If your crews work outside, weather will move your schedule several times a year whether you plan for it or not. Window cleaners, pressure washers, roofers, landscapers and painters all know the feeling: it’s 6:30, the radar looks bad, and a full day of visits needs to go somewhere. Good rain day rescheduling is less about the software and more about having a routine everyone knows before the clouds show up.
Make the call early, and make it once
The most expensive rain day is the one you decide halfway through. Crews load the trucks, drive to the first stop, wait an hour, then come back. Pick a time by which the office decides, such as the night before or first thing in the morning, and stick to it.
- Agree on what “too wet” means for each kind of work. Exterior glass in light drizzle may be a no; interior work and gutter checks may still go ahead.
- Decide who calls it. One person, usually the owner or the office manager, so crews aren’t getting three different answers.
- Know where the work goes. The next open day, or a day you keep light on purpose during the wet season.
Not everything has to move
A rained-out day is rarely all or nothing. Some crews may have indoor work, and some visits may be under cover. Before you move the whole day, look at it crew by crew. Moving only the exterior crews keeps the indoor work on track and leaves less to squeeze into tomorrow.
It also helps to know which visits have a due date this week and which have some slack. A quarterly visit that’s due any time this month can slide further than one promised for this week.
Keep the shape of the day
When you move a day, you have two choices: keep each visit at the same time on the new date, or stack the moved visits after whatever is already booked there. Keeping times is simpler for customers who planned around a morning visit. Stacking works better when the new day already has work on it and you don’t want overlaps.
Either way, the crew should still have its truck and its equipment on the new day. The lift booked for Tuesday needs to be booked for Wednesday too, or two crews will reach for it at the same time.
Tell the affected customers once
Customers don’t mind a weather delay nearly as much as they mind finding out when nobody shows up. A short email that names the new date is usually enough. Send one message per visit, not one per change, and don’t email customers whose visits didn’t move.
If you promise an arrival window, say so in the message, or let the next booking confirmation do it. Our post on arrival windows covers how to promise a time without boxing your crews in.
How Sentra Scheduler handles a rain day
In Sentra Scheduler a rain day is a single move, not an afternoon of dragging cards. Choose “Move visits…” on the schedule or “Move this day…” in dispatch, pick the new date and choose what moves:
- Everything on the day for the teams you plan,
- only some crews or technicians, such as the exterior crews, or
- only chosen visits.
You can keep each visit’s time of day, or stack them from the crew’s start time after anything already booked on the new date. A preview lists every visit that would move, where it would land and who would be emailed, before anything changes.
If a crew has no crew day set up on the new date, Sentra Scheduler copies it with the same people, lead, times, truck and equipment, and notes the old day as “Rained out” once nothing is left on it. The old day’s routes move with the visits.
Emailing the affected customers
Customer emails are optional and off until you tick the box. When you do, each moved visit gets one email with its new date, sent to the site contact or, when the site has none, the customer. The preview flags any visit with no email address on file, so the office knows who still needs a phone call.
Conflicts are warnings, not blocks. If the move puts a crew past its hours or books the same lift twice, the schedule says so and you decide what to fix.
A wet Thursday, start to finish
A window cleaning company has three exterior crews and one interior crew out on Thursday. At 6:15 the owner sees steady rain all morning. In the office, they choose “Move visits…”, pick Friday, select the three exterior crews and keep the times. The preview shows 22 visits moving and two customers with no email. They tick “Email the affected customers”, apply the move and call the two customers. The interior crew’s day doesn’t change.
The crews open Today in the crew app and see Friday’s work. On Friday the routes are already there, in the same order as Thursday’s.
After the storm
Rain day rescheduling has a knock-on effect: Friday is now fuller, and next week may be too. Check the week view for crews running past their hours, and use the tray to see what’s still due this week. If wet seasons regularly push you behind, the crew capacity planning guide shows how to see it coming months ahead.