Stop selling the same slot twice
Two jobs, one van, same nine o'clock. Someone wrote one in the wall planner and someone else took the other over the phone, and neither knew about the other until the morning.
Where it hurts
It usually comes down to more than one place holding the truth. A paper diary on the counter, a wall planner in the back, a note in someone's phone. None of them talk to each other, so the same slot gets sold twice.
The customer who gets bumped remembers it. You end up apologising, shuffling, maybe sending someone out unpaid to smooth it over. It's the kind of mistake that costs more in goodwill than in time.
And it gets worse as you grow. Two people taking bookings from two different lists is a double booking waiting to happen every single week.
What I'd build
I'd move everyone onto one shared calendar, whether that's Google Calendar or Microsoft 365, so there's a single diary the whole team sees the same way. One booking blocks the slot for everyone the instant it's made, on the counter or out on the road. If you take bookings online too, I'll connect that so the website can only ever offer genuinely free time. Where you've got several engineers or rooms, each gets their own colour and their own availability, so you can see the whole week at a glance and nothing lands on top of anything else.
What changes
- One diary everyone shares, the same on every device
- A booked slot is blocked for everyone straight away
- See every person or resource on one screen
- Online and phone bookings can't clash any more
Related fixes
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