Im having trouble keeping record of where im going and when. I want to work on a 5 week basis.
Ive broken the different areas into different rounds but i dont think this system will work.
How do you keep records, and job lists for the next day?
Do you set out certain days or keep it to certain jobs in a week. Some of my customers are not in and dont care when i turn up but some are tying me down to certain days.
I use MSWorkswhich usually comes free with most new computers.
I use the database for this. It's a bit of a pain setting it up but well worthwhile IMO.
The fields in the database that are the key to this fior me I have called:-
lastvisit, interval, nextvisit, countdown respectively.
lastvisit and nextvisit are formatted to show the dates. interval is the gap between visits (in days). countdown contains the formula =NOW()-nextvisit . countdown is formatted to return a whole number (i.e. no decimal places). It takes todays date and subtracts the due date of the next visit. This usually returns a minus number. The two digits are the number of days until the next visit. If the answer returned is 0, the job is due today. If it returns a positive number, the job is overdue by that number of days.
You can get the database to make a list of jobs that are coming up.
For instance, if you wanted to know which jobs were due in the next two days you could set up the filters to show all jobs where countdown>-2 . This would show a list of all jobs that are due two days from now up to any overdue jobs.
I know it sounds complicated but the tools (if you have MSWorks) are right there on your PC if you wish to take the trouble to learn a bit about them.
If you wanted to show all jobs due tomorrow, the filter could be set up to show countdown=-1 .
Personally, as I use a 6 weekly cycle, I've no problem pulling jobs forward a couple of days if I'm in front. Maybe even three days so long as I don't do it too much.