HVACBossPro Blog — Property Managers & Commercial

Mixing Commercial Stops and Residential Calls on One HVAC Dispatch Board

Most small HVAC companies do not have a commercial division. They have a few vans, a dispatcher and a mix of work: homeowner repairs, homeowner tune-ups, rental calls from property managers, quarterly visits at a strip center, a turnover at a vacant apartment. All of it lands on the same board. The trick is keeping the commercial commitments without letting them crowd out everything else.

One Board, Many Kinds of Work

Once a property manager's list is in, as covered in Importing a Property Manager Address List by CSV for HVAC Service, those addresses start coming due alongside your residential customers. That is good for business and a puzzle for dispatch.

Each kind of work has its own needs. Homeowner repairs need to go out today. Tune-ups can be planned. Commercial PM visits can be planned but have time windows. Rental calls need tenant notice or a lockbox. Turnovers have a move-in deadline.

Give Each Van a Role

The simplest way to keep it all moving is to give vans roles. A typical setup is one van on repair calls and one on maintenance. The maintenance van handles tune-ups, commercial PM visits and turnover checks, all planned work. The repair van stays open for no-heat and no-cooling calls from homeowners and rentals alike.

With three or more vans, you might put one on residential maintenance, one on commercial and rental maintenance, and one on repairs. Employees are assigned to vans in HVACBossPro, and the dispatch board can be filtered by van, so each van's day is easy to see on its own.

Start From the Waiting List

Planned work starts on the Waiting List, the live map and list of every visit that has come due. Homeowner tune-ups, rental plan visits and commercial PM visits all show there, with pins colored not due yet, due now, and overdue past a 7-day grace.

Use the map to group work by area. If the east side has four due rentals, two due homeowner tune-ups and a strip center with three rooftop units, that is a full day on the maintenance van with very little driving. Drag them onto the board for that van and day.

Respect the Time Windows

Commercial stops often have hard windows: before the store opens, before restaurant prep, after the office closes. Rentals may have a tenant who is only home in the afternoon. These windows live in the access notes on each address, so the dispatcher sees them while building the day.

Auto-route the van Closest First or Furthest First from the shop, then adjust the order by hand so the time-sensitive stops land in their windows. The tech's phone shows the same order. More on this in Scheduling Commercial HVAC Work Around Business Hours.

Urgent Calls Go to the Repair Van

When a tenant has no cooling in July, it does not matter that the call came from a property manager instead of a homeowner. It is a repair call and it goes to the repair van. Create the job on the rental's address under the manager's account, drag it onto today, and set its place in the route.

Because the address already has its equipment record and access notes, the repair tech arrives knowing the system, the filter size and the lockbox code. Rental emergencies are covered in No-Cooling Calls at Rental Properties: Handling Urgent Tenant Calls for Landlords.

Drag Work Between Days

Schedules change. A restaurant asks you to come Thursday instead. A tenant cancels. A heat wave fills the repair van and you need to push maintenance. On the dispatch board, drag the work to another day. Commercial PM visits can usually move a day or two without trouble, which makes them a good buffer in a busy week.

If a visit gets skipped on site, the tech taps Skip with a note. The visit stays visible so it can be put back on the board.

See the Vans Live

Crew GPS shows each tech on the office map. When an urgent call comes in, the dispatcher can see which van is closest. If the maintenance van happens to be two blocks from a rental with no cooling, it may make sense to slot the call in and move a flexible PM visit to tomorrow.

Keep the Customer Side Separate

Even on a shared board, commercial customers get commercial treatment: monthly statements for accounts set to Monthly, photos on every job, approvals through online estimates and texts to the right contact. Residential customers get their invoices and alerts as usual. For how mixed dispatch fits with the rest of commercial service, see the HVACBossPro commercial HVAC software page.