The Reality of Dispatching Technicians
If you run an HVAC, plumbing, or electrical business, dispatching is the heartbeat of your operation. Every job depends on the right tech getting to the right address at the right time with the right information. And yet, most small service companies handle dispatch using methods that haven't changed in 20 years.
This guide covers how to dispatch efficiently regardless of what tools you use — and where software can help when you're ready for it.
Common Dispatch Methods (and Their Trade-Offs)
Most small contractor teams fall into one of four categories:
The Whiteboard
A physical board in the office with tech names across the top and time slots down the side. Jobs get written in dry-erase marker. It's visual, simple, and free.
The problem: Only the person standing in front of the board knows what's happening. Techs in the field are blind. It can't be accessed remotely, there's no history, and one accidental sleeve swipe erases Tuesday.
Google Calendar or Outlook
A shared calendar with color-coded events for each tech. Better than a whiteboard because it's accessible from anywhere and keeps a history.
The problem: Calendars aren't built for job management. You can't attach customer details, track job status, capture photos, or generate invoices. You end up maintaining a calendar plus a spreadsheet plus a text thread. Three tools doing one tool's job.
Texting and Phone Calls
The dispatcher texts job addresses to techs, techs text back when they're done, and everyone hopes nothing gets lost in the scroll. It works when you have two techs. It falls apart at five.
The problem: No record of who confirmed what. No status visibility. No way to pull up last month's jobs when a customer calls back. "I texted you the address" is not a dispatch system.
Dedicated Dispatch Software
A purpose-built platform where you create jobs, assign them to technicians, and track progress in real time. Techs update status from their phones.
The problem: Cost and complexity vary wildly. Some platforms are built for 200-truck operations and priced accordingly. Others are simple but missing critical features. Choosing the right one matters.
What Efficient Dispatching Actually Looks Like
Regardless of your method, efficient dispatching shares the same characteristics:
- Visual schedule: You can see every tech's day at a glance — who's booked, who's available, and where the gaps are.
- Real-time status: You know whether a tech is en route, on-site, or finished without calling them.
- Location awareness: You know where your techs are so you can assign emergency calls to the nearest available person.
- Automatic logging: Arrival times, completion times, and job notes are captured without anyone having to remember to write them down.
- Photo documentation: Before and after photos are attached to the job, not buried in someone's camera roll.
- Fast invoicing: The job is done and the invoice goes out the same day, not three weeks later when you finally get the paper ticket back.
If your current system hits all of these, you're in good shape. Most small teams hit one or two and struggle with the rest.
The Hidden Costs of Bad Dispatching
Inefficient dispatch doesn't just waste time — it bleeds money in ways that are hard to see until you add them up.
Missed and double-booked appointments
When scheduling lives in multiple places (or someone's head), conflicts happen. A missed appointment costs you the revenue plus the customer's trust. Do it twice and they call your competitor.
The "where are you?" phone calls
Every time you call a tech to ask their status, you're interrupting them mid-job. Multiply that by 10 calls a day across your team and you've burned an hour of productive time on status checks alone.
No paper trail
A customer disputes a charge. Your tech says the work was done. The customer says it wasn't. Without timestamped photos, arrival logs, or a signed completion record, it's your word against theirs. You eat the cost.
Delayed invoicing
The average small service company takes 7-14 days to invoice after job completion. Every day you wait is a day your cash flow suffers. Paper tickets sitting in a truck aren't generating revenue.
Customer complaints from poor communication
"Nobody told me the tech was coming between 2 and 4." "I waited all morning and nobody showed up." These complaints aren't about your techs' skill — they're about your dispatch process.
How Dispatch Software Handles It
Here's a real workflow using DispatchCore as an example, though the general flow is similar across most modern dispatch platforms:
- Customer calls in. You create a job in the system with the address, issue description, and any notes. Takes 30 seconds.
- Drag the job to a tech. The dispatch board shows all your techs and their schedules. Drag the job onto an open time slot. The tech gets a push notification on their phone.
- Tech updates status from the field. They tap "En Route" when leaving for the job, "Arrived" when on-site, and "Completed" when done. You see every update in real time on the board — no phone calls needed.
- GPS is captured automatically. When the tech checks in, their location is logged. You have proof they were at the job site without asking them to do anything extra.
- Photos are taken and attached. Before-and-after photos go directly onto the job record, not into a text thread you'll never find again.
- Customer signs on the tech's phone. Digital signature captured on completion. It's attached to the job permanently.
- Invoice generated and sent. The job details flow into an invoice that can be emailed to the customer the same day. No re-typing from a paper ticket.
The whole cycle — from customer call to invoice — happens without a single piece of paper, a single "where are you?" call, or a single lost job ticket.
Tips That Work Regardless of Your Tools
Whether you're using software, a whiteboard, or Google Calendar, these practices will make your dispatching more efficient:
Batch by geography
Group jobs by area. A tech driving across town between every call wastes fuel, time, and billable hours. Even a rough geographic grouping — north side in the morning, south side in the afternoon — saves 30-60 minutes per tech per day.
Build in buffer time
Don't schedule back-to-back with zero travel time. A 15-minute buffer between jobs accounts for traffic, a job that runs long, or a customer who wants to ask one more question. Running tight looks efficient on paper but creates a domino effect when one job goes over.
Keep emergency slots open
Block 1-2 hours per tech per day for urgent calls. HVAC companies in summer and plumbers after a freeze know that emergencies are guaranteed — the only question is when. Having open slots means you can say "yes, we can be there today" instead of pushing it to next week.
Standardize your job information
Every job should have the same baseline info before a tech rolls out: customer name, address, phone number, issue description, any access instructions, and equipment history if available. Techs who show up blind waste time figuring out what they're there to do.
Debrief weekly
Spend 15 minutes each week reviewing: How many jobs were completed? How many ran over time? Were there any scheduling conflicts? Which tech had the most windshield time? Even basic tracking reveals patterns you can fix.
Ready to Try Dispatch Software?
If you're still dispatching with texts and spreadsheets, the tips above will help immediately. But when you're ready to eliminate the status calls, the lost paperwork, and the invoicing delays, dispatch software pays for itself fast.
DispatchCore is built specifically for small contractor teams — 2 to 15 techs. Flat pricing at $79/month with no per-user fees, a mobile app your techs can learn in minutes, and a 30-day free trial so you can see the difference before you pay anything.