Planning the day and sending it to the crew

You line up tomorrow's PMs, then a customer calls about a unit that won't start, and half of what you just placed has to move. That's most afternoons in a service shop, so the board in Office keeps the plan you're working on apart from the plan the crew is working from until you send.

What the board shows

Your people run down the side and the day runs across the top, and you drag visits into place. The time grid scrolls sideways while the names stay put, so on a long day you don't lose track of whose row you're in. Short visits still get a card big enough to read and grab, with a mark showing how long the visit actually runs, and two short visits back to back stack instead of hiding each other. Drag one of those short cards and the arrival lands wherever you drop it.

A dashed card is a draft you haven't sent, and a solid card is what the techs have in Field. The card also says Draft, Sent or Draft change, so you don't have to remember which is which. A card with a coloured edge and a note on it wants a look, whatever state it's in. A card or unscheduled row that says Customer on hold is work for a customer the office marked do-not-service; open it to see why. It's a warning, so you can still schedule and send it.

Office checks the schedule every thirty seconds while you're not editing, and again when you return to the tab. It pauses those checks while you're working so your typed changes stay put. If a check fails, the earlier schedule stays visible with its last checked time, but Save draft and Send wait until Retry loads the current plan. A save or send that Office already confirmed still succeeded, even if the next schedule check fails.

Drafts stay in the office

Moving a sent visit doesn't change what the tech sees. Save it as a draft and the board shows your proposal, including a different day or a different person, while Field keeps the plan you already sent. Drafts survive a reload and the other managers in the shop can see them, so you can rough in the day at four o'clock and finish it in the morning. When you review a draft, the currently sent time and crew sit beside what you're proposing, which is where you catch the move you didn't mean to make.

If someone else changes that visit while you're holding a draft on it, or the change comes in from an imported schedule, your draft goes stale instead of quietly overwriting it. You can then discard it with Discard draft changes and keep sent plan. Cancelling a visit or otherwise taking it out of play pulls it from Field and clears any draft on it at the same time.

Overlaps are allowed while you're planning, because you often need two visits in the same slot for a minute while you work out which one moves. Sending is where they have to be dealt with. If the tech is already booked then, the editor says which visit it collides with and offers Schedule anyway, so you either move something or go ahead in one click, and BoltWright records that you did. The check only says the appointments don't collide. Whether access is arranged, the travel fits, the tech is qualified and the parts are on the truck is still your call.

Sending the day

When the day looks right, open Review the day, pick the visits you want to send, and send them together. Everything you picked goes or nothing does, so if one visit fails a check the rest stay as drafts and the crew keeps the old plan. If the only problem is an overlap, the review names the visits that collide and offers Send anyway. The overlap check runs against the finished arrangement rather than one move at a time, which is why you can swap two techs' slots without the board complaining halfway through. If the connection drops while the send is going out, sending again is safe and won't dispatch anything twice.

A service call that just came in doesn't need the full review. Send the one visit on its own and it goes through the same checks as the reviewed day.

What the tech gets

Nothing reaches a tech from a draft. When you send, each tech whose work today changed gets a card at the top of Field asking them to tap Got it. A tech with Field alerts on gets a notification on their phone, and anyone else gets one text instead, as long as you have their mobile number. Changes to later days arrive as one Schedule updated notice per day that nobody has to answer. The page on schedule changes has the details.

Office tracks each change under Technician updates, above the board. If a tech hasn't tapped Got it five minutes after their text, it reads "Call technician · not acknowledged", and Bolt won't keep texting them. Sent means you sent it and acknowledged means they saw it, and with the reception most of your crew works in, acknowledged is the one to wait for before you assume the truck has turned around.

Showing some of the crew

The button beside Board, List and Month says who the schedule shows, and it starts on Everyone. Open it to pick several people at once, a whole crew, or the visits that have no technician yet. A crew is a short name like HV for the service techs or SM for sheet metal. If the office hasn't set one in Team (Edit crew, contact & skills), BoltWright reads it from an imported worker name that starts with one, so "HV Kennie Wran" is on the HV crew. Your choice applies to the board, the list and the month, and it's saved for you, so it's still there tomorrow and on another computer. Visits nobody has yet, or booked for someone who isn't on the schedule, stay in Crew to review whoever you pick, and a line under the heading says how many visits your choice is hiding, with Show everyone right there. A link from someone's Team page shows just that person until you change it.

Work with no time on it

An appointment, an arrival window, an anytime visit and an unscheduled one are all real states on the board, so a flexible PM doesn't fall off just because nobody promised the customer 9:00. An arrival window on a tech's day counts against an appointment that day when the board checks for conflicts. An anytime visit doesn't, because an all-day job is exactly the one you pull a tech off when a no-heat call comes in.

People, working hours and time away

You can schedule anyone on the roster, including crew who came in from an imported schedule and don't have a BoltWright login. When one of those imported techs does get a login, an admin connects the two in Admin → Team, and from the next refresh their imported visits show up in Field on that person's phone. Until that's done, the imported visits don't reach anyone's phone unless the login's name is the same as the imported name, and Team lists the imported techs with upcoming visits who aren't connected yet. A similar name is only offered as a hint, so check it's the same person before you connect. Team keeps track of whether each person is active, what they're qualified for, when they work and whether their phone number works. An empty skills list means nobody has recorded them yet, and an empty day only means nothing is booked for that person, so check before you assume they're free.

Working hours are optional. If you set them, each working day gets one block of hours in the shop's timezone. Scheduling someone outside their hours shows "Outside working hours" as a warning rather than a block, since an agreed after-hours call is a normal part of the trade. Change this day lets you mark one day Off work or give it Different hours, and Use normal hours puts the day back.

For a stretch away, use Mark time away in Team with the first and last day and a reason, and Back at work ends it early. For an appointment, give the hours on one day instead, like the dentist from 9 to 11, and the rest of their day stays open. Task, away or reminder on the Schedule does the same without leaving the board. Time away shows as a shaded block in their row. Booking someone over it doesn't stop you, because sometimes you do call someone in: it says who's away and when, and offers Schedule anyway. Anything already assigned to them in that stretch is flagged as needing a technician. Their login and access don't change.

Tasks and reminders

Not everything on the schedule is a service call. Task, away or reminder adds a task, like a site visit for a quote or a managers meeting, with the people on it, the day, the hours or all day, and where it is if it's at a customer's building. A task has no job number and bills nothing. It's on their Today like any visit, they clock in on it, and a teammate can join it. A reminder, like "Order filters", sits at the top of that day with nobody on it, and nothing is sent to anyone.

Arrival notes are about records

Later in the day the board tells you when an arrival wasn't recorded, when one was recorded after the promised window, and when an arrival window passed. Those notes are about the records, not about where the tech is standing, and a missing arrival can just mean the phone hasn't had signal yet. Open the visit and its Schedule notes show the times behind each note, including an outside-hours warning, so you can decide whether it's worth a call.

Updated November 3, 2026.