Plenty of small shops run the day on a whiteboard, a shared calendar or a group text, and it works. The trouble starts when nobody can see how far apart the day's jobs are until a tech is already driving. Here's an honest look at each option, including when to keep the whiteboard.
Who wrote this: Navigrate, which makes one of the options below. We've tried to be fair, including about what we don't do yet.
The short answer
- You run 1 or 2 trucks in a small service area.
- Most days are planned the evening before, with few same-day calls.
- Drive time between jobs isn't what's eating your day.
- Everyone who needs the schedule is in the shop each morning.
- You're at 3 or more trucks and the board is getting crowded.
- You book same-day calls into gaps and don't always know where that tech will be.
- Techs keep crossing town and back in the same day.
- The whole day lives in one person's head.
Side by side
| Whiteboard or paper | Spreadsheet | Shared calendar (e.g. Google Calendar) | Group texts | Navigrate | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | $0 | $0 | Free with a Google account | $0 | $19 to $129 a month by crew size; $29 for 3 technicians |
| Who can see the day | People in the office | Whoever has the file | Anyone you share the calendar with, on a phone | Whoever is in the thread | Whoever signs in to your account, on any browser. Technicians don't get their own logins yet. |
| Every tech's day side by side | Yes, if the board is big enough | Yes | Yes, with a calendar per tech | No | No: one tech's day at a time, picked from a list |
| Knows where the tech was just before a new job | Only in someone's head | No | No (you can add travel time by hand from an address you type) | No | Yes: the previous booking that day, or home base |
| Flags a long drive as you book | No | No | No | No | Yes, against your own limit (a straight-line estimate) |
| Map of a tech's stops for the day | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| Warns you about double-bookings | No | No | No | No | No, not yet |
| Works with no internet | Yes | Yes for a file on your computer; Google Sheets only if offline mode is on | Needs a connection to sync | Needs signal | No |
Scroll sideways on a phone. Google Calendar is a trademark of Google LLC, named as an example only.
What a whiteboard can't tell you
A whiteboard shows who's free at 2 pm. It doesn't show that the 1 pm job ends on the other side of town from the 2 pm address. That check happens in someone's head, when they remember to do it, while the customer is waiting on the phone.
A shared calendar fixes who can see the day, which is a real improvement. It still doesn't compare a new job's address with where that tech will be just before it.
Put your own number on it
Take a normal week and count how many bookings sent a tech across town when a nearer time or tech was open. Multiply by the extra minutes each one added, then by your trucks and days.
Example numbers, not a promise: if 2 bookings a day each add 20 minutes of driving, across 3 trucks and 5 days that's 10 truck-hours a week spent driving instead of working. Use your own numbers; nobody can tell you yours without your schedule, including us.
More ways to cut the drive, with or without software: How to cut drive time between jobs.
Trying a board without the chaos
- Add your technicians with their home base, so the first job of the day is checked from where they start.
- Set your long-drive limit in minutes (the default is 25).
- Enter next week's jobs as you book them. There's no import yet.
- Keep the whiteboard up for that week too, and compare.
- Decide before the 14-day trial ends. If you don't pick a plan, your data stays and you can still see and edit your jobs, but you can't add new ones until you pick a plan.
What Navigrate doesn't do
- Quotes, invoicing, payments or a customer database. Keep your accounting tool for those.
- Route optimization. It won't re-order a day's stops; it checks each booking's drive as you make it.
- Real road distances or traffic. The drive check is a fast straight-line estimate.
- Importing jobs or customers. Jobs are added as you book them for now.
- Customer reminders or texts, or repeating jobs.
- A phone app. Navigrate runs in any web browser, including on a phone.
- Warn you when two jobs overlap for the same tech, or show every tech's day on one screen. Open that tech's day and check the time before you save.
- Give technicians their own logins. The board opens in a phone browser for whoever is signed in to your account.
See Navigrate in 90 seconds
Every screen is from the real app and website: the long-drive flag, shorter-drive open times, 12-hour bookings and pricing.
Common questions
Is a whiteboard really a problem?
Can't I just use Google Calendar?
Can my technicians see their schedule in Navigrate?
Does Navigrate stop double-bookings?
What does it cost after the trial?
Already looking at software? See how Navigrate compares with Jobber, Housecall Pro and others.
Try the drive check on next week's jobs
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