What is a dispatch board, and how do you run one?
In a service business, the dispatch board is where the day is decided: every job against every technician, on one screen. (Not the freight kind, where loads are matched to trucks.) Here’s what a good one shows and how to run it.
What a good dispatch board shows
- Every person's day, side by side
- One lane per technician or crew, so gaps and double-bookings are obvious at a glance.
- What each job is
- Customer, address, the work and how long it should take, without opening it.
- Who can tell crews apart
- Colour per crew or person, so the board reads in a second.
- Repeat work, already on it
- Regular jobs placed by themselves, so the board starts each week mostly full.
- What's happened today
- Which jobs have started and which are done, from the technicians' own clock-ons.
How to run it: a daily rhythm
The afternoon before: check tomorrow’s board is full and balanced. Move work off anyone overloaded, and fill the gaps from waiting quotes and requests. The crew should see tomorrow before they go home, not at 7am.
First thing: watch for the clock-ons. A job that should have started and hasn’t is the one to ring about, not the other twenty.
When the day breaks: a sick call or a washed-out day is where boards fail. Move the whole day in one go, not job by job, and make sure each person and each affected customer hears about it.
End of day: anything marked done should become an invoice. If the board and the invoicing are separate tools, this is where jobs leak.
Whiteboard, spreadsheet or software?
A whiteboard works while everyone is in the same room each morning. A shared spreadsheet works until jobs repeat and crews need changes on their phones. Dispatch board software earns its keep when the board is also the source of the job card, the timesheet and the invoice, because then nothing is typed twice. That joined-up version is what field service management software is.
A board your crew sees on their phones
Extrua Dispatch puts every job and crew on one board, colour-coded, with repeat work set once and a washed-out day moved at once.
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FAQ
What is a dispatch board?
A screen (once a whiteboard) that shows every job for a day or a week against the people doing them, so the office can see who is where, spot gaps and clashes, and move work when plans change.
What's the difference between a dispatch board and a calendar?
A calendar shows time. A dispatch board shows time against people: one row or column per technician or crew, so you see each person's day at once and who has room for one more job.
Can I run a dispatch board in a spreadsheet?
For a few people, yes. It breaks down when jobs repeat, when the crew needs to see changes on their phones straight away, and when a finished job has to become an invoice: a spreadsheet can't tell anyone anything or carry the job forward.
Does a dispatch board need GPS tracking?
No. What matters is knowing a job was started and finished. GPS clock-on records where and when the technician clocked on at the job, which proves attendance without tracking their drive.