The 7am whiteboard is killing your day
Most small HVAC and plumbing shops still dispatch the way they did fifteen years ago: a paper printout, a marker, and a 30-minute scrum trying to figure out who goes where. By the time the trucks roll, the second-call cancellation has already come in, the first-call has rescheduled, and the schedule you spent half an hour building is already wrong. The dispatcher spends the next two hours playing phone tag instead of selling work.
Real dispatch software fixes this in three ways: visual rearrangement of the day, conflict warnings when two jobs land on the same tech, and route optimization that respects geography. Most "scheduling" tools handle the first two but not the third. ServiceTitan does all three but costs $250+ per technician per month with a long contract.
How POG's dispatch board works
The Schedule tab gives you three views. Week view shows all jobs across the next 7 days in a time-slot grid. Day view zooms into one day. By Tech view turns the columns into your technicians — the format real dispatchers actually use to balance load.
Every appointment card is draggable. Grab it, drop it on a different cell, and the new date/start_time/end_time persist immediately to the database. If you drop a job on a slot that's already booked for the same tech, you get a confirm dialog before the move goes through. If the change fails on the server, the optimistic update reverts and you see an error.
For routing, click "Optimize Today" and POG runs a nearest-neighbor pass across all geocoded appointments for the chosen tech, starting from the earliest scheduled job. You see a preview of the proposed reorder before any change is made. Approve and the appointments persist in the new order with start_times reflowed by each job's duration.
What's in the box
- Drag-and-drop calendar — vanilla HTML5, works on iPad and laptop. Touch + mouse pointer events both supported.
- By-tech swim lanes — columns are technicians, rows are time slots. The view real dispatchers use.
- Conflict detection — same tech, same date+time triggers a confirm dialog. No silent overbookings.
- Optimize Today — nearest-neighbor route order with preview-then-apply. Doesn't auto-overwrite your manual sequencing.
- Status tracking — scheduled, confirmed, in-progress, completed, cancelled, no-show. Status transitions enforced server-side.
- Live tech GPS — W-2 staff auto-share location from My Jobs. Contractors share via tokenized link. Both populate the dispatcher map.
- Auto reminders — 24-hour and 1-hour SMS / email reminders to reduce no-shows.
- Google Calendar sync — appointment changes propagate to your tenant Google Calendar (when connected).
How it compares
ServiceTitan: drag-drop dispatch + route optimize + per-tech view, but $250+/mo per technician, 12-month contract, 4-6 week onboarding. Jobber: drag-drop scheduling but no native route optimize and no per-tech swim lanes — you'd add Routific as a $40/mo bolt-on. Housecall Pro: drag-drop on Pro plan but no route optimize at any tier.
POG ERP: all four (drag-drop + by-tech + conflict detection + route optimize) on the $49/month starter plan. No per-user fees. No contract.
"If POG dispatch doesn't save your dispatcher at least 30 minutes a day in your first 30 days, we refund your setup fee."