Scheduling Software for Locksmiths
A lockout is a now-or-never job. The customer is standing in a parking lot with a dead phone, and if your line rings out they are already dialing the next listing. Cartoply gives them a booking page that answers at 2am, takes the service-call fee, and puts the job on the nearest tech’s calendar.
The job goes to whoever answers first
Almost nothing else in the trades has this shape. A customer locked out of a car at 11pm is not comparing five companies over a week — they are running down a search results page, calling in order, and hiring the first human who picks up and says a number. Every ring you do not answer is not a delayed job. It is a job that belongs to someone else within ninety seconds.
So locksmith shops overstaff the phone, or they miss calls, or both. And the calls they do catch are not all real. A meaningful share of inbound is price shopping: the caller wants a number, hears the number, says thanks, and calls the next listing. Some of them call you back an hour later when nobody cheaper answered. In the meantime you may have already sent a van.
Then there is the intake nobody wants to do on a phone call at midnight. Is it a Kwikset deadbolt or a mortise lock on a commercial storefront. Is it a 2014 or a 2019, because the transponder and the fob are not the same job and one of them needs a programmer you might not have in the truck. Did the key break off inside the cylinder, which turns a five-minute open into an extraction. Cartoply moves all of it to the booking page: the customer answers the questions, pays the service call, and picks a real arrival window — while you are still under a dashboard on the last job.
What Cartoply does for locksmith companies
Instant booking for the job that cannot wait
Turn on instant mode and the page drops the calendar entirely — it shows a flat list of the next available arrival times across every tech who covers that address, grouped by day, soonest first. A locked-out customer taps the first one. No month view, no picking a date, no wondering whether anyone is actually working tonight. The times shown are real, because they come from live calendars, not from a promise.
The service-call fee is paid before you roll
Attach your trip charge to any service and collect it through Stripe or PayPal at booking. Cartoply authorizes the card first and captures only once the slot is locked, so nobody is charged for a booking that lost a race. This is the cheapest filter in the business: the caller who was going to keep shopping while you drove across town does not enter a card number. The one who does is waiting when you pull up.
Lock and vehicle details captured at booking
Add up to ten questions per service. Residential, commercial, or automotive. Lock type and brand. Vehicle year, make, and model — the three fields that decide whether a car key is a cut-and-go, a transponder clone, or a fob that needs a programmer and a security wait. Whether the key broke off in the cylinder. Whether there is a spare key anywhere. The answers ride along on the appointment and land in the tech’s notification, so the truck leaves stocked.
Proof of ownership handled before the appointment, not at the door
Verifying that the person hiring you is entitled to the property is a legal requirement in most jurisdictions and the single most awkward conversation to have on a driveway. Ask it as an intake question — ID plus registration, title, or a lease — and route those bookings through manual approval instead of auto-confirming. The request lands in your Requests tab, you look at what they said, and you approve or decline with a reason the customer receives by email. Nothing is reserved until you approve, so the slot stays open in the meantime.
Routing to the nearest tech on shift
Draw each locksmith’s coverage on a map by ZIP code, city, radius from where they stage, or a custom shape. A customer enters an address and sees only the availability of the techs who cover it. Where coverage overlaps, jobs rotate to the tech whose last assignment is oldest rather than piling on whoever the system happens to pick first, and anyone genuinely booked at that moment is filtered out before the rotation runs.
Emergency and scheduled work under different rules
These are not the same business and they should not share a booking rule. An automotive lockout gets zero minimum notice, an after-hours window, a short duration, and a bigger trip charge. A ten-door rekey or a commercial master-key job gets a two-day minimum notice, weekday hours only, a two-hour block, and a buffer on both sides for the drive. Each is its own appointment type with its own price, questions, and cap on how many you will take in a day.
Who at a locksmith company uses Cartoply
Owner-operators
You are the tech, the dispatcher, and the person whose phone rings while both hands are inside a door. Every call you take on a job costs you the job you are on, and every call you miss costs you the next one. A booking page takes the whole intake — service, vehicle details, address, service-call fee — without you touching it, and puts the confirmed job on your calendar with an arrival window you can actually hit.
Start on the free plan. There is nothing to pay until you put a second tech on the road.
Multi-tech shops and dispatchers
Set coverage areas once and the routine inbound routes itself. A rekey in the north end never lands on the tech who staged south of the river, because the page never offered that tech’s times to that address. What is left for a human is the work that actually needs judgment: the commercial master-key rebid, the safe job that needs a drill rig and a second body, the customer whose ownership documents do not add up.
Pro runs $7/seat/month — $28 for a four-tech shop, less than the margin on one recovered after-hours lockout.
Whoever answers after hours
Answering services and after-hours phones are expensive and lossy — a message taken at 1am is a job you find out about at 7am, which means you do not have it. Send the overflow to the booking link instead. The customer self-books the next available window, pays the trip charge, and answers the vehicle and lock questions in their own words, which is usually better information than a call-taker reading them back over a bad connection.
See it set up for a locksmith van
We’ll configure an emergency lockout type with instant booking and a trip charge, a rekey type with proper lead time, and your coverage map — in 15 minutes.
