ElectricalBossPro Blog — Generator & Maintenance Plans

Routing a Generator Service Day: One Van, Auto-Route and a Printed Route Sheet

A generator maintenance visit does not pay much on its own. A full day of them, routed tightly in one part of town, pays well. The difference between a profitable plan book and a frustrating one is often just routing: whether the van spends its day at houses or on the highway between them. ElectricalBossPro gives the office the tools to build a tight generator day in a few minutes.

Routing Is How Plans Get Delivered

The renewal habits in Generator Maintenance Plan Renewals: Keeping Customers Year After Year all depend on visits happening on time. Routing is how that happens without burning the van's whole week.

A common setup for a small electrical shop is one van on service calls and another on installs, inspections and generator visits. This guide is about building a day for that second van.

Step 1: Pick Visits From the Waiting List Map

Start on the Waiting List. Every generator maintenance and safety inspection visit that has come due shows as a pin, colored not due yet, due now or overdue past a 7-day grace. Look for a cluster: a handful of due and overdue pins in one area, maybe with a few not-due-yet visits nearby that could be pulled in.

Pick enough visits to fill the day, leaving room for drive time and the unexpected. How many stops a day holds depends on what your visits include and how your techs work. A visit with a full safety inspection checklist takes longer than a quick generator check.

Step 2: Put Them on a Van and a Day

From the Waiting List, assign the visits to the van and the day on the dispatch board. The Scheduled List, or dispatch board, shows jobs by day and lets you filter by van, so you can see the generator van's day on its own without the service-call van's jobs mixed in.

If there is a one-time job in the same area, such as a surge protector install approved from last month's inspection, it can go on the same day. One-time jobs and recurring visits share the same board.

Step 3: Auto-Route From the Shop

With the day's stops on the van, auto-route puts them in order. Choose Closest First to start near the shop and work outward, or Furthest First to drive out first and work back toward the shop by the end of the day. You can also set the route order by hand if you know something the map does not, like a customer who asked for a morning visit.

Saved views let the office return to the same setup each week, such as “Generator van — this week,” without rebuilding the filters.

Step 4: Print the Route Sheet or Use the Phone

Some techs like paper on the dashboard. Route sheets can be printed with the day's stops in order. Most techs will also work from the tech app, where the day's calls are in the same route order, each with a navigation button, the equipment on the house, access notes and past notes.

The tech taps Start at each stop, works the visit, takes photos and taps Complete. The customer gets automatic “on the way” and “arrived” texts if they chose them. What the visit looks like on the phone is covered in A Generator Maintenance Visit on the Tech App, From Start to Complete.

During the Day

Days rarely go exactly to plan. A gate is locked, a customer is not home, a visit takes longer than expected. If the tech cannot do a visit, they tap Skip with a note explaining why. The office sees the skip and can text the customer to reschedule. The visit stays on the Waiting List until it is done.

Crew GPS shows the van on the office map throughout the day. If a service call comes in near the generator van's route, the office can see whether it makes sense to add it.

Make It a Weekly Rhythm

Shops that run plans well often set a regular rhythm: generator and inspection days on the same weekdays each week, built from the Waiting List on Monday morning. That predictability helps the office, the techs and the customers. The office knows when to build the days, the techs know what kind of day they are walking into, and plan customers can be offered a familiar window.

Tight routes are what turn a pile of small yearly visits into a good day's work. For how routing fits with records, the checklist and billing, visit the ElectricalBossPro generator maintenance software page.