HVACBossPro Blog — Dispatch & Scheduling

HVAC Dispatch Software: The Complete Guide to Scheduling Service Calls and Tune-Ups

Dispatch is where an HVAC company makes or loses its day. The techs can be skilled and the vans can be stocked, but if the calls are in the wrong order, on the wrong truck or on the wrong day, the company pays for it in drive time, overtime and customers who waited at home for nobody. This guide walks through how dispatch and scheduling work for a heating and air company running a few service vans, and how HVACBossPro handles each piece.

What HVAC Dispatch Actually Has to Do

Before getting into screens and buttons, it helps to name the job. HVAC dispatch has to juggle two very different kinds of work at the same time. If you want the short version with screenshots, the HVAC dispatch software page covers it.

• Planned work. Spring and fall tune-ups for maintenance agreement customers, yearly visits for commercial buildings, follow-up repairs where a part has come in, and installs or replacements that were quoted weeks ago.
• Unplanned work. No-cool calls in the first hot week, no-heat calls in the first cold snap, a condensate line backing up into a closet, a breaker that keeps tripping on the outdoor unit.

Planned work is easy to schedule and easy to push around. Unplanned work does not care what is on the board. Good dispatch keeps room for the second kind by managing the first kind carefully, and it does that every day, not just in July.

The Dispatch Board: One Screen for Every Van

In HVACBossPro the dispatch board is the Scheduled List. It shows jobs by day, and each van's jobs sit in route order. You can filter the board to one van or truck to see just that tech's day, or look at every van together to see who has room.

Each job carries the address, the customer and the equipment record: system type, brand, model, tonnage, filter size and where the unit sits, whether that is the attic, a hall closet, the garage, a basement, a crawlspace, the roof or outside. Access notes such as an attic ladder, a gate code, a dog or the thermostat location show too. That matters for dispatch, not just for the tech. A dispatcher who can see that a call is an attic unit in a two-story house knows it will take longer than a closet furnace on a slab.

The board is covered in more depth in The HVAC Dispatch Board: Every Van, Every Day and Every Call on One Screen.

Routing: Closest First, Furthest First and Your Own Judgment

Once a van has its calls for the day, the order matters. HVACBossPro can auto-route a van from the shop in two ways:

• Closest First starts near the shop and works outward. Good for a repair van that may get pulled toward a same-day call, because it stays near home base early.
• Furthest First drives out to the far end of the territory first and works back toward the shop, so the last stop of the day is close to home.

Auto-routing is a starting point. You can set the route order by hand when you know something the map does not: a customer who can only be home before noon, a commercial building that wants the rooftop unit serviced before tenants arrive, or an attic job that should go first before the attic heats up. The tech's phone shows the same order as the board.

Splitting Repair Vans From Tune-Up Vans

A common setup for a small HVAC company is one van on repair calls and one van on tune-ups. The repair van keeps open space in its day for no-cool and no-heat calls. The tune-up van works steadily through maintenance agreement visits in a tight geographic loop.

This split keeps the tune-up customers from getting bumped every time a repair comes in, and it keeps the repair tech from being stuck halfway through a tune-up when an emergency rings. When the season peaks, the tune-up van can be pulled onto repairs for a few days, and the tune-ups dragged to the following week.

Tune-Ups That Come Due on Their Own

Maintenance agreements in HVACBossPro are set by minimum days between visits: 180 for a spring and fall tune-up, 365 for a yearly visit. When a visit comes due, it lands on the Waiting List, a live map and list of every tune-up that is ready to schedule. Pins are colored by status: not due yet, due now, and overdue past a seven-day grace.

From the Waiting List, the dispatcher picks a cluster of due visits in one part of town and assigns them to the tune-up van for a day. Nobody has to keep a separate spreadsheet of who bought an agreement in March. The best time to work this list hard is the shoulder seasons, before the heat or cold arrives, so that peak weeks are free for repair calls.

The Same-Day Rush

When the phone starts ringing with no-cool calls, the dispatcher's questions are simple: which van is closest, which van has room, and what can move. Crew GPS shows every van on the office map. The board shows what each van is carrying. Dragging a few tune-ups to another day makes room, and the techs' phones follow the change.

The heat wave version of this is in No-Cool Calls in a Heat Wave: Same-Day HVAC Dispatch When the Phone Won't Stop, and the cold snap version has its own guide too.

Keeping Customers Informed Without Calling Them

Much of a busy HVAC office's phone time goes to one question: when is the tech getting here? HVACBossPro answers it automatically. When the tech taps Start on the next job, the customer gets an 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.

The customer app goes further, with today's route on a live map: “You're stop 12 of 20 — the crew is 5 stops away.” Replies to texts come back to the office through two-way texting, so a customer who needs to step out for an hour can say so before the van pulls up.

Skips, Reschedules and Moving Days

Not every call happens. Nobody is home, the attic hatch is blocked by boxes, or the tech needs a part. The tech taps Skip and writes why. The office sees the skip with the note, texts the customer, and drags the job to another day on the board. A tune-up that gets skipped stays on the books rather than quietly falling off.

A Simple Daily Routine

Most small HVAC offices run dispatch on the same rhythm:

• The afternoon before: set tomorrow's vans, auto-route each one, adjust the order, and let night-before reminders go out.
• First thing: check for overnight requests from the website form and the customer app, and slot any urgent ones onto the repair van.
• Through the day: watch crew GPS and skip notes, and move tune-ups aside when a run of repair calls comes in.
• End of day: review skips, reschedule them, and check the Waiting List for what is coming due next week.

Choosing HVAC Dispatch Software

The big enterprise HVAC platforms do a lot, but many small shops find they are paying for a call center they do not have. Generic field-service software often handles scheduling but knows nothing about equipment, filter sizes or twice-a-year tune-ups. Spreadsheets and paper are cheap until a heat wave shows their limits.

HVACBossPro plans are $59, $89 and $199 per month (Start, Pro and Crew), with dispatch, routing, the Waiting List, the tech app and customer texts on every plan, and a 14-day free trial with no credit card. To see the board, the map and the customer side together, visit the HVACBossPro HVAC dispatch software page.