During winterization and spring recommissioning season, you can receive hundreds of orders in a short window of time. Most of these orders include a digital form, a customized questionnaire that collects extra details from the customer (like drop-off and pick-up dates).
This guide covers the tools Boatyard gives you to stay on top of that volume: knowing what's come in, who still needs to complete their form, and how to nudge customers along without manually chasing every one.
How these orders show up
When a customer requests winterization or recommissioning service, whether through the Customer Portal or a service reminder, Boatyard creates the order right away, even before the customer finishes the form. This is intentional. Long forms can lose a customer's attention partway through, so we lock in their intent to book as soon as they start.
The new order will land in Awaiting Acceptance with no order number or customer name showing yet. A team member needs to claim the order by accepting it.
Open the order and click Accept.
After accepting, you'll be prompted to send a status update to the customer. The default "thank you" message works fine, or customize it.
If the order isn't yours to manage, reassign it to the right team member. They'll get an email letting them know it's been assigned to them.
Tracking which customers have completed their form
Once an order is accepted, the order detail page will show whether the form is still outstanding. If no form information appears near the top and there's nothing in the timeline about it, the customer hasn't finished it yet.
On the order list screen, use search and filters to work through volume instead of clicking into every order one by one:
Search by service type (for example, "winterization") to isolate just that batch of orders.
Filter by form status: Completed Form or Awaiting Forms. This is the fastest way to see exactly who still needs to finish.
Add a date filter when you want to narrow the list further, for example to exclude old orders from a previous season so you're only working with the current batch.
Follow-up emails
Customers get automatically reminded to complete their form if they don't finish the it right away:
One reminder email 1 hour after the order is placed
A second reminder 24 hours after that
If a customer says they placed an order but never finished the form, tell them to check their inbox for the reminder email. It includes a link straight to their unfinished form.
You also have two ways to prompt them directly instead of waiting on the automatic schedule:
Resend to one customer: from the order, click the resend form icon to manually trigger the reminder.
Bulk resend: filter your order list down to Awaiting Forms (and a date range, if useful), select the checkbox on each order, and use the bulk action to resend forms to everyone selected at once. This is the biggest time-saver when you're dealing with a large batch.
Tips for staying ahead during peak season
Accept orders promptly. Until someone accepts, the order sits without an owner and customer name.
Run your Awaiting Forms filter regularly rather than waiting for customers to ask. Catching incomplete forms early keeps your schedule accurate.
Combine search, filter, and date range together to keep your working list small and specific before doing any bulk action.
If a customer says they never got the email, you can copy the form link directly from the order timeline and send it to them yourself instead of relying only on the resend.
Use bulk resend at natural checkpoints (for example, once a week during peak season) rather than one at a time, to save the most time.