Visits vs. Jobs Explained

Rotor stacks three layers — service plan, job, and visit — and knowing which one holds the money, the calendar slot, and the technician's work solves most day-to-day confusion. Includes a "which one do I edit when…" reference.

Written By Support Team

Last updated About 2 hours ago

This is the single most confusing concept in Rotor, and it is worth five minutes. Most field software has one object called a "job." Rotor has three layers, because the thing you sold, the thing you bill, and the thing a technician shows up to are not always the same thing.

The hierarchy

A service plan generates jobs. Each job is worked through one or more visits.

Layer	What it is	Quarterly pest example	How many
Service plan	The arrangement you sold: service type, frequency, duration, pricing, billing mode, agreement	Quarterly pest control, 12 months, exterior treatment at $120 per service	One per service the customer buys
Job	One occurrence of that service — the unit you price, complete, and invoice	The March treatment	Four, one per quarter
Visit	One appointment on the calendar where a crew shows up and works	Tuesday March 12, 9:00–10:00 AM, Alpha Crew	Usually one per job — more if you have to go back

One-time work follows the same shape. You still create a service with a frequency of One-Time, which produces a single job, which you schedule as a single visit.

What each layer holds

The service plan holds the service type, frequency, duration and auto-renew, the master line items and discounts, the billing mode, the signed agreement, sales attribution, and plan notes. It decides how many jobs exist and when they come due.
The job holds the line items and price for that occurrence, the discount, the payment status, job notes, and the invoice. It is what you see on the Jobs page and what you filter for unpaid work.
The visit holds the date and time, the arrival window, the crew or technician, the visit timer, visit notes, and the checklist a technician fills out on site.

Which one the technician actually works

The visit. Everything a field tech does happens on the visit page: Start, Pause, and Finish the timer, complete the checklist, add notes, add line items. The badge in the upper-right corner of the mobile screen tells you when you are looking at a visit; tap Details → View Job to step up a layer for invoicing and customer details.

Technician efficiency is tracked at the visit level, not the job level, which is the whole reason the layer exists. A two-day gutter job that took eleven hours across two visits tells you far more than one job record ever could.

Which one gets invoiced

The job. Finishing a visit does not bill anyone — when a technician taps Finish, they choose between Add another visit and Mark the job as complete. Completing the job is what prompts you to create a draft invoice.

So a re-service trip does not create a second invoice. Add a second visit to the same job and the customer is billed once, for the job.

Which one carries line items and upsells

Pricing lives on the plan and lands on the job. In the plan builder, each line item has an Apply to All Jobs toggle so you can charge more for the initial service, or add screen cleaning to only the second and third jobs of a window plan.

Upsells are added from the visit screen but belong to the job's total. When a technician adds a line item in the field, it is automatically attributed to the logged-in user so upsell commission is tracked, and the value flows into that job's invoice.

One wording note that trips people up: some older screens and articles say "visits" when they mean the individual jobs inside a plan — for example "interior cleaning applies only to the 2nd and 3rd visits." Read that as the 2nd and 3rd jobs in the plan.

Which one payroll pays against

Both, in different ways. The amount comes from the job — salesman commission is a percentage of the job total, technician commission a percentage of the technician's portion, upsell commission a percentage of the upsold line item only. The timing comes from the visit: commissions are applied based on the scheduled visit date.

That matters at period boundaries. Drag a visit from March 31 to April 2 and the commission moves with it into the next payroll run. Hourly pay is separate again — it comes from clocked time and visit timers, not from the job value.

Where a pending job fits

A pending job is a job with no visit yet. The plan knows the customer is due in December; nobody has committed a date, a time, or a crew. Scheduling it is what creates the visit and turns it into real work on someone's calendar.

Because there is no visit, there is nothing to open or edit — a pending job is purely an indicator. See Pending Jobs for the three places you can schedule them from.

Which one do I edit when…

You want to	Edit this layer	Where
Reschedule an appointment	The visit	Drag it on the schedule, or open the visit and change the time
Change the crew	The visit	Drag it to another technician's column. To have a technician assist another crew, use Temporary Reassignment under Schedule Settings to move them off their typical crew for a set duration or for specific visits
Change the price for this service only	The job	Line items and discount on the job — reachable from the visit's line items section
Change the price for every future service	The service plan	Customer profile → the plan → edit. Update your price book too, so new sales match
Add a checklist	Neither — it's a setting	Settings → Price Book → Checklist, attached by job or visit type and optionally by service type
Record an upsell	The visit (value lands on the job)	Line items section of the mobile visit page, during the appointment
Add a return trip	The job	Finish the visit, then choose Add another visit instead of completing the job
Stop all future services	The service plan	Deactivate the plan on the customer profile — don't delete individual jobs

Tips

Schedule and crew changes belong on the visit; one-off price changes on the job; future pricing on the service plan.
For a return trip, choose Add another visit instead of completing the job — the customer is still billed once.
Finishing a visit doesn't bill anyone. Mark the job as complete to get the draft invoice prompt.
Moving a visit across a payroll period moves its commission with it.
To stop all future services, deactivate the plan rather than deleting individual jobs.

Congratulations! You can now tell service plans, jobs, and visits apart and edit the right layer in Rotor.

Have additional questions? Our team is ready to help you succeed. Contact us through the chat or drop us an email at support@getrotor.com.

Crew Scheduling — how visits and crews work on the calendar
Service Plans — how plans generate jobs
Mobile: Jobs & Visits — what the technician sees
Pending Jobs — scheduling jobs that have no visit yet

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