Dispatch software for portable toilet and septic jobs
Book the job while they're still on the phone.
The dispatch map already knows where your trucks are this week, who has room, and which day a driver is passing that address anyway. So you can say Wednesday and mean it.
One phone call.
A new jobsite on Route 82, from the first ring to a locked gate two days later.
Monday, 10:04 AM
Cardinal Utilities Contracting calls.
They need a restroom and a handwash station at a new pad on Route 82, and they need it by Wednesday. The map is already open, this week's stops colored by driver.10:05 AM
Luis is out there Wednesday anyway.
Under the calendar, PortaPro looks at the next seven days of route work near the customer's site, by driving distance rather than as the crow flies. Wednesday comes back Strong fit, already in this area. Tap the row and the date and driver fill themselves in.10:06 AM
He has room, so it's booked.
The drivers panel shows every driver's stops against their daily target, so nobody has to call Luis to ask. The job is on Wednesday before the customer hangs up.Tuesday
Route Plan puts Wednesday in order.
Dispatch picks the day and the driver. Route Plan picks the order once the day is set, and sequences Luis's route with the new stop in it.Wednesday, 2:10 PM
The gate is locked.
Luis marks the stop Locked gate and keeps moving. The job stays open and lands in Needs attention with his reason on it, and Reschedule suggests the next day somebody is in the area.
The weekly work is already on the board.
Every rate card row with a service frequency makes its own service jobs. They are created when the rate card is saved and again each night for visits coming due, and they land in Unassigned marked Auto-scheduled, ready to drag onto a driver.
One job per due date, so saving a rate card twice never books a visit twice. When a customer waves the driver off for a week, Skip cycle drops that visit without a charge and keeps the schedule on its day.
Events get the same treatment. Put a recurring service on an event quote, every three days say, and when the customer accepts, PortaPro books the delivery, the pickup, and a service stop for every visit date in between, each at the event's site and ready to route.
One set of jobs, five ways to look at it.
Plus drafts for the call you didn't finish, and saved notes for the gate code you'd otherwise type every week.
- Calendar
- Deliveries going out and pickups coming back, side by side or by driver, with Needs attention across the top.
- Dispatch
- A lane for every driver and a column of unassigned jobs. Drag a job onto a driver and it's theirs.
- Map
- Stops by driver, with layers for territories, customer density, routes, disposal sites, weather radar, and sites due for service with nothing booked. With GPS tracking, the trucks and tagged units too.
- Service Board
- Every site with units on the ground: out since, next service due, last serviced, and the pickup date. Pickup overdue and No service scheduled are called out so you see them first.
- Advanced Search
- Jobs across any date range by driver, job type, and status. The filters you run every Monday morning save as a preset.
At the end of the day, one report of what didn't happen.
When your day ends, 6 PM unless you move it, dispatch gets one report: every stop that wasn't marked complete, grouped by driver, with the reason the driver gave. Each person picks how it arrives, bell, push, email, or text. If nothing was missed, nothing is sent.
Turn on auto-move and the stops nobody got to roll to the next business day with the same driver. A stop with a driver's reason on it, a locked gate or a refused delivery, always waits for a person.
The report stays off until you switch it on, so a company still importing old jobs isn't emailed about them.
The customer hears the stop is done, with the proof attached.
Switch on the service completed notice under Settings, Jobs, and the customer gets an email, a text, or both within about a minute of the driver closing the stop: what was done, where, when, and the driver's first name, with a link to a proof-of-service page that needs no login. The page carries every photo from the stop with its time and GPS stamp, the signature, GPS verified on site when the truck has a tracker, and the service report as a PDF.
Both are off until you turn them on. It goes once per job, however the job was completed: from the phone, from the office, or from a phone that was offline and caught up later. Catching up on last month's paperwork messages nobody, because a job completed more than a day after its date is skipped. Texts need texting set up and wait out the customer's quiet hours.
A contractor with twenty sites doesn't want twenty emails. Under How often, choose One summary at the end of the day and each customer gets one email (and one text, if texting is on) at the time you pick, between 3:00 PM and 9:00 PM: every stop finished for them that day, each with View proof, plus View all stops. One customer can be set differently in Edit Customer, Billing: One message per stop, One summary at the end of the day, or Don't send.
Turn on Show proof of service on invoices and the proof follows the bill. The invoice email says how many service visits it covers with a link to one no-login page listing each of them, and the invoice PDF and statements carry the same link.
Questions operators ask
Does booking a job here reorder the driver's route?
No. It puts the stop on that day for that driver. Route Plan sequences the day when a dispatcher plans it, with the new stop included, and nothing changes on a driver's phone until the route is pushed.
What if the customer has no site on file yet?
Scheduling suggestions measure from the customer's default site, so a customer with no site coordinates shows no suggestions. Add the site and they appear. You can always pick any date by hand.
Does the driver find out when a stop moves?
Yes. Rescheduling sends the driver a Stop rescheduled notification with the old and new dates. If the new date is today and the route is already out, you can insert the stop into their live route so it shows on their phone in order.
Can I see the schedule in Google Calendar or Outlook?
Yes. Each person can subscribe their own calendar to their PortaPro jobs: Google Calendar, Outlook, or Apple Calendar. Owners, admins, and dispatchers can also add an All jobs feed with every scheduled job and its driver. It's read-only, prices and internal notes are never included, and you keep changing jobs in PortaPro. Google refreshes subscribed calendars every few hours; Apple Calendar and Outlook check more often.
Can a customer get one message a day instead of one per stop?
Yes. Set the service completed notice to One summary at the end of the day and each customer gets one email, and one text if texting is on, at the time you choose between 3:00 PM and 9:00 PM company time, listing every stop finished for them that day with its own proof link. You can also set a single customer to One message per stop, the daily summary, or Don't send, under Edit Customer, Billing.
Which plan is it on?
Jobs and dispatch, the dispatch map, and missed-stop tracking are on every plan, Starter included. Trucks and tagged units on the map come from GPS tracking, which is on the Growth plan. The service completed notice by email comes with it; sending it by text needs texting, which is on Growth.
