Forty houses, one summer and a spreadsheet
In spring, a student landlord sends a spreadsheet: every house in the portfolio, front and back doors, and bedroom locks for each room, to be changed between the outgoing tenants leaving and the new ones arriving. Some houses empty at the end of June, some in mid-July. Keys go to the landlord's office labelled by house and room, with a set number per tenant.
Your office tries to schedule it alongside normal work. Vacate dates change as tenants leave early or late. A house is missed because it was on the second tab. Room keys come back in bags labelled by hand, and on move-in day one house has a room key that does not match the room.
Seasonal batches break a day-by-day job system
Most locksmith job systems are built around individual jobs booked a few days ahead. A summer batch is a project: many jobs with dependencies on tenancy dates, parts ordered in bulk, keys counted per room and a hard deadline.
- The landlord's list arrives as a spreadsheet and is retyped into jobs.
- Vacate and move-in dates change and the schedule is not updated.
- Parts for the whole batch are ordered without a per-house breakdown.
- Key counts per room and tenant are tracked by hand.
- The landlord has no view of progress except asking you.
Late houses and angry move-in days
The deadline is fixed by the tenancies. A missed house or a wrong key is discovered by a tenant on move-in day, which reflects badly on the landlord and, through them, on you. The office spends the summer answering progress queries. And normal emergency work is squeezed, because nobody can see how much capacity the batch really needs.
A batch planner built around tenancy dates
We build a batch planning tool that imports the landlord's list and turns it into scheduled jobs.
- The landlord's spreadsheet is imported, with each house, door and room lock, plus vacate and move-in dates.
- Each house becomes a job with a window between those dates, and the planner suggests a schedule that groups houses by area and fits the windows, leaving room for your normal work.
- Parts are calculated per house from the lock list, so bulk orders are right and each house's parts can be picked and bagged in advance.
- Key counts are set per door and room. The engineer records keys cut and labels them from the job app, with printed labels by house and room.
- If the landlord changes a vacate date, they update it in a shared view, and the planner moves the job and flags any clash.
- The landlord sees progress per house: scheduled, done, keys delivered.
| Batch task | Spreadsheet and email | Batch planner |
|---|---|---|
| House list | Retyped into jobs | Imported once |
| Scheduling | By hand, around other work | Suggested by area and date window |
| Parts | Bulk order, then sorted | Per-house picking lists |
| Keys | Bags labelled by hand | Counts and printed labels per room |
| Progress | Answered by email | Visible to the landlord |
A summer that runs to plan
The batch is visible from the start, so you can see whether it fits alongside your usual work and plan staff holidays around it. Engineers arrive with bagged parts and the key count for each room. Landlords check progress themselves. Move-in day passes without calls about keys that do not fit.
The following year, the same landlord's list can be reloaded with changes, and the planner remembers what was fitted where.
For the landlord, the change is just as clear. They stop sending chasing emails in July, because the progress view answers the question before they ask it. When a vacate date moves, they change it themselves and see straight away whether the new date still fits. And when the new tenants collect their keys, each bag matches the room it is labelled for.
Does your summer look like this?
- Student landlords send you lock change lists as spreadsheets.
- Vacate dates change and your schedule does not keep up.
- Room keys are labelled by hand.
- Landlords ask for progress updates by email all summer.
- Emergency work suffers during the summer batch.