company in touch with the customer and keeps the generator on somebody's list. The problem is that “somebody's list” is often a wall calendar, a spreadsheet or the owner's memory, and those all fail eventually.

Generators on the Waiting List

The recurring-visit approach for inspections is covered in Scheduling Yearly Electrical Safety Inspections From the Waiting List. Generator maintenance works the same way.

Set up generator maintenance as a recurring service at 365 days between visits, at your price, such as $189 per visit. Add it to each generator customer, or let customers sign up for the plan themselves in the customer app or through a sign-up form. A customer who signs up through a form with their card captured shows in Form Responses, and one click turns the sign-up into a client.

From then on, each customer's generator visit comes due on the Waiting List a year after the last one was completed.

Grouping Generator Visits

Generator customers are often spread across the territory, sometimes in outlying areas. Scheduling each visit as it comes up means a lot of driving. The Waiting List map helps by showing every due generator visit as a pin:

• Look for due-now pins near each other.
• Assign that group to the van that handles generators.
• Put them on the same day and auto-route, often Furthest First so the tech drives out once and works back toward the shop.

For more on that routing choice, see Furthest First Routing: Driving Out Early and Working Back Toward the Shop.

Timing the Year

Many shops prefer to get generator maintenance done before their area's stormiest season. Because each visit comes due a year after the last one, the schedule tends to repeat itself: if most visits were done in the spring this year, most come due in the spring next year.

If you want to shift the cycle, schedule visits a little early when they show as not due yet. The next one will come due a year after that visit is completed. Over a season or two, you can move the bulk of your generator work into the months that suit you, and away from the busy days when the phone is full of outage calls.

What the Tech Sees

The equipment saved on the house carries the generator's details onto every job card: brand, model number, serial number, year installed, rating in kW, fuel type such as natural gas, propane or diesel, location and access notes. The transfer switch or generator interlock is listed too. A line like “Side yard · gate latch is stiff” saves a call to the office.

Past notes from last year's visit show on the job as well, so the tech can see what was done and what was noted. If the tech updates anything about the equipment during the visit, the change flows back to the house for next year.

This is where a good record pays off. A tech who has never been to the house before knows what kind of generator is out there, how it is fueled and where the transfer switch is before getting out of the van. Any tech on the crew can take any generator visit, which makes it much easier to fill a maintenance day from the Waiting List.

Letting the Customer Know

A lot of generator maintenance is outside work, but most homeowners want to know when someone is on the property. The customer's alert choices cover it: the night before, when they are next and when the tech arrives. The on-the-way and arrived texts go out from the tech app automatically.

A general reminder in your texts can help too: the homeowner should keep the area around the generator clear, and call you if it ever does not run as expected. Anything technical stays with your tech.

After the Visit

When the tech taps Complete, the office sees the notes and photos, the invoice is created, and a card on file can be charged. If the tech noticed something that needs a repair or replacement, the office builds an estimate from your service list and sends it to the customer for online approval. The approved estimate becomes a scheduled job.

Every Generator, Every Year

Generator maintenance is steady, predictable, recurring work, the kind that keeps vans busy between installs. It just has to be scheduled reliably. A Waiting List that brings every generator back on its own is how that happens without a wall calendar. To see how generator scheduling fits with the dispatch board and routing, visit the ElectricalBossPro electrician scheduling software page.