Planning Board

Jobs > Planning Board is the scheduling desk. It shows one column per working day with a card for every job planned to start that day, a strip of available tradespersons underneath, and a notes strip for reminders. Operations uses it to decide who works where, then to send the work orders and customer notifications for the day. It replaced the older Jobs Board as the main scheduling tool.

What you see

Toolbar

Control	What it does
Jobs dropdown	Opens one of three lists of sub jobs that still need attention: Ring and Book (n), Ready to schedule (n) and Is Waiting (n). The counts update as you work.
Total Value	The sum of the accepted prices of every job visible on the board for the selected date range. This is the “dollars of work starting this week” figure.
Legend icon	Hover for the card colour key (reproduced below).
Ready to schedule, Accepted, Pending deposit, CC pending	Status filters. With nothing ticked, the board shows every active job status. Tick one or more to restrict the board to those statuses.
Date range picker with arrows	Choose any start and end date. The arrows step backwards and forwards by the same number of days as the current range. The range is written to the page address so a link can be shared.
Refresh	Reloads the board.

Day columns

Only weekdays are shown. Each column header carries the date and three controls:

• A switch that expands every card in that column to show its sub jobs (so you can drag tradespersons onto them).
• An envelope: Send Work Order for the whole day. See Send the day’s work orders and client cards.
• A sticky note: Add note for that day.

A job appears in a day column when any of its sub jobs has an approximate start date on that day, or when the job’s own approximate start date is that day and it still has unscheduled sub jobs. Cards are sorted by job price, largest first. Ring and Book sub jobs and colour consultant sub jobs never appear on the board itself; they live in the Jobs dropdown lists.

Job cards

Each card shows the reference number, the customer surname (or full name for commercial jobs), the suburb, the first planning board note, the tradespersons allocated (painters in bold, unallocated sub jobs shown as their trade name), the job type (INT, EXT or Both) and the painter sub job price. Hover the info icon for the full job popover; click the card body to open the job modal.

A tick appears next to the reference when every sub job has a start date, and it turns into an envelope once every work order has been sent.

Card colours (from the on screen legend):

Colour meaning	When
Job schedule is waiting	A painter sub job is marked Is Waiting.
Unassigned painters	A painter sub job has no tradesperson. If the job is flagged flexible the card shows the flexible colour instead.
Assigned painters	All painters allocated but at least one work order not sent.
Assigned painters and work order sent	All painters allocated and every work order sent.
Jobs unassigned (not painting jobs)	No painter sub job on the job and a trade is unallocated.
Jobs assigned (not painting jobs)	Trades allocated, work order not yet sent.
Jobs assigned and work order sent (not painting jobs)	Trades allocated and work orders sent.
Notes	Yellow strip entries for the day.

Available tradespersons strip

Below the cards, each day has a list of tradespersons who have said they are available that day. A tradesperson appears here when they set a next available date in the tradesperson app, when a project manager adds them from the iPad, or when office staff add them with the plus icon. Each entry shows a flag:

• Outline flag: confirmed available.
• Filled flag: tentative. The flag colour tells you who set it: the current user’s own colour when office staff set it, the default blue when the tradesperson or PM did.

Tradespersons with expired mandatory capabilities are highlighted red, and those expiring soon orange. A tradesperson who is already allocated to a job on that day is hidden from that day’s strip so you do not double book them.

The Jobs dropdown lists

List	Contents
Ring and Book	Sub jobs where the tradesperson books directly with the customer. Sorted In Progress, then Waiting on Trades, then Accepted, then On Hold. You can bulk allocate from here.
Ready to schedule	Sub jobs on Ready to Schedule jobs that have no approximate start date yet (excluding Colour Consultant and the “Other” trade). Sorted by profession with painters first. Shows customer name, preferred start date, price and any planning board notes.
Is Waiting	Sub jobs marked Is Waiting. Reference only.

What you can do

Plan a job onto a day

1. Open the Jobs > Ready to schedule list to see what is waiting, or find the card if the job already has a job level approximate start date.
2. Drag a job card from one day column to another. The job’s approximate start date is updated to the new day and the board refreshes silently.
3. Click the card to open the job modal and set the Start date on each sub job row. Until you press Confirm, the date is only a suggestion (the row stays white). Confirmed rows are highlighted blue.

Allocate a tradesperson by dragging

1. Turn on the column switch (or hover the card) so the sub job rows are visible.
2. Drag a tradesperson from the availability strip onto the matching sub job row. Only an empty row accepts a drop.
3. A success toast confirms “Tradesperson allocated”. The tradesperson disappears from that day’s availability strip because their availability entry is marked processed.
4. Dragging a tradesperson back off a sub job un-allocates them and restores their availability entry, so they reappear in the strip.

