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 new job takes the customer, the kind of work in your trade's own words, a time window and who is doing it; the unit it is measured in (squares for a roof, linear feet for a fence, hours for a service call) follows your trade. 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. 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. DeskOps records and totals hours; it does not run a clock on a phone or 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 your Booking requests tab 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.

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.