How to effectively use crews in job management

Many lawn and garden businesses assign repeating visits to the same “team” or “crew” each time so they can provide consistent service and build a sense of ownership among staff. SortScape helps support this practice with its “Crews” feature.

The “Crews” feature allows you to automatically assign visits to a crew so that you spend less time arranging your schedule each day. If there are any visits due for a crew on a given day, SortScape will automatically create a job run for that crew, add those visits to the job run, and add the crew’s default employees (unless they are marked unavailable on the roster).

Crews do not have their own weekly timetable. Repeating visits do. A job run appears for a crew only on days when that crew has visits due.

How job runs get created (important)

Job runs do not repeat on their own. You do not need to copy a run each week for regular lawn or garden work.

The usual setup is:

1. Create a repeating visit for each customer (weekly, fortnightly, monthly, or a seasonal schedule).
2. Assign those visits to the same crew (for a sole trader, that is often Crew 1).
3. On days when several of those visits are due for that crew, SortScape creates the job run automatically and puts those visits in it.

Visit tags help you label or filter visits. They do not create runs.

Copy job run is only for irregular one-off batches (for example snow runs). See How to copy a job run.

Below is an example of job runs for 3 different Crews.

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Naming your crews

Typically, a crew represents a group of one or more employees. In the example above, the crews are named by number (e.g. Crew #1, Crew #2, etc) but every business has different naming conventions so feel free to use whatever names make sense to you and your staff.

Here are some some examples of different naming strategies that have proven effective for our customers:

1. Existing Names: If the crew already has a name, then use that. For example, “Team Blue”, “Team Red”.
2. Type of Work: You can also name them by the type of work they do. For instance, “Lawns 1”, “Lawns 2”, “Gardening”.
3. Vehicle Identifier: You can also use the name or number plate of a vehicle. It is generally not recommended to name crews by location or service type. To group visits by location or service type, you can use visit tags.

We also don’t recommend naming crews after employees. We have found that this can create issues in the long term if other employees take over that crew. A better way is to assign employees to that crew instead and stick with a name like “Crew 1”.

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Adding a new crew

You can create new crews when creating a new job run. This allows you to easily assign a crew to a job run at the same time you’re setting up the job run.

You can also create a crew from Visits → Crews by clicking Add a crew.

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Assigning a crew to visits

When adding or editing a visit, you can specify the crew for that visit so that it’s automatically assigned to that crew on the schedule. If it’s a repeating visit, all future visits will get assigned to that crew as well.

You can also update the crew for a visit through drag-and-drop. If you drag a repeating visit to a different crew on the schedule, SortScape will display a prompt at the bottom of the screen asking if you want to “apply to all future visits.”

If you click this button, all future visits for that series will then get assigned to the new crew as well.

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Renaming a crew

Job run titles come from the crew name. There is no separate “job run title” field.

To rename a crew:

1. Open Settings (gear icon), then go to Visits → Crews.
2. Click the crew you want to rename (or open its actions menu and choose Edit).
3. Change the Name and click Save.

The new name shows on that crew’s job runs on the schedule.

The job run … menu has Change crew, which swaps which crew is on the run. It does not rename the crew.

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Managing existing crews

On the Visits > Crews screen, you can

• rename a crew
• change the colour for a crew
• assign employees to a crew You can also see which crews are still in use, delete them if they are obsolete, or merge them if there are duplicates. Regularly reviewing and updating your crew list will ensure that your crew assignments remain relevant and effective.

Crew colours on the schedule

Each crew has a colour you can set when you create or edit it. That colour helps you tell crews apart at a glance.

Crew colours show on the schedule, calendar views, and schedule map view.

Set each crew’s colour on the Visits → Crews screen. On the day, week, and month schedule views, turn on Crew colors in the Schedule display settings so job run titles use each crew’s colour instead of the default green.

Important: Only delete a crew if it is truly obsolete. Deleting a crew is not a way to remove that crew from one day, one recurring day, or one job run.

