Sanjeev's Daily Assignments

The office types in the day's customer addresses, taps a technician's name on each one, and every technician opens the site to see only their own stops.

Who this is for

Sanjeev Deshmukh runs an AC repair business in Nagpur with five technicians on two-wheelers and one small office above a hardware shop. In May the calls start before seven. He has just hired Pooja to sit in the office, and on her second morning he is stuck on a rooftop in Wardha Road with a leaking outdoor unit. She has twenty-two addresses on a notepad and nobody to ask what to do with them.

How the job is done today

Customers call or send a WhatsApp message to Sanjeev's number. He copies the addresses into a notebook at night, then each morning forwards them one by one into a WhatsApp group with all five technicians and types names next to each. Someone always reads the wrong line. Two technicians turn up at the same flat in Dharampeth, another misses a job in Sadar because the message got buried under forty others. When a technician is lost he phones Sanjeev, who is usually holding a gas cylinder at the time.

The screens, in order

1. Add the day's jobs — Lets whoever is in the office type in each customer's name, phone, address and what is wrong with the AC, with an example already filled in so a new person knows what goes where.
2. Assign jobs — Shows the day's jobs as a plain list with every technician's name as a button under each one, so assigning is just tapping the right name.
3. Technician's route — Shows a technician, once they log in on their phone, only their own stops for the day in order, with a tap to call the customer or open the address in Maps.
4. Mark done — Lets the technician mark a job finished or not finished with a short note, so the office can see what is left without phoning anyone.
5. Team and settings — Lets the owner add or remove technicians and give the office person a login, so a new business can set itself up on its own.

What it keeps track of

• Business — business name, owner's name and phone, town, who works there
• Technicians — name, phone number, which business they belong to, still working here or not
• Jobs — customer name, phone, full address, what is wrong with the AC, which day, morning or afternoon, which technician, done or not done, technician's note

The one decision that matters

The assigning screen can be a calendar grid with technicians across the top and time slots down the side, or a simple list of the day's jobs with technician names as buttons under each one. It should be the list. The person using it is new and has nobody to explain it, and anyone who has used WhatsApp understands a list with names to tap. A grid asks them to understand rows, columns and time slots before they can do anything, and AC repair does not run to exact times anyway. Morning or afternoon is as precise as Sanjeev ever promises. The list also works on a phone, which a grid does not.

What to leave out of the first version

Leave out automatic route ordering, text messages to customers, invoices and payment collection, and spare parts tracking. The problem being solved is that the right technician does not reach the right door. Everything else adds screens a new employee has to learn on day one, and each business that buys this will already handle billing its own way. Once the assigning part is trusted, customer updates are the obvious next step.

How you would know it worked

On a busy morning when Sanjeev is out on a job, a new office helper puts in every address, assigns them all, and not one technician phones the office to ask where they are going.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I run an AC repair business in Nagpur with five technicians and I want a website I can also sell to other repair businesses. Each business signs up, adds its technicians and gives its office person a login. The office person types in the day's jobs, with the customer's name, phone, address, what is wrong with the AC and whether it is morning or afternoon. Then they see the day's jobs as a list with every technician's name as a button under each job, and they tap a name to assign it. When a technician logs in on their phone they see only their own jobs for the day, with a button to call the customer and a button to open the address in Maps, and they can mark each job done or not done with a short note. It will be handed to a new employee with nobody to explain it, so every screen needs to make sense on its own, with an example filled in and plain words, and it must work well on a phone.