GarageDoorBossPro Blog — Running a Garage Door Business

A Weekly Office Routine for a Garage Door Company

The office in a small garage door company is often one person, sometimes the owner's spouse, sometimes the owner at night. Whoever it is, the work is the same: answer, book, dispatch, follow up, bill, collect. Without a routine, that work gets done in whatever order the phone dictates, and the quiet tasks like estimate follow-up and tune-up booking slip week after week.

Why a Routine Helps

The owner's weekly check, described in Simple Reports a Garage Door Business Owner Should Check Every Week, looks at how the company is doing. The office routine is what keeps those numbers healthy.

A routine is just a short list of things that happen on certain days, no matter what. The phone still comes first. But when there is a gap between calls, the office person knows what to work on instead of wondering.

Every Morning

Start each day the same way:

• Check Form Responses. Website requests and sign-ups that came in overnight. Call or text each one back, book them, and convert sign-ups into clients with one click.
• Read text replies. Customers answer reminders overnight with “can you come after 2?” or a new gate code. Handle them through two-way texting.
• Look at today's board. Check each van on the dispatch board. Any tech out sick? Any job missing access notes? Is the repair van leaving room for emergencies?
• Check overnight emergency calls. Make sure any after-hours job is on the system with its invoice.

Through the Day

While techs are out, the office watches the day move. Jobs change as techs tap Start, Skip or Complete. A skipped job comes with the tech's note (“nobody home, door is inside the locked garage”), so the office can text the customer and rebook. Crew GPS on the office map shows which van is closest when a new emergency call comes in.

When a tech leaves a note about extra work found, like worn rollers or a frayed cable, the office turns it into an estimate the same day while the customer still remembers the visit.

Monday: Plan the Week

Monday is for looking ahead. Open the Waiting List and book tune-ups and commercial maintenance visits that are due now or overdue, grouped by area onto the install-and-tune-up van. Look at the rest of the week by van and spot the gaps. Fill them from the Waiting List, from open estimates waiting for a date, or from callbacks.

Wednesday: Follow Up on Estimates

Midweek, go through open estimates. Follow-up emails go out on their own, but some quotes deserve a personal touch: large installs, commercial work and anything from a builder or property manager. A short call or text asking if there are any questions moves a lot of quotes along. Estimate follow-up is covered in more depth in Following Up on Open Estimates in a Garage Door Business.

Friday: Money and Clean-Up

End the week with the money:

• Check that every completed job this week has an invoice.
• Look at the past-due list and follow up on anything late.
• Check that property manager, HOA and builder accounts are set to Monthly so they get one statement covering every address.

Then clean up records. Fill in door and opener details where a tech added them in notes but not on the house. Add tags to new plan customers and referral sources. Look for duplicate clients created during the week.

Monthly: Statements and a Look Back

Once a month, make sure monthly account statements have gone out, look over the past-due list with the owner, and review which customers signed up for tune-up plans. It is also a good time to ask the owner about any prices or policies that need updating on the service list.

Leave Room for the Phone

A routine is a backstop, not a cage. On busy days the phone will take over, and that is fine. The point is that when things calm down, the office knows exactly where to pick up. Keep each routine task small enough to finish in a short gap between calls: one batch of estimate follow-ups, one look at the Waiting List, one pass through the past-due list. Small tasks get done even on hectic days.

If the office person is out, the routine is also what lets someone else cover. Anyone who can read the one-page list and log in with the right office user role can keep the week moving until they are back.

Write It Down

Put the routine on a single page next to the desk. When someone new joins the office, it is the first thing they get. The software that holds the routine together, from Form Responses to the dispatch board and past-due list, is shown on the GarageDoorBossPro garage door business software page.