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What happens when you delete a crew?

Deleting a crew does not delete the job runs or visits themselves, but it does remove the crew assignment from every past and future job run and visit that used that crew.

When you delete a crew:

• All past and future job runs that used the crew become No Crew job runs.
• All visits that were assigned to the crew become unassigned from that crew, including future repeating visits.
• Employees assigned to the crew are removed from that crew.
• Any empty job runs for that crew may be removed. There is no automatic undo for deleting a crew. If you still use the crew on other days, do not delete it. If you are trying to swap a crew on a recurring job run, follow Changing the crew on an existing job run below instead.

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Adding employees to a job run

Use this when you want someone on one job run only, not on every future job run for that crew. For example, you might add someone for a single day to cover for someone who is away.

You can add employees directly to a specific job run on the schedule:

1. Open Schedule and go to the day with the job run.
2. On the job run, click Assign employees (the people icon), or open the … menu and choose Assign employees.
3. In the dialog, click the employee under Available employees.

This schedules them on that job run for that day only. It does not add them to the crew, and they will not automatically appear on future job runs. If you want someone on every future job run for a crew, add them to the crew instead (see Adding employees to crews below).

On the day view, you can also drag an employee from the Available employees sidebar onto the job run.

The person must already exist as a user in SortScape. If you are an administrator adding yourself, make sure your account is set up as a user you can schedule. See Adding employees if you need to create a new user from the schedule.

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Adding employees to crews

You can add employees to a crew so they are automatically scheduled when that crew has a job run.

Crew membership does not put someone on the schedule every weekday. SortScape creates a job run for a crew only when that crew has visits due on that day. When that happens, default crew members are added to the job run.

If a crew has no visits due on a day, no job run is created for that crew, and crew members are not scheduled that day.

To add employees to a crew, open Settings (gear icon), go to Visits → Crews, and edit the crew.

When you add employees to a crew, they will be instantly scheduled on that crew’s future job runs (days where that crew already has visits due).

If the user had set themselves as unavailable in the roster on a given day (for example, if they are on annual leave, sick, etc), then they wouldn’t get automatically scheduled for those days.

If you remove a user from a crew, then they will be instantly removed from that crew’s future job runs.

A user can only be added to one crew.

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Changing the crew on an existing job run

Change crew lets you swap one crew for another on a job run, including from a chosen date onward. This option is still rolling out, so it may not appear on every account yet. If you do not see Change crew in the job run … menu, use the steps under If Change crew is not available below.

1. Open Schedule and go to the day where the change should start.
2. On the job run, open the … menu and click Change crew.
3. Choose the New crew.
4. Under Apply this change to, choose This and following visits if future repeating visits should use the new crew, or Just this job run for that day only.
5. Choose whether to use the new crew’s default employees or keep the current employees, then click Change crew.

You can only change to a crew that does not already have visits on that day. If the target crew already has a job run with visits, move those visits first, or pick a different day to start the change.

After the visits are on the new crew, you can delete the old crew from Visits → Crews only if it is no longer used on any other days. Do not delete a crew as a way to swap crews.

If Change crew is not available

Create a job run for the crew you want, drag the visits into it, and click Apply to all future visits in this series when prompted. If you only want to change one day, move the visits without applying the change to future visits.

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Migrating to crews

Older subscriptions of SortScape might not have the crew feature enabled yet. To have it enabled for you, please contact SortScape support.

Once enabled, follow these steps to migrate your existing job runs over to crews:

1. Create crews as it suits your business, following the naming advice above
2. Once the crews are created, you can create job runs for each crew on the day.
3. Move the visits from the “No Crew” job runs over to the job runs with a crew and remember to click the “Apply to all future visits in this series” button at the bottom of the screen. Once you’ve done this for all repeating visits, SortScape will automatically create the right job runs in the future, and there shouldn’t be any more “No Crew” job runs.