How much time do you spend making your schedule?

Just wondering how much time everyone is putting finding their shop for the day/week/month. I'm especially interested in the experienced full-timers, or people who have streamlined their process. Are you figuring this time into your bottom line? Thanks for your input!

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I don't tend to tally my time... I check email regularly and check job boards when I am bored. This tends to fill up much of my shopping time. If I am looking to fill a time slot, I'll check about 10 different sites and pick something. If I am planning a longer route, I might intentionally spend quite a bit of time (two or three hours)...

Hard work builds character and homework is good for your soul.

Thanks, MFJ--I was wondering, also, how much of your work load comes directly from schedulers (e.g. they call or email you)?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/21/2018 05:47PM by hg70.

I would roughly estimate that at 20% of my workload, but 40% of my income.

Hard work builds character and homework is good for your soul.

Probably an hour or two per week, when summing up the time.

Shopping the Greater Denver Area, Colorado Springs and in-between in Colorado. 33 year old male and willing to travel!

A ton. Probably a lot more than most. It's the part of shopping I enjoy the most. It's also the part I am good at. I make more than a lot of shoppers who are significantly better than me simply because I am better at scheduling.

In my opinion scheduling is the single largest driver of profit in this business.

There are reasons that a body stays in motion
At the moment only demons come to mind

With the time I spend doing my routes, I would completely concur with this statement. Were I doing this full time and doing routes most days, I would spend a lot of time planning....

@bgriffin wrote:

A ton. Probably a lot more than most. It's the part of shopping I enjoy the most. It's also the part I am good at. I make more than a lot of shoppers who are significantly better than me simply because I am better at scheduling.

In my opinion scheduling is the single largest driver of profit in this business.

Hard work builds character and homework is good for your soul.

I'm spend a lot of time on my schedule too. For me, scheduling is when I earn my money. Not when I do the shops and not when I get paid. When I finalize a route with a nice profit, that's when I break out the champagne, figuratively speaking. The rest is just loose ends.

@mystery2me wrote:

For me, scheduling is when I earn my money. Not when I do the shops and not when I get paid.

Exactly

There are reasons that a body stays in motion
At the moment only demons come to mind

When I shopped full time, I would get the work on Sunday afternoons. I would go through all of the job boards for the MSCs I was most active with, self assign, and put the jobs on my calendar.

Now that I shop very part time, I wait until I receive an email to self assign. For ACL, I go to their website or contact the scheduler since I don't get their emails.

"I told myself to quit you; but I don't listen to drunks." -Chris Stapleton

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/22/2018 08:30AM by HonnyBrown.

My anchor shops make my schedule by themselves each month from my accepting job offers that I get by email, but I still have to plug those offers into a calendar. I probably use one day total each month to adjust my schedule throughout the month. I try to avoid scheduling shops the last week of the month, so I will able to do the EOM rush shops. If I am going on a route out-of-town, I may have to take some time for the logistics of that trip. How much time depends on factors like how many shops the trip includes, where the shops are located, the hours they can be shopped, and whether I've shopped them before.

I usually don't have time to look through every job board, even though there are not than many for me to look at. Emails are so much faster to sort through than job boards are. That's especially true with companies who just cannot design a user-friendly website that works.

Yes, I tend to like the boards that have both the new and "classic". So much easier to see what a MSC is offering!

Ha! I get the sentiment, but the time I spend at the computer after the shop is what is sometime the PITA!

Sorry, what I meant was:

@bgriffin wrote:

@mystery2me wrote:

For me, scheduling is when I earn my money. Not when I do the shops and not when I get paid.

Exactly

May 21, 2018 08:57PM
Ha! I get the sentiment, but the time I spend at the computer after the shop is what is sometimes the PITA!

So, it's good to know that planning can be a very significant part of it. I was concerned that maybe I was spending too much time. I guess it's like any sort of freelance work: finding the job, making it optimal, hitting deadlines, etc.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/21/2018 09:03PM by hg70.

@bgriffin wrote:

A ton. Probably a lot more than most. It's the part of shopping I enjoy the most.

It's nice to hear I am not the only one who enjoys the planning. I spend a couple of hours or more every morning, after I drop the kids at school, going through emails and searching job boards. I then check my email multiple times throughout the day. The ensuing shopping days are not such a happy affair for me. If I could get paid to schedule for someone else, I would be quite happy.

And all this time I thought it was just me, LOL. There is definitely a great deal of satisfaction from scheduling a fantastic route and having it go according to plan is icing on the cake,

Equal rights for others does not mean fewer rights for you. It's not pie.
"I prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps themselves up in the Constitution over someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps themselves up in the flag." -Molly Ivins
Never try to teach a pig to sing. It's a waste of your time and it really annoys the pig.

I also spend a lot of time on planning my schedule. I enjoy adding jobs to my spreadsheet and watching the monthly total grow. I enjoy adding to a route to make it ultra-profitable.

*****************************************************************************
The more I learn about people...the more I like my dog..

Mark Twain

Hey new poster here. I just started mystery shopping but I devote a lot of time to planning and scheduling my hours. I have a part time already, so I schedule shops to fit before that part time shift starts and days I'm off. I try to maximize all the hours I have including the reporting time and much needed rest periods. I do feel a sense of pride going over my excel spreadsheet and checking off whats been completed.

@hg70 wrote:

So, it's good to know that planning can be a very significant part of it. I was concerned that maybe I was spending too much time. I guess it's like any sort of freelance work: finding the job, making it optimal, hitting deadlines, etc.

Exactly correct. But it gets less time-consuming as you learn; the time you spend now is an investment in your future.

I've seen shoppers just give up because they couldn't schedule. I'm not especially computer literate, so I use an old fashioned desk calendar. I write my shops under each day, and flip forward and make an additional note of the payment due (when, method, company who owes it) so on the due date I can follow up if necessary. That's what works for me. No chance of losing data if my computer dies, LOL!!!

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