When there are three of you, the diary is whatever the last person wrote down, and the day it goes wrong is the day two customers are told the same Tuesday morning. Picktime gives the crew one diary that cannot be written in twice, lets customers pick their own slot from what is actually free, and raises the invoice off the job that was already booked.
Blu TradesBook online
Boiler service1h · Dave$140.00
Callout45m · Next van free$75.00
Annual serviceRepeats every MarchBook
Next free8:15 AM11:00 AM2:30 PM
Booked online
10:40 PM
Nobody answered a phone
Invoice
$140.00
Raised off the boiler service
Tuesday morning
Held once
Nobody can promise it twice
No crew boards, no route plans, no timesheets. One diary that everybody can read and nobody can double-book, and a customer who can put themselves in it.
Everybody gets their own login and their own hours, and the calendar shows all of it in one view. The moment a Tuesday morning is taken it stops being offered, to you and to the customer both.
Your own page listing the jobs you take and how long each one needs. They pick a slot that is really free, and it appears in the crew’s calendar without anybody answering a phone.
On the paid plans, a service that repeats every year or every quarter is booked as a run, so next March is already held. The customer gets the confirmation and you get the work without having to remember it.
Every booking already carries the customer, the work and the price, so the invoice comes off it. Download the PDF, record a payment, or send a reminder on the ones still showing overdue.
A confirmation when they book, on the free plan, and a reminder before the day on the paid plans. Each carries a link to move it, so a customer who has to go out tells you the night before rather than not being in when you arrive.
A double-booking on a small crew is not a scheduling error, it is a wasted morning and a customer who now thinks you are disorganised. Everybody on the account has their own hours, their own days off and the jobs they cover, and the calendar is one view of all of it. A slot booked by anybody (you, the customer, the apprentice on the way back from the merchant) stops being offered to everybody else that instant.
You are under a floor with your phone in the van, and the ten o’clock has decided to go out. Every confirmation carries a link they can use to pick another slot or cancel outright, so the change happens while you are working rather than in four missed calls afterwards. The hour they hand back goes straight onto the crew’s availability, where the next customer can take it. A moved job is a job you still have.
Five to eight. You are outside a bungalow in Elm Road and Marc is outside a flat two miles away, and both of you were given nine o’clock on Tuesday: one over the phone on Friday, one in a text on Monday night that never made it into the book.
Picktime has one diary and it cannot be written in twice. A slot taken by anybody, on any device, stops being offered to everybody in the same second, whether it was the customer taking it themselves or you taking it standing in somebody’s kitchen.
A quote visit, a service, a call-out, a second fix, each with its length and its price if it has one. Set your working hours and the days you are not taking anything.
Each person gets their own login, their own working hours and the jobs they cover, so the page only offers a boiler service in the diary of somebody who does boilers.
Your website, your Facebook page, a QR code on the van door, or pasted into the reply you send from the van. They book, everybody’s calendar updates, and nothing gets written on a job sheet.
The free plan has no end date and no card behind it. What moves you onto a paid plan is how many of you there are and how many places you work out of.
A job booked here shows up in the calendar you already keep on your phone, and a day you block out there stops being offered on the booking page. Payments run through PayPal on the free plan and through Stripe or Square on the paid ones, into your own account, so a deposit on a call-out is settled before anybody sets off.
Picktime runs in a phone browser and there are iOS and Android apps, so the next address, the customer’s number and what they booked are in your pocket rather than on a job sheet in somebody else’s van.
It depends whether you need a diary or a dispatch system. If your crew is small enough that the problem is one calendar everybody can trust and customers booking themselves, Picktime does that free for one person, with iOS and Android apps for the van. Where most of what you book is quote visits and measured surveys rather than call-outs, booking the client half of a builder’s week is the page to read instead.
Yes. Picktime is free forever for one contractor, with your own booking page, customers booking and moving their own slots, a confirmation by email on every booking and every customer’s history in one place. No card, and no date on which it stops.
Yes. Everybody gets their own login, their own working hours and the jobs they cover, and a slot taken by anybody stops being offered to everybody else immediately, including when the customer took it themselves.
Yes. Your page lists what you take and how long each job needs, and they pick from what is genuinely free. It works at eleven at night, which is when most people finally get round to sorting the boiler out.
Yes, on the paid plans. Book it as a repeating job and next year’s date is held now, with the confirmation going to the customer. You get the work back without having to remember it twelve months later.
Yes. Invoices are raised off the booking, which already carries the customer, the work and the price. Download the PDF, record a payment, and send a reminder on anything still showing overdue.
No. Picktime books slots; it does not route a van between them or hold arrival windows. If routing is the thing you need, that is a field service tool rather than this.
Not this kind, on a large site. Construction scheduling there means critical path planning: tasks, dependencies and float across a programme of works, drawn as a chart and kept by somebody whose job that is. Picktime schedules the other calendar on a building job, the one with people in it, the survey, the first fix, the annual service, the customer who has to be at home when you arrive. Three of you in two vans need the second one. Forty subcontractors on one site need the first, and the client meetings that sit alongside that programme are covered by booking site visits on a live job.
Yes, and plenty of small builders do, with the dates down the left and a bar drawn in coloured cells. It holds up until two people need to change it in the same week, or until somebody rings to ask whether Thursday is free and the only current copy is on a laptop in the van. A spreadsheet cannot refuse a double booking, and refusing double bookings is most of what a diary is for.
Nobody can answer that honestly, and a page that puts a name to it is usually quoting a review site’s own traffic. Compare what actually breaks instead: whether two people can write in the same day without one of them losing, whether a customer can book at eleven at night without ringing, and what happens to the bill when you take somebody on. Picktime’s free plan has no end date, and what eventually moves you off it is the size of the crew rather than the number of jobs.
Repairs A repair slot booked from a link, with the fault described before it arrives.
See computer repair scheduling
Bookings A booking that holds the bay for as long as the job actually takes.
See car detailing scheduling
Visits A visit booked in the customer’s evening and confirmed without a call back.
See carpet cleaning schedulingFree forever for one contractor. No card, no trial clock, and your customers can be booking themselves in tomorrow morning.
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