GarageDoorBossPro Blog — Garage Door Software

Doors, Openers and Springs Saved on the House: The Equipment Record in Garage Door Software

A garage door company does not really service people. It services doors, and the doors stay at the house. The homeowner might change, the tech might change, but the 16x7 insulated steel door in the double bay is still there with the same springs and the same opener. That is why the most useful thing garage door software can do is remember the equipment on the house.

Why the House Is the Right Place

Getting off paper is covered in Moving a Garage Door Company Off Paper Tickets, Whiteboards and Sticky Notes. The equipment record is where most of the old ticket information ends up.

If equipment is written on a job, it is gone when the job is done. If it is stored on the customer, it gets confusing when a customer has a house and a rental, or a property manager has forty addresses. In GarageDoorBossPro, equipment lives on the property itself, so it follows the address no matter who owns it or who calls.

What You Can Save

Every property keeps a list of its doors and hardware. Each item has a type:

• Garage door
• Garage door opener
• Torsion springs
• Extension springs
• Cables & drums
• Keypad
• Remotes
• Safety sensors
• Commercial rolling door
• Commercial sectional door
• Gate opener

A typical house might have one or two doors, an opener for each, a set of torsion springs, a keypad and a couple of remotes. A shop building might have a commercial rolling door and a sectional door side by side.

The Details on Each Item

Each piece of equipment can carry:

• Brand and model #. For example, “LiftMaster 87504-267” on an opener or “Amarr Stratford 3000” on a door.
• Serial #. Handy when a manufacturer asks for it.
• Year installed. Useful when a homeowner is weighing a repair against a replacement.
• Size. A door size like 16x7 or 9x7, or an opener's HP like 1/2 HP.
• Drive or material. Belt, chain, screw or wall-mount jackshaft for openers. Steel, insulated steel, wood, aluminum & glass or composite for doors.
• Bay. Single, double, bay 1, bay 2, bay 3, detached, shop or commercial dock.
• Access notes. Anything the tech needs to know to reach it.

Not every field needs filling. A door with only a size and material is still far more useful than a blank address.

What the Tech Sees

On the tech app, the equipment shows on the job card in a short line the tech can read in the driveway:

• “Garage Door · Amarr Stratford 3000 · 9x7 · Wood · installed 2014”
• The serial number on the next line
• “Bay 1 · the left door is the problem”

That one card answers the questions that usually turn into phone calls: which door, what size, what opener, and how old. It also lets the tech check the van for the right parts before pulling out of the shop.

Changes Flow Back to the House

Equipment changes. A tech replaces an opener, swaps extension springs for a torsion setup, or puts in a new door. When the tech updates the equipment on the job, the change flows back to the house record. The next tech to visit sees the new opener, not the old one.

This works in the other direction too. When the office creates a new job, the From House picker fills the equipment onto the job from the house, which is the subject of The From House Picker: Filling In a New Garage Door Job From the House Record.

Building the Record Over Time

You do not need to visit every house before you start. The practical approach is to fill in the equipment the first time a tech is there for any reason: a repair call, a tune-up or an estimate. Within a season, the houses you visit most will be fully recorded, and the ones you rarely see will fill in when they call.

The door safety inspection helps here too. Its readings, like door size and door age, are a natural moment to check that the equipment on the house matches what is actually hanging in the opening.

Commercial Equipment

Commercial addresses work the same way. A warehouse might have several rolling doors on a commercial dock and a sectional door on the shop side. Each one gets its own entry with its size, bay and access notes, so a maintenance visit every 90 days shows the tech exactly which doors to check.

To see how the equipment record fits with dispatch, tune-ups and billing, visit the GarageDoorBossPro garage door software page.