Solar scheduling is less like running a service board and more like running a small production line where every station is a different truck in a different town.
A residential install usually moves through the same sequence:
- Site survey. One person, sometimes two, measuring the roof, checking the main panel, photographing the attic and the meter.
- Design and permitting. Office work, but it sets the calendar for everything after it.
- Install. A crew of several people, often split between roof work and electrical, for one or more days.
- Inspection. A local inspector on their schedule, sometimes with your installer on site.
- Utility interconnection and any follow-up visits.
The office and the AHJ own steps 2 and 5. Steps 1, 3 and 4 are field scheduling, and each has a different shape.
Each stage has a different scheduling shape
| Stage | Who goes | Typical length | What makes it hard |
|---|---|---|---|
| Site survey | One surveyor | A visit, not a day | Many short visits spread across a wide territory |
| Install | Multi-person crew | One day or more | Crew size, roof and electrical skills, long drives to rural sites |
| Inspection | Installer or lead | A window | Inspector sets the window; your person waits on it |
| Follow-up | One technician | Short | Usually a return trip to a site you already drove to |
The surveyor's day looks like a service technician's: several stops, drive between each, and the number of stops is set mostly by the drive. The install crew's day looks like a construction day: one site, long hours, with the morning drive and the load-out as the main scheduling risk. Inspections look like a wait, and they tie up a person at an address for a window you do not control.
Solar scheduling software has to handle all three without treating them as the same kind of appointment.
Site surveys: the stage where drive time decides capacity
Solar territories tend to be wide. A company might sell across several counties because homeowners in every one of them have roofs and electric bills. That means site surveys are spread thin, and the survey itself may be short compared with the drive to it.
When a surveyor's day is mostly driving, two things help:
- Cluster by area and day. If you know the surveyor will be in one county on Thursday, offer Thursday slots to new customers in that county first.
- Check feasibility at booking. The homeowner who signs on a Tuesday afternoon wants a survey this week. Offer only the times a surveyor can reach, given the surveys already booked that day.
This is travel-feasible scheduling applied to the survey calendar. Survey slots are also where a sales team and an ops team usually collide. Sales wants the soonest date. Ops knows the soonest date may put the surveyor on the road for two hours. An honest booking offers the soonest time that fits the drive.
Install crews: crew size and the multi-day problem
An install crew is not a technician. It is several people who have to arrive together with the panels, racking and inverter. The scheduling unit is the crew-day, not the person-hour.
Three things follow from that:
- The crew's first drive matters more than its last. A crew that loads at the warehouse at 7:00 and drives 80 minutes to the site starts work around 8:30. Promising the homeowner a 7:30 start is wrong before the day begins.
- Multi-day installs pin a crew to a location. Day two starts where day one ended. If the crew goes home each night, both days pay the long drive. On distant sites, decide in advance whether that is worth it.
- Crews that finish early need something nearby. A crew that wraps a small system at 1:00 p.m. on day one has an afternoon. A short follow-up or a punch-list visit in the same area turns that into useful work instead of a drive back.
A worked example: crew-days on a distant install
This is an illustrative example with invented numbers. Plug in your own crew size, drive and system times.
A four-person crew has an install estimated at 12 working hours. The site is 90 minutes from the warehouse each way. The crew's shift is 10 hours including drive.
The install work is the same in both cases. What changes is how much of the crew's paid time is spent in the truck. That is the number to know before you promise the homeowner dates, and before you price a far-out job. More on the cost side in windshield time.
Inspections: hold the person, not the day
Inspection windows can be wide and are set by the inspector, a problem electrical contractors know well from permitted panel work. If your installer needs to attend, treat the window as a fixed block at that address. Do not book tight survey or follow-up visits around it unless the drive fits after the latest possible end of the window.
The useful move is the same as with install crews: keep short work nearby. If an inspection is in a town you rarely visit, look at what else is open there that week, such as a survey or a service visit, and book it alongside.
How CrewLink handles solar scheduling
CrewLink builds live travel time into availability. When you book a survey, an install or a follow-up, the only slots offered are ones a crew can physically reach, with travel computed from where the truck will actually be: the previous site, not the warehouse.
On the dispatch board, the drive sits next to each job, so a 90-minute drive to a rural install shows up as 90 minutes, not as part of a vague all-day block. It is built for companies running 5 to 50 trucks, and a walkthrough uses your own territory and service times.
CrewLink does not handle design, permitting, utility interconnection, financing or a sales pipeline. Those belong in other tools. CrewLink is the field scheduling layer, checking that every visit you promise is reachable.
If you use subcontracted install crews, see subcontractor scheduling. A contractor network, where independent crews publish their availability and get booked into gaps, is on the roadmap and not live yet.
What to take away
- Solar is a sequence: surveys, installs and inspections each have different scheduling shapes.
- Survey capacity is set mostly by drive; cluster by area and check feasibility before offering a time.
- Install crews are scheduled in crew-days; the morning load-out and drive set the real start time.
- On distant sites, compute crew drive hours across all days before promising dates.
- Treat inspection windows as fixed blocks and keep nearby work ready to fill around them.
Common questions
How many solar site surveys can one surveyor do in a day?
Divide the surveyor's working hours by the survey length plus the average drive between surveys. For example, 9 hours with 75-minute surveys and 45-minute drives is 9 ÷ 2, or about four to five surveys. Wide territories push the drive up fast, which is why clustering by area matters.
How many days does a residential solar install take to schedule?
Work it out from your own job. Divide the estimated install hours by the hours your crew will actually spend on site each day after the round-trip drive, and round up. A long drive can add a crew-day to a job that would otherwise fit in one.
How big should a solar install crew be?
That depends on system size, roof type and your own safety rules, so there is no single answer. For scheduling, what matters is that the crew-day is the unit: a larger crew may finish in one day what a smaller crew needs two days and two round trips to do.
How do you schedule solar installs around inspections?
Hold the inspection window as a fixed block for anyone who must attend, and plan the next phase so it can float if the inspection slips. Keep short, nearby work ready for that person in case the window runs long.