Draft the job at the survey, on your phone
Notes from a site visit get retyped in the evening, or they get lost. Saving the job as a draft while you are still standing there removes the second pass.
Every job starts with somebody standing in a room, measuring, and writing on whatever is to hand. What happens next decides whether that visit becomes a job or a note you cannot read by Thursday. The fix is not a better notebook — it is entering the job once, at the survey, in a state that does not commit you to anything yet.
The survey is the first data entry
By the time you leave a site visit you already know most of what the job record needs: who the customer is, where the work is, what has to happen and roughly when. Writing that on paper and typing it again at nine in the evening is the same work twice — and the second pass is where the gate code and the boiler model go missing.
A draft is what lets you do it once. It is a real job: it has a number, it belongs to the customer, it is searchable. It is simply not on anybody's schedule yet.
What a draft actually needs
Little enough to fill in on a phone while somebody is talking to you. Everything else — full address, description, checklist, who is going — can be added later from the van or the office, and usually is.
What it takes to save one:
- A customer. If they are new, create them straight from the search field — the name alone is enough
- A title, which is usually the sentence you would have written on the pad
- A date, prefilled, so it is one tap unless you already agreed on a day
- A priority, which defaults to medium
A draft is private
The customer portal link is created and emailed when the job first starts, not when it is created. Until then the draft is yours: leave it half-finished, rename it, or delete it when the survey comes to nothing. Nobody outside the company sees any of it.
That is what makes it usable as a scratchpad. A record you hesitate to create because it might notify somebody is a record you will not create at all.
From survey to job in one step
When the customer says yes, one button turns the draft into an open job — the same record, now on the calendar and visible to whoever is assigned. Nothing is retyped, and the notes you took standing in the room are still attached to it.
When the survey comes to nothing, the draft simply stays where it is. Six months later, when they call back, the measurements are still there.
Frequently asked questions
What is the minimum needed to save a draft?
A customer, a title and a date. The date is prefilled and a new customer can be created from the search field with nothing but a name, so in practice it is one line of typing.
Can the customer see a draft job?
No. The portal link is generated and sent when the job starts, so a draft is visible only inside your own company.
Do I need to install an app?
No. It runs in the browser on a phone, which is the point — it works on whatever the person doing the survey is already carrying.