PressureWashingBossPro Blog — Crew App

Installing the Pressure Washing Crew App From the Browser: No App Store Required

The first hurdle with any crew app is getting it onto the phones. If that takes an afternoon of searching app stores, entering passwords nobody remembers and waiting for downloads over a weak signal in the shop parking lot, the rollout is in trouble before the first wash. The PressureWashingBossPro crew app skips most of that, because it runs in the browser.

Where the Crew App Fits

If you have not read the overview yet, start with Pressure Washing Crew App: The Complete Guide for Washing Companies and Their Crews. It walks through the whole day on the phone. This article covers step zero: getting the app there.

The crew app is a web app. It opens in Safari on an iPhone or Chrome on an Android phone, the same way any website does. Once it is open, it can be added to the home screen, and from then on it opens from an icon like any other app.

Why No App Store Is a Good Thing for a Washing Crew

An app store app sounds more official, but for a small washing company it brings a list of little problems:

• Accounts. Every washer needs an app store account with a password they remember. Plenty of them do not.
• Storage. Phones full of photos and videos refuse to download one more app.
• Updates. Store apps ask for updates at the worst possible time, like in a customer's driveway with the pump running.
• Device rules. Older phones sometimes cannot install the latest version of a store app at all.

A browser app avoids all four. There is nothing to download from a store, and when the software improves, the crew gets the new version the next time the app loads.

Installing It, Step by Step

Do this in the shop, on Wi-Fi or good signal, with every washer holding their phone. It takes a few minutes per person.

1. Open the crew app link in the phone's browser. Send it by text so nobody has to type it.
2. Add it to the home screen. On iPhone, tap the Share button in Safari and choose Add to Home Screen. On Android, open the browser menu and choose Add to Home screen or Install app.
3. Open it from the new icon. From now on, that icon is the crew app. Tell the crew not to use the browser tab.
4. Sign in with the company login and the washer's personal PIN.
5. Allow location when the phone asks, so crew GPS shows on the office map.

Have each washer open a job card and tap the navigation button once before they leave the shop. That way the first time they see it is not at the end of somebody's cul-de-sac.

What to Do About Old Phones

Because the app runs in the browser, most phones that can open a modern website can run it. If a washer's phone is very old, the browser may be out of date. Updating the phone's system software usually fixes that. If the phone cannot update, it is probably time for a cheap replacement, and it is worth deciding now whether that is a personal phone or a phone that stays with the rig. That choice is covered in Shared Rig Phones or Personal Phones for the Pressure Washing Crew App.

Common Install Mistakes

A few things trip crews up in the first week:

• Using a private or incognito tab. The phone forgets the login every time. Use a normal tab, then add to home screen.
• Saving the link as a bookmark instead. It works, but it is easy to lose. The home screen icon is faster.
• Denying location by accident. If the office cannot see a rig on the map, check the phone's location settings for the browser.
• Sharing one PIN. Every washer gets their own. Sharing a PIN means the office cannot tell who did what.

None of these are hard to fix, but catching them in the shop beats catching them at the first stop.

After the Install

Give it a day before you judge it. The first morning, washers will open the browser out of habit, tap the wrong thing or forget which icon is which. By the second or third day the icon is just part of the phone, the same as the weather app or the camera. If someone is still struggling after a week, sit with them for five minutes and watch them use it. The problem is almost always one small habit, like signing in from a different browser each time, and it is easy to fix once you see it.

Once the icon is on the home screen and the washer is signed in, the next step is the login itself: why there is a company login and a personal PIN, and what to do when someone forgets theirs. The next guide covers that. For the bigger picture of what the crew sees after they sign in, go back to the PressureWashingBossPro crew app page.