Scheduling for an installation business isn't complicated in theory. You need to know who's going where, when, and make sure everyone involved knows the plan. The problem is execution - keeping everyone informed when things change, giving fitters the details they need, and not spending half your day on the phone coordinating.
Most scheduling software is either too simple (just a shared calendar) or too complex (built for enterprises with dispatch teams). Here's what actually matters for fitting and installation businesses.
The basics that aren't optional
- Visibility for everyone. Your fitters need to see their schedule from their phone, not just from the office whiteboard. You need to see everyone's schedule at once. If someone has to call in to find out where they're going tomorrow, the system has failed.
- Automatic notifications. When you book a job, the fitter should know without you texting them. When you reschedule, they should know without you calling them. Manual communication doesn't scale - you'll forget, or they won't see the message.
- Job context attached. A booking that just says "Smith, 9am" isn't useful. Your fitter needs the address, the job details, any notes about access or parking, photos from the survey. The booking should link to everything they need to do the job.
If your current system doesn't do all three, you're filling the gaps with phone calls and texts - which means things slip.
What separates good from adequate
- Different booking types. A survey isn't the same as an install isn't the same as a remedial or maintenance visit. Your schedule should distinguish between them so you can see at a glance what kind of day your team has - and plan capacity properly.
- Multiple people per booking. Some jobs need two fitters. Some need a fitter and an apprentice. The scheduling should handle this without creating duplicate entries or confusion about who's actually going.
- Customer notifications. "When are you coming?" is the most common inbound call for most fitting businesses. If your system can notify customers when they're booked - and notify them again if it changes - you eliminate half your phone traffic.
Route awareness. Knowing where your team is and how jobs are geographically distributed helps you schedule smarter - less windscreen time, more productive hours.
How FitterPal handles scheduling
FitterPal's schedule is built around how fitting businesses actually work.
You create bookings as surveys, installations, remedials, or general visits. Assign one person or multiple - everyone assigned gets an email notification immediately and a reminder on the morning of the booking. No chasing, no "did you tell Dave?" conversations.
Customers and contacts (like tenants or site managers) can be notified automatically when you book or reschedule. They know when you're coming without anyone picking up the phone.
Every booking links to its job. Your fitter opens the booking on their phone and they're one tap from the full job details: customer info, job description, notes, photos, previous visits. They arrive prepared, not guessing.
The schedule view shows staff in columns with their bookings for the day or week. A map view shows where everyone is, with distances and driving times between jobs - useful for planning efficient routes or responding when something overruns.
What this actually changes day-to-day
Monday morning, your fitters open the app and see their week. They don't text asking where they're going. They don't call the office for an addresses, it's all there.
You book a survey for Thursday, the customer gets a notification confirming the time. They don't call to check. They know.
A job overruns on Wednesday afternoon. You check the map, see Dave's nearest to the next job, and reassign. Dave gets notified. The customer gets notified. Done in sixty seconds.
At the end of the month, you can see the history of every visit to every job. When was the survey? Who did the install? When did we go back for the remedial? It's all there, attached to the job, not scattered across calendars and memory.
Stop coordinating, start scheduling
The right scheduling software doesn't just show you a calendar. It handles the communication, provides the context, and keeps the history. You make the decisions; the system handles the admin.
FitterPal was built for fitting and installation businesses - not retrofitted from generic field service software. The features exist because fitters needed them, not because a product manager thought they'd look good on a feature list.
Book a demo today where we can show you how our scheduling system can support your business.
Book a demo today where we can show you how our scheduling system can support your business.