Book a 15-minute demoHow to set up online booking for your locksmith business
Most locksmith shops go from signup to a live, fee-collecting booking page in under 30 minutes.
- 1
Create your Cartoply account
Sign up free — no credit card required. Add your shop and invite your techs.
- 2
Connect tech calendars
Each locksmith connects Google Calendar or Outlook. Cartoply reads live availability, so a job that ran long or a personal block never gets booked over.
- 3
Draw your coverage areas
Map each tech’s territory by ZIP code, city, radius from where they stage, or a shape you draw. Addresses outside your coverage never see open slots, so you stop taking calls you cannot reach.
- 4
Create your services
Residential lockout, automotive lockout, rekey, lock installation, car key and fob programming, safe opening, and commercial master-key work — each with its own duration, price, and buffer.
- 5
Split emergency from scheduled
Give the emergency types zero minimum notice and after-hours availability. Give rekeys, installs, and commercial work a longer lead time, weekday hours, and a daily cap so a big job never gets squeezed between two lockouts.
- 6
Add intake and ownership questions
Lock type and brand, residential/commercial/automotive, vehicle year, make and model, whether the key broke in the cylinder, and whether they can show ID plus proof of ownership. Send the ownership-sensitive types to manual approval.
- 7
Turn on the service-call fee and publish
Connect Stripe or PayPal, set the trip charge per service, and put the link on your website, your Google Business Profile, and your truck. Customers book 24/7 and each job routes to the nearest tech on shift.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best scheduling software for a locksmith business?
It depends which half of the problem you are solving. If you need full field-service management — invoicing, inventory on the truck, payroll, job history, and a dispatch board — that is what Workiz, Jobber, Housecall Pro, RazorSync, and ServiceTitan are built for, and Workiz in particular has deep roots in the locksmith trade. If your problem is the front door — calls missed at 11pm, price shoppers eating your dispatch, no trip charge collected before the van rolls, and no way to keep a job inside the coverage area of the tech who is actually closest — that is the booking and intake layer, and that is Cartoply. It puts a 24/7 booking page in front of the business, authorizes the service-call fee before the slot confirms, captures the lock and vehicle details, and routes the job to the nearest locksmith on shift. Plenty of shops run Cartoply for inbound booking alongside a field-service platform for everything after the job is confirmed.
How can a locksmith take bookings 24/7 without answering the phone at 2am?
Publish a booking link with instant mode turned on for your emergency types. Instead of a calendar the customer sees a plain list of the next available arrival windows, soonest first, pulled from the live calendars of every tech who covers their address. They pick one, answer the vehicle and lock questions, pay the trip charge, and get a confirmation — no one on your side is awake for any of it. The tech gets the job on their calendar with the details attached. If you still want a human option for the genuinely stuck, keep the phone number on the page underneath the booking button.
Can I collect a service call fee before dispatching a locksmith?
Yes, and for lockout work it is the highest-leverage setting on the page. Attach your trip charge to any service and connect Stripe or PayPal. The customer pays at booking; Cartoply authorizes the card, secures the slot, then captures — and voids the authorization outright if the slot was taken in the same instant, so a customer who loses the race is never charged. The filtering effect is immediate. A caller who is still working down the search results does not enter a card to hold a slot they might abandon, which means you stop driving across town for jobs that evaporated while you were on the road.
How do I verify proof of ownership before a lockout or car key job?
Ask for it at booking and hold the appointment until you have looked at the answer. Add intake questions covering what identification they can present and what proof of ownership they have — vehicle registration or title, a lease or mortgage statement, a utility bill at the address — and set those services to manual approval instead of auto-confirm. A booking on a manual-approval service creates a request, not a reservation: the slot stays open, nothing is charged, and it lands in your Requests tab for you to approve or decline. Declines carry a reason that is emailed to the customer, so the conversation happens in writing before anyone is standing on a driveway.
Can I set different booking rules for emergency lockouts and scheduled rekeys?
That is the point of separate appointment types. Each one carries its own duration, price, buffers, minimum notice, availability hours, and daily cap. An automotive lockout can be 30 minutes, zero notice, available until 2am, with a trip charge attached. A residential rekey can be 90 minutes, two days of notice, weekdays 8 to 4, capped at three a day so your emergency capacity is not eaten by scheduled work. A commercial master-key job can be a longer block with a different set of questions and a bigger buffer for the drive. Customers see whichever ones you publish; the rules are enforced when they book, not by you saying no afterward.
How does Cartoply send a lockout to the closest locksmith on shift?
Coverage is drawn on a map — ZIP codes, cities, a radius around wherever each tech stages, or a custom shape for a route. When a customer enters their address, Cartoply resolves which techs cover it and merges the live availability of only those techs into the times shown. Nobody outside the area is offered. Where two techs overlap, the job goes to the one whose most recent assignment is oldest, and anyone actually booked at that moment is filtered out before the rotation runs, so the customer is never handed a window that a busy tech cannot make. Rep identity is never exposed on the public page — the customer just sees an arrival time.
Ready to stop losing the 11pm call?
Start free. No credit card required.
Set your trip charge, split emergency from scheduled, draw your coverage, and let lockouts book themselves — in under 30 minutes.
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