GarageDoorBossPro Blog — Commercial Doors

Dispatching Commercial Door Work: Which Van Goes to the Warehouse

Every morning someone decides who goes where. On a residential day that is mostly geography: put the calls near each other on the same van. Commercial work adds more to think about. Which tech knows the building? Which van has the room for a maintenance visit that covers eight doors? Who can take an emergency call at a shop across town without blowing up the rest of the day?

The Board Shows Every Van's Day

Running commercial and residential work side by side is covered in Mixing Commercial and Residential Garage Door Work on One Schedule. This guide is about the dispatch decisions inside that schedule.

In GarageDoorBossPro, the Scheduled List and dispatch board show jobs by day and can be filtered by van. The office sees each van's list, how full it is and where the stops are. Jobs come onto the board from the Waiting List, where due maintenance visits and new requests wait to be scheduled, or get added directly for emergencies.

Matching Jobs to Vans

A few simple rules cover most commercial dispatch decisions:

• Planned maintenance goes to the planned van. In a typical setup, one van runs installs, tune-ups and maintenance. Commercial maintenance visits fit there, since they are scheduled ahead and take a known amount of time.
• Repairs go to the repair van. The van running repairs and emergency spring calls takes commercial repair calls too.
• Big visits get their own block. A maintenance visit on a building with many doors can take a good part of a day. Give it room instead of squeezing it between six other stops.
• Familiar techs for tricky buildings. If one tech knows the warehouse's dock lead and the building's quirks, send them when you can. Access notes cover the rest when you can't.

Setting the Route Order

Once jobs are on a van, auto-route sets the order Closest First or Furthest First from the shop. For commercial stops with timing needs — a dock that is busy until 10am, a shop that needs work done before opening — set the route order by hand. The tech's phone shows the same order as the board, so when the office moves a commercial visit to the afternoon, the tech sees it move.

Route sheets can be printed for any van, which some techs still like to have on the dash for a long commercial day.

Emergencies and Crew GPS

When a commercial emergency comes in, the question is who can get there fastest without wrecking the rest of their day. Crew GPS shows where every van is on the office map. If the repair van is two stops from the warehouse, it takes the call. If the repair van is across town, the maintenance van might be closer and can pick it up, with its next stops shifting later.

Whoever takes it sees the job on their phone with the door record, access notes and past notes, as covered in After-Hours and Emergency Commercial Door Calls: Getting a Tech to a Stuck Door.

Saved Views for Commercial Work

Saved views keep the board quick to read. An owner might keep:

• A view of each van on its own
• A view of all vans for the week
• A view filtered to commercial accounts only

Switching between them helps catch problems: a commercial maintenance visit sitting on the wrong van, or too many big commercial stops on the same day.

Employees, PINs and Van Assignments

Each employee has their own PIN and a van assignment. When a job is put on a van, it shows on the phone of the tech assigned to that van. Techs log in with the company login and their PIN, see their calls in route order, and use Start, Skip and Complete through the day. Office user roles keep dispatch in the hands of the people who should be doing it.

If a tech is out sick, change who is on the van and their jobs show up on the replacement's phone, with all the commercial access notes and door records they need to step in.

When One Van Does It All

Not every company has a van for each kind of work. If you run one van, or the owner is the only tech, the same board still helps. Put planned commercial visits on days with fewer repair calls, keep space in the morning for emergencies, and let auto-route order the rest. As the business grows and a second van comes on, the commercial maintenance work is already organized and ready to hand over.

Dispatch That Holds Up

Good commercial dispatch is mostly about giving big jobs room, sending the right van and keeping the board and the phones in sync. The board does the bookkeeping so the person dispatching can focus on decisions. For how dispatch fits with the rest of commercial accounts, go back to the commercial garage door software overview.