The renewal pass: confirm every customer before the water opens
Every spring, some crew ties up at a dock that got sold in October. One deliberate February pass through the whole list — back, gone, or changed — beats discovering it from the boat, and it replaces the spreadsheet most shops copy forward year after year.
· 6 min read
How do you confirm who’s back this spring — and catch the customer who sold the house in October? One deliberate pass through the whole customer list, in February, before any water opens. Every name gets one of three verdicts: back as usual, gone, or changed. It takes an office afternoon for a couple hundred properties, and it’s the cheapest insurance in the season.
The alternative is finding out from the boat. Every operator has the story: the crew ties up, starts setting sections, and somebody walks down the hill asking who they are — the house sold in the fall, the new owners have a different dock company, or no dock at all. Now you’ve done free work for a stranger, your schedule ate a stop that didn’t exist, and the bill has no one to go to. That morning costs more than every renewal pass you’ll ever run.
The spreadsheet this replaces
Most shops already do some version of this, on a spreadsheet copied forward from last year’s copy: names down the side, a checkmark column, maybe a “called?” column. It mostly works, the way the whiteboard mostly works. Its failures are quiet ones — it knows the customer but not which equipment the arrangement covers, so the raft they dropped last June is still on it; it doesn’t talk to the season’s work, so a name unticked on the spreadsheet still has to be remembered again wherever the jobs get made; and every year starts from a copy of a copy, carrying forward whatever last year got wrong.
The three verdicts
- Back as usual — the default, and for most of the list, the verdict. The pass exists for the exceptions; the majority should cost you no time at all.
- Gone — sold, moved, passed away, switched, or doing it themselves now. Write the reason down every time; a year of reasons is your churn report, and it tells you which losses were weather and which were fixable.
- Changed — same customer, different arrangement. New lift bought over the winter, canopy gone, dock extended two sections. February is when to fix the record, because the crew will otherwise discover the change from the boat, mid-job.
Catching the sold house
The gone ones rarely announce themselves — a homeowner who sells in October has no reason to remember their dock company in the closing chaos. So the pass looks for signals: an email that bounced, a number no longer in service, the neighbor who mentioned a moving truck, the customer who went unusually quiet after years of chatty Octobers. For anyone uncertain, one thirty-second call settles it: “Getting the spring list together — you’re on it as usual?” That call almost always ends warmly, because being asked is being remembered. It’s a renewal check that doubles as the year’s first customer contact.
What the pass looks like in LakeOps
This ritual is built in, and it’s attached to the thing it feeds. Each customer’s standing arrangement lives as a service plan — the property, the service, spring or fall, and exactly which docks, lifts and canopies it covers. When you create the spring season, the rollover screen lists every active spring plan with the customer, the property, how many items the arrangement covers, and when that work was last done. Everything’s ticked by default. The pass is walking that list.
Untick the gone ones and type the reason — that cancels the plan, so they won’t generate this year or any year after, while every job they ever had stays intact with its history, prices and photos. For the changed ones, fix the plan’s items now and the change is simply what generates. Then generate the season: one job per remaining plan, each carrying its items, all pending, all on the map.
The pass is forgiving in the two ways February needs. Generating twice can’t create duplicate work — the second run just tells you what already existed. And a customer who calls in March, after the pass, isn’t a problem: add their plan, generate again, and only their job appears. The pass doesn’t have to be perfect. It has to be done.
Why February, specifically
Earlier, and you’re calling people who haven’t thought about the lake since the canopy came down. Later, and the pass collides with everything else March brings — hiring, gear, and the ice-out watch. February is the window where the office has time, the customers are starting to think about spring, and there’s still room to fill any slots the gone ones open up. One afternoon, three verdicts per name, and when the ice finally goes, the season starts from a list you trust — with nobody setting sections for a stranger.