Emergency Glazing Callout Workflow: One Call, Two Jobs

The emergency glazing callout workflow that actually pays is a two-job workflow: qualify the call in under three minutes, photograph the damage before you touch a single shard, make the building safe with a temporary boarding visit you invoice as a job in its own right, measure for the reglaze while you are already standing there, and leave with a documented file an insurer will accept. One callout, two jobs, one evidence pack. The firms losing money on nights are the ones treating the board-up as a free favour and the reglaze as the only real job.

Why the van beats the office in 2026

Break-in and storm glazing is bought by whoever answers the phone. Nobody with a hole in their shopfront at 02:40 rings three companies for comparison quotes. They ring until someone picks up, then they stop ringing.

What has changed is the second half. Customers and insurers now expect the paperwork at the same speed as the response. If you board up at 03:00 and send the boarding invoice on Thursday, the claim has gone cold, the loss adjuster has already asked for photos you never took, and your reglaze quote is competing with a glazier who sent theirs from the van at 03:40.

Everything below is built to be done on a phone, in the dark, in the rain, with cold hands, before you leave site.

Taking the call: eight questions that price the job

Whoever answers the out-of-hours phone needs a fixed script. Not because they are careless, but because at 3am nobody improvises well. Eight questions, in this order:

1. Address and any gate or access code. First, always. If the line drops you can still turn up.
2. Is anyone hurt, and is glass still falling? Glass hanging above a pavement changes the priority and possibly who you call first.
3. Is the property secure right now? An open hole with stock behind it is a different urgency to a cracked-but-intact pane.
4. Home, shop, office or communal? This decides who pays and which claim or deduction route applies.
5. Ground floor or upstairs? Access equipment. A first-floor bedroom window doubles your boarding time.
6. Roughly how big, one pane or a whole unit? "About the size of a door" is enough at this stage.
7. Single glass or a sealed double-glazed unit? Ask: "look at the edge, is there a metal strip between two sheets of glass?" That is the sealed-unit tell.
8. Break-in or accident, and have you reported it? Insurance hinges on this. In Sweden that means a polisanmälan; in the UK, a crime reference number from 101. Most insurers will not settle a forced-entry claim without one.

Then say the price structure out loud before you drive. Not the total, the structure: a call-out charge covering the first hour or two, an hourly rate after that, materials at cost plus a stated markup, and a separate quote for the permanent glass once measured. A verbal yes to that structure on the phone is what stops the argument at the door.

Photograph the damage before you touch it

This is the step everyone skips and everyone regrets. Once you have swept up, the evidence is gone permanently and the adjuster has only your word for it.

Shoot these, in this order, before you move anything:

• A wide shot of the whole elevation, so the frame is identifiable as this building.
• The opening from outside, then the same opening from inside.
• The point of impact, close up. Toughened glass popped with a punch looks nothing like storm damage, and that distinction is the entire claim.
• Glass on the ground or floor. Where it fell shows which side the force came from, and adjusters read it.
• Any tool marks on the frame, handle or lock. Forced-entry evidence lives here.
• The spacer bar or corner stamp on a sealed unit. The unit spec, and often a date, is printed there.
• A tape measure held across the opening in at least one shot, for scale.

Ten photos, ninety seconds. Then sweep. Leave geotagging and timestamps on: a photo proving you were at that address at 03:12 is worth more than any invoice narrative.

Temporary boarding is a job, not a favour

Board-up is a distinct, billable, completed piece of work. Its own labour, its own materials, its own risk, and it delivers the thing the customer actually rang about at 3am, which is a secure building. Treat it as the first of two jobs and invoice it on the night.

A workable boarding standard for a domestic opening:

• Remove loose and hanging glass, bag it, leave no shards in the rebate.
• 12mm OSB or ply cut to the opening, not a sheet leaned against it.
• Fix into the frame or reveal, screwed rather than nailed, so removal does not damage the frame a second time.
• Batten across anything much wider than a metre.
• Tape or foam the perimeter if weather is driving in.
• For shopfronts, screened ply or a steel screen where the location has any history.

