PlumbingBossPro Blog — Dispatch & Scheduling

The Waiting List Map: Scheduling Recurring Plumbing Work That Came Due

Service calls find you. The phone rings, and the job is on the board by lunchtime. Recurring work is different. Nobody calls to say their water heater is due for its yearly flush. If you do not have a way to see what is due, it quietly never happens, and the maintenance customer you signed up last year drifts off.

Two Kinds of Work, One Board

Crew GPS, covered in Crew GPS on the Office Map: Finding the Closest Plumbing Van, shows where your vans are. The Waiting List map shows where the due work is. Put the two together and filling a van's day gets much easier.

How Recurring Work Comes Due

In PlumbingBossPro, recurring work is set by minimum days between visits. Some common plumbing examples:

• Yearly water heater flush: 365 days.
• Softener service: whatever interval you sell.
• Backflow tests: on the cycle the customer needs.
• Restaurant grease-line jetting: every 14 or 30 days.

Once that many days have passed since the last visit, the next one comes due and appears on the Waiting List. Nobody has to remember it or write it on a calendar a year ahead.

What the Waiting List Shows

The Waiting List is a live map and a list of every visit that has come due. Pins are colored by status:

• Not due yet: coming up soon, useful for planning.
• Due now: ready to schedule.
• Overdue: past a 7-day grace period and should go on the board soon.

The map view shows where due work clusters. The list view is handy for working through them in order.

Using the Map to Fill a Van's Day

The real power of the Waiting List is pairing it with the day's routes. A practical way to use it:

1. Build each van's day from service calls and approved estimates first.
2. Open the Waiting List map and look for due pins near those routes.
3. Add nearby due visits to the van that will already be in that area.
4. Re-route the van, or place the new stops by hand.

A yearly flush three streets from a service call costs almost nothing to add. The same flush on its own day costs a whole trip.

Which Van Takes Recurring Work

In a shop that splits repairs and drains from water heaters and maintenance, most recurring work belongs on the maintenance van. Flushes, softener service and backflow tests fit its steadier rhythm. Restaurant jetting may go on the drain van if that is the van with the jetter.

The maintenance van's light days are a good time to clear a cluster of due visits in one area. More on yearly flushes and maintenance in Scheduling Yearly Water Heater Flushes, Softener Service and Backflow Tests Around Service Calls.

Overdue Pins Need Attention

An overdue pin is a customer who is paying for, or expecting, a visit that has not happened. A few causes and fixes:

• Too much service work. Busy weeks crowd out maintenance. Book a block of due visits on the next quieter day.
• Hard-to-reach addresses. Outliers far from any route get skipped. Group them with the next call in that direction.
• Customer not responding. Text them through the office to book a time.

Check the overdue color every week, at minimum.

Recurring Visits on the Tech's Phone

Once a due visit is on the board, it works like any other job. The tech sees it in route order with the equipment from the house on the card: the water heater's type, size, fuel and location, the softener, the backflow preventer. The inspection checklist on the tech app covers things like flushing the tank, the anode rod and the T&P valve, and the office can print a Plumbing Inspection Report for the homeowner.

When the tech completes the visit, the clock starts again, and the next one comes due after the minimum days pass.

Using Not-Due-Yet Pins to Plan Ahead

The not-due-yet color is easy to ignore, but it is useful for planning. If a cluster of yearly flushes in one subdivision is about to come due next week, you can plan a maintenance day there now and text those customers ahead of time. Planning a week out beats scrambling when twelve pins turn due at once. It also gives the office a ready answer when a slow day opens up: look at what is about to come due nearby and fill the gap.

Recurring Work That Schedules Itself Onto Your Radar

The Waiting List makes recurring plumbing work visible, on a map, at the moment it is due. Dispatch can then slot it into routes that already pass nearby. To see how the Waiting List fits with the dispatch board and route order, visit the PlumbingBossPro plumbing dispatch software page.