GarageDoorBossPro Blog — Technician App

Garage Door Technician App: The Complete Guide for Garage Door Companies and Their Techs

A garage door company lives and dies by what happens in the driveway. The office can book the calls, price the estimates and send the invoices, but the money is made when a tech pulls up, figures out the door, does the work and leaves a homeowner who trusts them. Everything a tech app does should serve that moment. This guide walks through the GarageDoorBossPro tech app from the first login of the morning to the last card charged at the end of the day.

Where the Tech App Fits

This guide is the starting point for the technician app series. For the short version of what the app does and what it costs, see the GarageDoorBossPro garage door technician app page. The rest of this article explains each piece in the order a tech meets it during a working day.

The app is the field half of GarageDoorBossPro. The office half is the Waiting List, the dispatch board, estimates, clients and billing. The two halves share one set of records. When the office books a broken-spring call, the tech sees it. When the tech completes it, the office sees the checklist, the photos and the invoice. There is no copying a job sheet into a computer at night, and no second system to keep in sync.

On the Phone, Not in an App Store

The tech app runs in the browser on iPhone and Android. A tech opens a link, logs in, and can add it to the home screen so it opens like any other app. There is nothing to download from an app store and no special device to buy. If a tech gets a new phone, they open the same link on the new one.

Login is two steps: your company login, then the tech's own personal PIN. The company login ties the phone to your business. The PIN ties each call, photo, checklist and clock-in to the person who did it. When someone leaves, the office turns off their PIN and their access ends. More on that in Logging In to the Garage Door Tech App: Company Login Plus a Personal PIN.

The Day's Calls in Route Order

Once logged in, the tech sees their calls for the day in route order. That order comes from the dispatch board in the office, where calls are assigned to a van and a day and set in order by hand or with auto-routing (Closest First or Furthest First from the shop). A common setup for a two-van company is one van on repairs and emergency spring calls and one van on installs and tune-ups.

Plans change. A broken spring comes in at 10am, a homeowner cancels, an install runs long. When the office moves a call on the board, the tech's list follows. The tech always works the top card down, and the office always knows what the list says.

Every card has a navigation button. One tap opens directions to the address in the phone's maps app. Nobody types a street name with greasy hands, and nobody ends up at the wrong cul-de-sac because the address was copied wrong into a text message.

The Door Before the Driveway

This is where a garage door tech app earns its place. Every house in GarageDoorBossPro keeps a list of its doors and hardware: garage door, opener, torsion or extension springs, cables and drums, keypad, remotes, safety sensors, and on commercial accounts rolling doors, sectional doors and gate openers. Each item can carry a brand, model number, serial number, year installed, size (a 16x7 or 9x7 door, or the opener's horsepower), drive or material, which bay it is in, and access notes.

On the tech's card that reads like this:

• “Garage Door · Amarr Stratford 3000 · 9x7 · Wood · installed 2014”
• Serial number on the next line
• “Bay 1 · the left door is the problem”
• “Garage Door Opener · LiftMaster 87504-267 · 1/2 HP · Belt Drive”

Access notes sit with the address: keypad codes, which side door to use, dogs, gates, and where to park. Past notes from earlier visits show too, so the tech knows the last person flagged worn rollers or a frayed cable before the homeowner mentions it.

When the tech replaces an opener or puts on new springs, the change on the job flows back to the house, so the next tech sees what is really on the ceiling now.

Start, Checklist, Photos, Complete

Three buttons run every call. Start tells the office the tech is on site. Skip takes the call off today's list with a note saying why, such as no one home or a keypad code that didn't work. Complete closes the call, creates the invoice, and can charge the card on file.

Between Start and Complete is the work, and the app records it. The door safety inspection checklist covers springs, cables & drums, rollers, hinges & brackets, tracks aligned & secured, door balance, the auto-reverse safety test, photo-eye sensors, opener force & limits, lubrication, bottom seal & weatherstripping, emergency release, and keypad & remotes. The checklist records what the tech checked and what they found. It is not a set of repair instructions; springs and cables are work for trained techs, and the app assumes that is who is holding the phone.

Next to the checklist are readings: door size, spring turns, how many pounds off balance the door is, door age, opener age, estimated spring cycles used, and issues found. The tech rates the overall condition as Good, Needs attention or Repair recommended and writes recommendations in plain words. From that, the office can print a Garage Door Safety Inspection report for the homeowner.

Before-and-after photos taken in the app stay with the call: the snapped spring, the bent track, the finished install. When someone asks months later what was done, the answer is on the job.

The Customer Hears From You Automatically

When the tech heads to the next call, the customer can get an automatic on-the-way text. When the tech arrives, an arrived text. Customers choose their alerts: the night before, when they are next, and when the tech arrives. Replies go to the office through two-way texting, so the tech is not answering texts on a ladder.

In the customer app, the homeowner can see today's route on a live map (“You're stop 12 of 20 — the tech is 5 stops away”), request service, sign up for a yearly tune-up plan, update their card, and see and pay invoices.

Time Clock, Crew GPS and the Office View

The same phone runs the time clock. Techs clock in and out in the app, so hours are recorded when they happen instead of reconstructed on Friday. Crew GPS shows each tech on the office map, which is how the office decides who takes the emergency call that just came in.

In the office, a completed call shows the checklist, readings, condition, recommendations, photos, notes and invoice together. Repair recommended on a tune-up becomes a reason to send an estimate. A yearly tune-up plan comes due again on the Waiting List after its minimum days between visits, so next year's visit is not left to memory.

Getting Started

Most companies start by adding their techs with PINs and vans, importing customers with a CSV import (addresses land on the map automatically), and adding equipment to the houses they visit most. From there the tech app works the first day. The guides that follow cover each step in detail, starting with getting the app onto phones in iPhone or Android, No App Store: Putting the Garage Door Tech App on Phones Your Techs Already Carry. For the full list of guides and the feature summary, head back to the garage door technician app page.