What to use instead of paid installation planning when you want to start for free

Installation planning can be replaced for free with a shared calendar, a spreadsheet in shared storage or a group chat. This set-up holds up as long as appointments stay put and one person does the planning. Once orders run concurrently, it lacks three things: clash checking, records of technicians' qualifications and the order history in one place. You have to supply those with your own discipline, or take them over from a dedicated system.

• A free substitute exists and for some companies it is sufficient: a shared calendar plus a spreadsheet plus one place for attachments.
• You pay the price not in money, but in the planner's time and the risk of a wasted site visit.
• The limit is not in the size of the company, but in how many orders run concurrently and how often appointments change.
• ServisBook can be tried free for 30 days without a payment card; only then does it cost EUR 20 per user per month.
• The transition does not have to be abrupt; the first week can be planned in both tools side by side.

What can be used for installation planning without paying

There are several free routes and each has a different weakness. A shared calendar can handle appointments and can be seen from a phone. A spreadsheet in shared storage can handle the technician-by-day grid and the totals. A group chat can send information out quickly. A paper diary can handle everything, as long as it is in the office and as long as one person writes in it.

The problem does not arise inside any one tool, but between them. The appointment is in the calendar, the holiday in the spreadsheet, the photo of the switchboard in the chat and the agreement with the customer in an e-mail. The link between them is held only by the person who was there. The moment they are ill or happen to be on a roof at a customer, the company does not have that link.

Comparison of the free set-up and a planning system

The table is not an argument against the free set-up. It shows where its limits are, so that everyone can judge whether they are running into them in their own operations.

A shared calendar as the first substitute

A shared calendar is the most sensible free start. Create one calendar per technician, share them with everyone, and the planner enters installations into the specific calendar. The technician sees their day on their phone and does not have to call the office.

The calendar, however, does not distinguish what is arranged from what is only being offered. A proposed appointment and a confirmed installation look the same, so it easily happens that the same day is offered to two customers. The second weakness is multi-day work: in a calendar, a three-day installation is either one long event with no link to the individual days, or three separate entries that nobody holds together. The appointment calendar solves this difference by distinguishing proposed and confirmed appointments and showing a multi-day installation as one continuous bar.

A spreadsheet as the second layer

A spreadsheet adds what the calendar cannot display: an overview of the whole week across all technicians at once. The technician-by-day grid shows who is assigned when, who is on holiday and how many people are at work. It is a cheap and quick solution. For simple shift allocation you can use the free shift planning template in Excel.

This saving is paid for with manual checking. A spreadsheet without your own formulas does not know what a clash is; it can only warn you if you write the rule yourself and maintain it. And even then it stays separate from the calendar the technician drives by. Two places mean two versions of the truth and the question of which one counts. In the planning board the grid and the source of appointments are the same thing; you enter assignments by dragging across cells and the app reports a clash on saving.

Where the free set-up fails first

Most often not at the plan, but at arranging the appointment with the customer. The customer writes that Thursday does not suit them. The planner looks at the calendar, offers Tuesday and Friday, and the customer replies a day and a half later that they will take Tuesday. In the meantime Tuesday has been taken by another order. The whole cycle starts again and uses up three e-mails and two phone calls.

The free set-up does not shorten this cycle, because the customer cannot see into it. The appointment offer to the customer works the other way round: the customer gets a link with the free days, picks for themselves and you confirm the appointment. The number of messages drops because the negotiation over what is free goes away.

The second place where the free set-up fails is the question of qualification. Neither the calendar nor the spreadsheet knows who holds a valid qualification for the given work. The answer is in the manager's head or in a binder. Capacity and skills keeps availability, absence and qualification in one place, so you have the answer while still on the phone with the customer.

The third place is history. A complaint is dealt with months later, and the question is what exactly was done at the customer and who was there. In the free set-up the answer is scattered across e-mails, in a camera and in the memory of a technician who may have left in the meantime. Orders and history keeps attachments, internal notes and a record of every change on one order.

When a free solution continues to be enough

A shared calendar and a spreadsheet are enough where the plan hardly changes during the week, where one person both plans and goes out, and where orders do not overlap. They are also enough where installations are long and there are few of them a month. In such an operation a clash practically never arises, and a planning system would be solving a problem the company does not have.

They stop being enough the moment at least two of these conditions apply at the same time: orders run concurrently, appointments change during the week, there is more than one technician, and the site visit needs a qualification that not everyone holds. So it is the operation that decides, not the size of the company. A two-person company with a dense calendar hits the limit sooner than a twenty-person company that goes out on long refurbishments.

How to check the limit before you start paying

1. For one month, record two numbers: how many minutes a day arranging appointments takes, and how many times a technician calls the office to ask where to go.
2. In the same record, note every wasted site visit and every case where an appointment had to be moved because of a clash.
3. After a month you have your own data instead of someone else's estimate. If both numbers are low, stay with the free set-up.
4. If they are not low, put one real week into a trial alongside; ServisBook is free for 30 days and needs no payment card.
5. After a week, compare where the plan diverged and why. Only this comparison is the basis for a decision.

What the free substitute costs, even though you do not pay for it

The free set-up has a zero invoice and a non-zero price. It is paid in the time of the planner, who re-types the same information in several places. It is paid in the technicians' phone calls to the office, because in the field they have no reliable overview of their day. And it is paid in wasted site visits that arise from a clash nobody noticed in time.

The last item is the most expensive and the least visible, because it does not appear in any report. A technician in the field opens mobile for technicians in the browser, sees their day, starts the work and logs the tasks done. That removes one of the phone calls to the office and at the same time creates a record that otherwise might not be created.

What applies regardless of the tool you choose

No tool will change the fact that a customer announces a change of appointment at the last minute, or that a technician falls ill. The only thing that changes is how many people have to hold that change in their memory and how quickly it reaches everyone it concerns. In the free set-up it is one specific person and several messages. In a planning system it is one entry in one place.

If your company has no people to plan over time, or already has its own enterprise system in which planning runs, there is no reason to change anything. This article describes the situation where planning is done in a calendar and a spreadsheet and it is starting to creak.

Frequently asked questions