Schedule and crew

The board is where work sits in time and who is doing it. Jobs drag between days, between people, and to and from the tray of unscheduled work; a drop shows exactly where it lands before you let go, and a move that fails to save reverts visibly with a message rather than pretending. The board is deliberately money-free — for what a job earned, open Jobs. A job that runs over several days is several visits, one per day, each with its own time and crew. A membership business — a gym or a studio — is not shown the Jobs page or its Calendar.

Move day (desktop) or Move this whole day (phone) reviews up to 100 scheduled visits together. Pick another date, then Review move to see each destination, named conflicts and the text or email summary owed to customers who were already told. Confirm move keeps the business's local clock time across daylight-saving changes. Changed or conflicting visits stay put and are named. The result stays open with Undo moved visits; Undo goes through the same checks and can refuse a newer edit or booking. Customer updates are queued for the next reminder sweep during contact hours, with delivery, consent and STOP checks. If an update already went out, Undo can queue another. If a response is interrupted, retry the same date safely; visits already at that destination are recognized. A clock time that does not exist on the chosen date is refused so the owner can choose that visit's new time individually. Date-only holds remain date-only.

A new job on the Calendar takes what the work is, the customer (with their email and phone), a day, a Start time and a Length, and who is doing it — the length starts at a sensible default for your trade. The size of the job in your trade's unit (squares for a roof, linear feet for a fence) is set on the Jobs page. Jobs that exist without a time wait in the tray until you place them. Rescheduling is a drag; the customer, if you already gave them a time, is told automatically (see below). Maintenance plans on the Jobs page book their visits onto this same board.

A field seat sees one card: the next stop — the customer's name, the window, the address, and one button. Under it is a quiet timeline of the rest of the day; a later stop opens when tapped, and a finished one collapses to a tick. The two buttons that matter are On my way, which texts or emails the customer and gives them a page to watch, and Done, which closes the stop with a six-second undo. The expanded desktop card and phone stop show Site access for assigned work today or tomorrow: the saved property's gate or alarm code, access notes and active equipment. These details are read-only; if the job has no saved site, ask the owner to link it. Another site's codes are never substituted. A field seat sees only the jobs assigned to them, and never money: no prices, no invoices, no revenue, and Des will not tell them either.

Hours are how labour reaches the numbers. An hourly pay rule turns logged hours into wages; hours logged against a job become that job's labour cost, so its margin stops saying unknown. Hours with no job are allowed — shop time, a day of estimates — and count toward the person's pay without landing on any one job. A crew member can also time a visit instead of remembering it: on the job in My Jobs or on the Calendar, tap Start timer when the work starts and Stop when it ends, then log the timed span. A span counts toward pay and job cost only once it is logged, and it logs once. If a payroll expense for the same crew is also attached to the job, each person's labour is counted once — the larger of the wages paid and the hours logged — and the job's costs say how much was counted once. DeskOps does not track location.

Every business has a booking page at a private link — thirty-six random characters that only the people you give it to can find. It is on by default in approval mode: a customer picks a service and a time, and the request waits on Requests until you approve it, at which point it lands on the schedule. A service can be switched to automatic booking, where the time is confirmed the moment they choose it. Booking settings holds your hours, the services on offer (each with a duration, a buffer after it, and who can do it), your service area (the ZIP codes you serve — leave it empty to take requests from anywhere; with a list, a customer booking a visit to an address outside it is told so before choosing a time, with your phone number), and the switch that closes the page — closing it keeps every existing appointment. Early access: the page is new and no real customer has booked through it yet.

DeskOps emails the link with your business name and a one-line explanation of whether you approve requests or confirm them automatically. To send it by text, copy the link into a conversation on your connected texting line — texts go from that line, not from DeskOps. The share screen keeps a history of who was sent the link and when.

Your request form asks what they need — your own services appear as quick picks — plus up to six photos, the address, when they would like it done, and a phone number or an email. It arrives as a request, not a booking: nothing goes on your schedule and no price is promised. They see what happens next and get a short email from your business saying when you will reply. You get an email — and a notification on your phone if you have them turned on — and it shows on Requests and in Needs Attention on Home until you handle it. In a very busy hour, after six, you get one note saying more are coming in rather than an email each. Spam is stopped without costing you anything: a hidden field bots fill in, a minimum time to fill the form, limits per address and per business, and links in odd places are refused.

Open it to see what they wrote, their photos, the address and how to reach them. DeskOps checks whether they are already a customer by the same email or phone — never by name — and only suggests the match; you choose, and when the email and phone point to different people it asks you to pick. Make a quote opens a new quote with the customer and address filled in and their services as lines for you to price; the request stays beside it for you only, and it is marked Quoted once the quote is created. Book a visit puts the job on your board without a time, for you to schedule. Decline… lets you review a polite reply before it is sent from your business, or decline without a reply; Not a real request clears spam without a word to anyone.

Only if you turn customer reminders on. Then the customer gets one note the day before, with the arrival window and who is coming. It goes by text when a TextDesk line is connected to the business, and by email otherwise; a text that cannot be sent falls back to email in the same run. The Communications screen shows which of the two your business is using right now.

You pick an arrival estimate — anywhere from a minute to eight hours — and the customer gets a message saying the crew is on the way, by text when a TextDesk line is connected and by email otherwise, with a link to an arrival page they can watch. The page carries your business name, the when and the where, and a countdown that refreshes on its own; it is money-free and needs no account. DeskOps declines to send it for a job that is not until later, so a mis-tap at breakfast does not promise a morning arrival. It goes out even if customer reminders are off, because you chose to send it.

If the customer was already given a time, moving the visit sends them the new one with an updated calendar invite, and cancelling tells them so nobody waits in for a crew that is not coming. Both go out regardless of the reminders switch — a business that stops sending reminders still owes the correction to someone it gave a time to. A visit nobody was ever told about sends nothing.

A visit a plan booked says so when you open it — which plan, and on what rhythm. Skip takes that one day off the board, frees whoever was booked on it, and the plan never books that day again; every other visit stays where it is and the plan carries on. Nothing is sent to the customer. If the plan bills through a contract, the invoice does not change — a skipped visit is not a credit unless you adjust the invoice yourself. A visit you have already moved by hand belongs to you rather than to the plan, so it is cancelled as a job instead.