Budget 30 to 60 minutes for a single ground-floor domestic opening once you are on site, and considerably more for a shopfront where you are also clearing pavement glass. That is real, chargeable time.

What goes on the boarding invoice

On a private home in Sweden, labour on both the boarding and the reglaze is normally eligible for ROT, a tax deduction worth 30% of the labour cost with an annual per-person ceiling shared with RUT. Materials, call-out fees and disposal are not deductible. Check the current ceiling at skatteverket.se before you promise anything. Outside Sweden the same discipline applies for a different reason: split labour and materials cleanly, because insurers routinely settle glass and labour on different terms.

Measure for the reglaze while you are still there

You will never get a cheaper site visit than the one you are already on. Measure now, or pay for a second survey trip out of your own margin.

The measurement checklist

• Sight-size width and height, measured in three places each. Old frames are not square.
• Rebate depth. This decides whether a thicker unit will physically fit.
• Overall unit thickness and make-up, if double glazed. A 24mm unit is typically 4mm glass, 16mm cavity, 4mm glass.
• Spacer colour. Warm-edge black or grey versus mill-finish aluminium is visible from the street, and the customer will notice a mismatch.
• Coatings and patterns. Low-E, solar control, obscure pattern and its name, any tint. Photograph the pattern against a plain background.
• Toughened or laminated markings, usually a stamp in a corner or etched on the spacer.
• Is this a critical location? Glass low in doors, in side panels beside doors, and low in walls generally has to be safety glass. Sweden works to Boverket's building rules and the EN 12600 impact classes; the UK applies Approved Document K on the same principle. If the broken pane was safety glass, the replacement must be too. Never quote plain float into a door because it is cheaper.
• Frame condition, rot, whether beads are internal or external, and gasket type.
• Access for the reglaze. Can two people carry a unit that size through that door, or is it a hoist job?

Note the lead time honestly. A stock clear unit might be days; a patterned, toughened or shaped unit is a special order and the board stays up until it lands. Say that on the night and the chase-up call never happens.

One callout, two documented jobs

Split it deliberately in your system:

• Job 1, emergency attendance and temporary boarding. Status: completed on the night. Invoice raised on site. Photos attached. Customer signs on your phone.
• Job 2, reglaze. Status: quoted, awaiting acceptance or awaiting glass. Carries the measurements, the unit spec, the lead time, and a line confirming board removal is included.

Why bother splitting? Because a single merged job forces you to wait for the glass before you invoice anything, so the 3am work you already did sits unpaid for a fortnight. Because insurers frequently authorise emergency make-safe immediately and the permanent repair separately. And because your reglaze quote should show the board-up as already handled, not buried inside a total that makes the number look frightening.

This is the exact shape OdinTask is built for: raise the boarding job, attach the photos from the offline-first field app (it queues and replays when there is no signal, which matters in a stairwell at 3am), send the invoice with the ROT split calculated for you, then send the reglaze quote for e-signature from the same van before you drive home.

Building the insurance-ready file

Whether the claim is the customer's or yours to support, the file should hold, per job:

• Time of the call and time you arrived.
• The reported cause, in the customer's own words.
• Police report or crime reference number, if it was a break-in.
• The pre-touch photo set, timestamped.
• Photos of the completed boarding.
• Labour and materials itemised separately, with times.
• The measured unit specification for the reglaze.
• A signed acceptance of the emergency work.

Assemble it on site. Every hour you wait, detail evaporates.

Five mistakes that cost real money

1. Sweeping before shooting. Unrecoverable.
2. Boarding for free because you assume you will get the reglaze. Sometimes you do not, and you have donated a night.
3. Quoting the glass over the phone. You have not seen the spacer, the coating or the rebate.
4. One lump sum. It hides the labour, kills the ROT split, and hands the insurer a reason to query all of it.
5. Leaving without a signature. At 3am they are grateful. By Thursday afternoon, less so.

Make the workflow fixed and repeatable and a night callout stops being a disruption you tolerate. It becomes the highest-margin work in the book. Start a free 14-day trial, or see the pricing page for what it costs.