WindowBossPro Blog — Tech App

Crew GPS on the Office Map: Knowing Where Every Window Cleaning Van Is

The phone rings in the office. A storefront on the east side has a smeared front door after a delivery and wants someone to stop by. A homeowner wants to know if the crew is still in the neighborhood because they forgot to ask for the garage windows. A new customer wants a quote this afternoon. Each of those calls has the same first question: where is everybody right now?

The Office Side of the Tech's Phone

The time clock was covered in The Time Clock in the Window Cleaning Tech App. Crew GPS is its partner on the office side.

In WindowBossPro, the location of each tech's phone shows on the office map during the workday. It is the crew's location from their phones, not a tracker bolted to the van. If two techs ride in Van 1, both phones show there. If the owner is out doing a quote in their own truck, the owner's phone shows there.

Combined with the dispatch board, the office can see both where each crew is and where each crew is going next.

What the Office Uses It For

Crew GPS earns its keep in a handful of everyday situations:

• Adding a job mid-day. A storefront needs a quick touch-up. The office looks at the map, sees Van 2 is three blocks away on the storefront route, and adds it to that van's list. The tech's phone shows the new job in its spot.
• Answering “where's the crew?” The office can tell a customer the crew is two streets over without calling the tech. For most customers, the live map in the customer app answers this before they call.
• Rain decisions. When a storm rolls in from the west, the office can see which vans are in its path and start moving jobs before techs get soaked.
• Covering a problem. If a van breaks down or a tech gets hurt, the office knows exactly where to send help.

Closest Van, Not Best Guess

Without crew GPS, the office answers the “who is closest?” question from memory: “Mike was on the west side this morning, I think.” That memory is usually an hour out of date. With the map, the answer is right there, and the job goes to the van that can get there fastest.

For companies running one van on houses and one on a storefront route, this matters more than it sounds. Storefront vans tend to stay in commercial corridors, residential vans wander through neighborhoods, and the closest van to a new request is often not the obvious one. Splitting the work between vans is covered in Two Vans, Two Routes: Splitting Residential and Storefront Work in the Window Cleaning App.

It also helps the end of the day. When a van finishes early, the office can see it on the map and pull a due job from the Waiting List that sits on the way back to the shop, instead of letting the last hour go unused.

Talking to Your Crew About It

Some techs bristle at location sharing. The way to handle it is to be upfront and specific:

• Say when. Location matters during the workday, when the tech is working routes and the office is dispatching.
• Say why. Adding jobs to the closest van, answering customer calls, rain decisions and safety. Not checking how long lunch took.
• Say it before they start. Cover it during hiring and training, not after someone notices.

Most techs are fine with it once they see it used to send them the job around the corner instead of the one across town. And many appreciate that if they fall off a ladder, the office knows where they are.

GPS Plus the Buttons

The map tells the office where a tech is. The buttons tell the office what the tech is doing. Together they answer nearly every question the office has during the day. A tech on the map at the Hendersons with the job started is working there. A tech on the map at a gas station between jobs is getting gas. A tech whose dot has not moved in a while and whose last job is started but not completed might be on a big house, or might need a call.

That combination is what makes the end-of-day phone call unnecessary.

See the Day as It Happens

Crew GPS is not about watching people. It is about dispatching well, answering customers quickly and knowing where your crew is when something goes wrong. For what else the office gets from the tech's phone, see the next guide, or go back to the WindowBossPro window cleaning app page.