If the allocation is refused the card reverts and the toast tells you why: expired mandatory capabilities (painters are exempt), unsigned agreements, or a server side error.

Work in the job modal

Click a card to open the modal for that job. It shows the customer, price, address, job type and any planning board notes, plus:

• Project Manager selector and Auto-assign Project Manager checkbox. Picking a PM manually locks the job to that PM. Leaving auto-assign on lets the PM zones decide when you confirm a sub job.
• Flexible start date flag (orange). Toggles the job’s flexible flag, which changes the card colour and tells the team the start can move.
• A Sub Jobs table with one row per sub job: ID (links to the work order), Profession, Price, Start date, Tradesperson, Send JC, Notify Client, Waiting S A and Confirm.

In the Tradesperson column you may see two hints under the dropdown:

• A red suggested tradesperson: the painter who has worked for this customer before. Click to select.
• PM recommended names: tradespersons the project manager recommended on the prestart report from the iPad. Click a name to select it.

Choosing a tradesperson from a different profession asks you to confirm the rate change; the sub job rate and price are recalculated to the new profession’s rate. If a painter has a red capability status a Send trade capabilities reminder button appears.

Confirm on a row saves that sub job now, copies the approximate date into the real start date, records when the tradesperson date was entered, and sends the work order (if Send JC is ticked) and the client card (if Notify Client is ticked). If the sub job is over $3,000 and the job has a PM, a first day project manager visit is booked at the start time or the PM’s next free slot, and a message tells you when. Save at the bottom saves every Scheduled row at once but does not send anything.

Waiting S A marks the sub job as waiting on a service agreement.

Send the day’s work orders and client cards

1. Click the envelope in a day column header.
2. The Send SubJob modal lists every sub job on that day that has a tradesperson and has not yet had its work order or client card sent. A warning appears if any job is still Colour Consultancy Pending.
3. Tick Send JC and/or Notify Client per row, or use the header checkboxes to select all.
4. Click Send Email. Work orders go to tradespersons by email and SMS; client cards go to customers by email and SMS. The Work Order Sent and Client Card Sent timestamps on the job’s Tradespersons tab are stamped.

Ring and Book bulk allocation

1. Open Jobs > Ring and Book.
2. Tick the sub jobs to allocate. Jobs in Waiting on Trades are locked.
3. Optionally change the parent job status in the row.
4. Set Approximate Start Date, Profession and Tradesperson and click Save. The selected sub jobs are given that start date and tradesperson, the work order is sent immediately, and the parent job takes the status you chose.

Manage availability and notes

• Click the plus in a day’s availability strip to add a tradesperson for that day. If they are already allocated to a job that day you are warned rather than adding an invisible entry.
• Click the flag on an entry to toggle tentative. Click the X to remove the availability outright (a removed entry is never restored automatically).
• Click the plus in the notes strip to add a short note to a day (for example “Public holiday”, “Truck booked”). Notes can be dragged between days and deleted with the X.

How it works behind the scenes

• Dates on the board are the approximate start date of each sub job (or the job). The real start date is only set when you Confirm a row, send from the Ring and Book list, or set it on the job’s Tradespersons tab. Until then the job page shows the date under Aprox. Start Date so nobody thinks it is lost.
• As soon as every sub job on a job has a start date the job moves to In Progress (see Jobs).
• Allocating a tradesperson consumes their availability entry for that date in the same transaction as the allocation, so a failed allocation cannot leave them missing from both the job and the strip. Un-allocating restores the entry.
• Availability entries that are consumed on the board still show in the tradesperson’s own app under next availability; only the board hides them.
• Confirming a sub job with auto-assign on geocodes the address if needed and sets the PM from the PM Zones.
• Changing the tradesperson after a work order was sent clears the sent stamp so a new work order must be sent, and the previous tradesperson is emailed that the job was rescheduled.
• The nightly Clear expired tradesperson availability dates task clears a tradesperson’s headline “available from” date once it has passed.

Tips and gotchas

• The board refreshes itself quietly after every drag or save. If something looks stale, press Refresh rather than reloading the browser.
• Cards only show painter prices; use the info popover for the full breakdown of every sub job.
• The status filters are additive. Ticking nothing shows everything active; ticking Accepted alone hides deposit paid jobs, so untick when you are done.
• Total Value counts every job on the board for the range, including jobs that are only partly allocated.
• A drop that does nothing is almost always a blocked tradesperson (red capability or unsigned agreement). Check the toast, then fix the record under Tradespersons.
• Colour consultant sub jobs never appear on the board. Their work order is sent automatically when the deposit is paid.