PlumbingBossPro Blog — Dispatch & Scheduling

Printing Plumbing Route Sheets for the Van and the Office

Plenty of plumbers have run their day off a sheet of paper on the dashboard for years. Moving to a phone app does not mean the paper has to go. A printed route sheet still has its uses, as long as everyone remembers which one is current.

From Saved View to Paper

The quickest way to print is to start from a saved view, as covered in Saved Views on the Plumbing Dispatch Board. Open the van's view for the day, check the route order and print.

In PlumbingBossPro you can print route sheets from the dispatch board for any van and any day.

When a Printed Sheet Helps

• Techs who like paper. Some techs want to glance at the whole day without picking up a phone. A sheet on the clipboard does that.
• The office wall. A printed copy of each van's day is easy to glance at while on the phone.
• A backup. Dead phone battery, cracked screen, no signal in a basement. A sheet in the van means the tech still knows where to go next.
• Ride-alongs and new techs. A sheet makes it easy to talk through the day before leaving the shop.
• Planning long days. Laying out two vans' sheets side by side is a quick way to spot a lopsided day.

The Phone Stays the Source of Truth

The one rule that matters: the phone is always current, and the paper is current only until the next change. In plumbing the day always changes. An emergency gets added at 10am, a customer cancels at noon, a job moves to tomorrow. The tech's phone shows those changes. The sheet does not.

Tell techs plainly: use the sheet for the overview, use the phone for the next stop. Before driving, check the phone.

What Belongs on a Route Sheet

A good route sheet gives the tech the essentials for the day at a glance:

• The stops in route order.
• Addresses and customer names.
• What each job is.

The detailed information, like equipment from the house, past notes, access notes and the inspection checklist, lives on the job card in the tech app. That is where the tech should look once they are at the house.

Paper and Privacy

Printed sheets sit on dashboards where anybody walking past can read them. Be careful about what you print and where it sits. Gate codes and lockbox codes are better kept in access notes on the phone, behind the tech's personal PIN, than on a sheet left on the seat. Collect old sheets at the end of the day instead of leaving them in the van for weeks.

Printing for the Next Day

Some shops print tomorrow's sheets at the end of the day so techs can look them over before they leave, or so the first stop is clear before the morning meeting. That works fine, with one caveat: tomorrow's day will probably change by morning. Treat an evening sheet as a preview.

If you print in the morning, do it after the morning routine: after auto-routing, adjusting order by hand and adding due visits from the Waiting List.

Moving Off Paper Gradually

If your shop has always run on paper, the sheet can be a bridge. Print route sheets for the first few weeks while techs get comfortable with the tech app. As they start relying on the phone for navigation, equipment notes and Start / Skip / Complete, many will stop asking for paper on their own. Some never will, and that is fine. The broader move off paper is covered in Moving Plumbing Scheduling Off the Whiteboard and the Paper Calendar.

When the Sheet and the Phone Disagree

Sooner or later a tech will drive to the next stop on the sheet and find out it moved. Make the rule clear before that happens: if the sheet and the phone disagree, the phone wins. Some offices write “Check phone before each stop” at the top of every printed sheet. Others reprint and hand a fresh sheet to the tech when a big change happens mid-morning. Either way, the tech should never be the last to learn about a change that the office made an hour ago.

Completed work also belongs on the phone, not the sheet. A checkmark on paper does not tell the office the job is done or create the invoice. Tapping Complete does both.

Paper as a Backup, Not the System

Route sheets are a useful backup and a comfort for techs who like paper. Print them from the board when they help, keep codes off them, and make the phone the place everyone checks for the next stop. To see how route sheets fit with the board, routing and the tech app, visit the PlumbingBossPro plumbing dispatch software page.