Field service scheduling and dispatch
- This visit, labor and parts
- $660
- Technician hours on site
- 6
- Labor on this visit
- $540
Every figure on this page is computed from the inputs entered, by the method stated below it. FlatRateBook publishes no labor rate, no markup, no tax rate and no survey: the defaults are a worked example to replace with your own costs.
Field service scheduling and dispatch, as the phrase is sold, is a board: twenty vans on a map, a dispatcher moving jobs between them, drive-time optimisation and a GPS dot per truck. The small company that searches for it has two vans and the owner in one of them, and its scheduling question is different and smaller: which technician goes where tomorrow, how long the visit is booked for, what it was priced at, and whether the follow-up visit the last report called for has been booked. What the small company needs from scheduling and dispatch is the job record read forward: the visit, its hours, its rate and its follow-up, kept against the customer. This guide is about that version, and the free field service report on this site works the visit's hours, labor and follow-up with no account.
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The visit as hours, not a slot
A booking is technicians times hours, and that figure is the schedule as well as the cost: six technician hours is a morning for two or a day for one, and the rate makes it a price. Scheduling for a small company starts by writing the visit down as hours at the rate, which is what the report on this site does.
Who goes, at what rate, for how long
The dispatch decision at two vans is a name, a customer address, a booked duration and the rate the call was priced at. Kept against the customer as a job, it is the schedule; kept in a text message, it is a dispute in a month. The paid plan keeps jobs with their status from booked to on site to complete to paid.
The follow-up, booked from the report
Most repeat work is the follow-up the last visit's report called for, and most lost work is the follow-up nobody booked. The report on this site estimates the follow-up visit in hours at the rate; the paid plan files it against the job so the next booking is a line on the customer's record rather than a memory.
Field service scheduling and dispatch: common questions
What is field service scheduling and dispatch?
Deciding which technician goes to which customer, when, for how long, and telling them. Sold to large fleets it is a board with drive-time optimisation and GPS; for a small company it is the job record read forward: the visit as hours at a rate, the technician assigned, and the follow-up booked. FlatRateBook is the second kind.
Do I need dispatch software with two vans?
You need the jobs written down against the customer with a technician, a duration, a rate and a status, and the follow-ups the reports call for booked rather than remembered. That is a record, not a dispatch platform, and it is what FlatRateBook Pro keeps; the free report on this site works the visit's hours and follow-up with no account.
How long should a service visit be booked for?
Technicians times hours, from your own experience of the job, at the rate the call was priced at. The report on this site shows the technician hours, the labor and the total for the visit, and the follow-up estimate, so the next booking can be sized from the last report. It publishes no standard times.
FlatRateBook Pro
Keeping what you make
The tools are free forever. Pro turns them into the book: every customer and every job kept, the rate the call was priced at and the invoice it produced filed against it, your name and logo on the paperwork, no watermark, and an export when the accountant asks.
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- Invoice-sent and follow-up-due reminders emailed to your customers
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Cite or embed this figure
On the worked example, two technicians for three hours each is 6 technician hours on site, $540 of labor at $90 an hour and $660 with $120 of parts, with a $180 follow-up visit estimated at two hours.
Field service report (This visit, labor and parts): $660, FlatRateBook, worked example.
Cite as: "Field service scheduling and dispatch, FlatRateBook", updated 2026-09-03, https://flatratebook.com/field-service-scheduling-and-dispatch/.