How to organize/keep track of multiple Handymen

How to organize/keep track of multiple Handymen

Member since 2020 · 223 posts · 233 votes

With 3 STR's I'm trying to start organizing and automating processes for myself. It's become a chore to organize my different handymen who all have different schedules, and I have to not only remind them of every single repair that is pending for each house, I have to make sure they know which dates the houses are available/free of guests to head over. In addition to that, they often don't report precisely what they did to fix a problem, or which problems they forgot to work on.

This leads me to needing a centralized system to track/manage their tasks.

I suppose before I get to my ideas - does anyone have this problem, and have a ready-to-go app or service they use to organize handymen, that they've found useful, especially given that handymen are often not technologically adept, and have very little interest in downloading a new app or learning a new system?

I'm thinking of coding my own web app. Basically, all a handyman has to do is go to a bookmarked website, where it lists all my houses. Under each house they would see pending repair tasks, and see the next available dates those houses are free of guests. They would then have a button to click to say 'working on', and they could enter their name. Once it's done, they would click 'finish', and it would require them to upload a photo to confirm. Once finished, a task disappears from the list.

They, as well as my cleaners, would be able to also add new repair tasks as they see them. On the backend, I would be able to see the finished tasks, a photo of the task, and who completed it. I would also be able to upload my iCal links to sync my booking availability automatically. I would be notified every time a handyman clicks 'working on' and also when they click 'finish' by email.

I could probably get this done for $400 or so with my developer, so it's quite cheap and easy to do. Just wanted to double check with everyone if they already have a solution for this, or any suggestions for how to improve it.

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Investor · The worst town to live in, KS · Member since 2016 · 4k+ posts · 4k+ votes
5y

I know this guy with 23 STRs in a refinery town.  He does most of the work himself.  He will not do anything that involves a sewer snake.  He doesn't want other peoples ship on his hands.

He posts on here occasionally, he's got dark hair and is wearing a white muscle shirt in his avatar.

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  • Property Manager · Pigeon Forge · Member since 2016 · 199 posts · 208 votes
    5y

    We use Asana internally for this.  The handymen are assigned to a Project (house) that I want them to have access to.  This project will have everything in there from changing air filter schedule to a list of repairs that are needed.  If the handyman wants to do a particular job, they can assign any OPEN task to themselves.  If they have questions, they can ask on the job and tag the appropriate person.  They can also upload photos on the particular job to show completion. 

    There is a bit of workflow supported, but for simplicities sake we don't use it.  It also supports importing your icals.  If you wanted to get fancy, I bet you can have triggers fired off as new tasks are added to a project to let the handyman know an open job is available.  

    It's not a perfect app, but it's good enough.

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