• Replies 11 replies
  • Subscribers 2 subscribers
  • Views 17 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
Related

How do you handle jobs that need multiple visits?

Gwen Albright

We've got a growing number of jobs that span 2–4 visits over a week or two — think system installations with staging, rough-in, then final commissioning. Right now we're creating separate work orders for each phase, but I'm wondering if there's a cleaner way.

The pain points I'm seeing:

  • Customers getting multiple appointment confirmations for "the same job"
  • Techs showing up without context from previous visits (photos, notes buried in older WOs)
  • Dispatched as separate jobs, so we're not seeing the true capacity load
  • Billing gets fragmented — sometimes we invoice per visit, sometimes at completion

I've experimented with using a single work order and just scheduling multiple appointments, but that gets messy when phases get delayed or rescheduled. What's actually working for your teams?

Would love to hear how you're structuring these — whether it's parent/child work orders, custom statuses, or just better handoff protocols. We're on FieldPulse 3.2 if that matters.

Parents

  • Pro tip: we stopped creating separate WOs entirely. Single work order, multiple appointments scheduled in the Appointments section. Key is training your dispatchers to always check for existing open WOs before creating new ones — we made that part of our dispatch protocol checklist.

    The real game-changer was getting our field lead (me) to update the WO notes immediately after each visit with what happened and what's next. Techs now know to read the full history before starting. Took about three months of nagging but now it's muscle memory.

    One gotcha: if you're using the customer portal, they'll see all appointments listed separately. We just tell them upfront it's a multi-phase project.

Reply

  • Pro tip: we stopped creating separate WOs entirely. Single work order, multiple appointments scheduled in the Appointments section. Key is training your dispatchers to always check for existing open WOs before creating new ones — we made that part of our dispatch protocol checklist.

    The real game-changer was getting our field lead (me) to update the WO notes immediately after each visit with what happened and what's next. Techs now know to read the full history before starting. Took about three months of nagging but now it's muscle memory.

    One gotcha: if you're using the customer portal, they'll see all appointments listed separately. We just tell them upfront it's a multi-phase project.

Children