Live Job: start the job on site and build it as you go

Why it exists

Live Job came straight from the field. The owner of the first SWITCHBOARD shop, working as the lead tech, put it plainly: creating a job was too much, editing a job was too much, and the job was too locked in once it was made. Real service work does not follow the booking. A customer flags you down for a second problem, the leak is bigger than it looked, or the part on the truck is the wrong size. Live Job is built for the job you are already standing in.

How a live job runs

1. Start. From + New job, pick Project (doing it now) instead of Estimate. The job and its visit are made for this minute on your own day, and Arrived is tapped for you, so your clock starts and your crew's follows the way it would on a booked visit. The phone can fill in the address from where you are standing.
2. Start OK. The customer OKs the starting price on your phone, and deposits and the agreement work the same way they do on any estimate. Under a small-job amount the shop sets, there is no start OK at all: one signature at the end covers it.
3. As you go. Add lines from your own Price Book, change quantities, take things off. Taking a line off or lowering a quantity needs nobody.
4. Finish. The customer signs once for the whole job. Everything added on site is listed, the job is completed, the balance invoice is raised and the visit is closed with the crew clocked out.

The rules for adding work

Every shop sets its own limits, and SWITCHBOARD holds to them:

• Small additions from the Price Book that stay under both the shop's dollar limit and its percent-of-the-OK'd-total limit ride to the final bill as "Added on site".
• Bigger additions stop and ask: the customer OKs the change on the tech's phone as a signed change order before the work goes on.
• Off-book prices, such as a custom line, a discount past the limit or a margin under the shop's floor, still go through the same approval as any estimate, and the first person to tap decides.

Helpers can add photos and notes but not lines or prices. If you talk to Switch, the AI, on a live job ("add a second shutoff valve"), what he heard comes back as a card that changes nothing until you tap it.

+ Time: when the job runs long

Tap + Time and pick 15, 30, 60 or 120 minutes. Your next visits move to match, and SWITCHBOARD drafts a text to the next customer with the new time. The text goes only when you tap it, never on its own. If the push makes your next visit 30 minutes or more late, it offers to give that visit to a tech who is free, in one tap, and the office is told. + Time works on any visit, live job or not. More on this in what to do when a job runs long.

The office sees it live

Live jobs show up on the office's desk while they are open. The office can edit a live job's lines from the computer under the same rules, and the tech's phone shows "Office changed this" until the tech has seen it. Because the visit was made through the same path as a booked one, it is on the dispatch board, the timesheet and the job's money like any other job.

From a walk to a live job

If you walked the job first with Job Walk and the customer wants the work done now, the walk's lines can be moved onto the live job. You can also switch a job's name partway through and keep the lines you added by hand. For a booked visit that grows on site, "Edit as you go" turns it into a live job.

Where it fits

Live Job suits service calls that grow on site, small remodel tasks done the same day, and the owner who runs a truck. For bigger work you quote first and schedule later, Job Walk and staged invoicing are the better fit. Getting paid at the finish uses the one Collect screen. To see it on a phone, open the sandbox or book a 30-minute walkthrough.