Switching Traffic Control Software in 14 Days: A Day-by-Day Plan

Short answer: about two weeks, if the setup is built for you and you send three things on the first day: your customer list, your price sheet and a sample of the ticket your crews fill in today. The time goes into getting the ticket and the prices right and into training people, not into the software.

Below is the day-by-day plan Traffic OS uses for its 14-Day Launch, followed by advice that applies to any switch, whichever software you choose.

Before day 0: decide three things

Who owns the switch. One person in the office, usually whoever invoices today, makes the decisions and answers the launch team's questions. A switch with no owner drifts.

What moves and what stays. New work starts in the new system. Open invoices are collected in the system that sent them. History stays in the old system or in an export you keep. Moving years of closed jobs is rarely worth the effort.

When to go live. Time the kickoff so go-live lands at the start of a pay period, so a single pay period never spans two time clocks, and avoid a week with a large closure or a holiday weekend.

The 14-Day Launch, day by day

Day 0: kickoff

You send the customer list, the price sheet and a sample daily ticket. Send a ticket your crews actually filled in, not a clean blank, so the setup reflects how a day is really recorded. If the price sheet and the ticket disagree, this is the day to find out.

Days 1 to 5: the build

The launch team builds your setup in Traffic OS:

• The ticket, set up with your sample as the guide. The Traffic OS daily ticket has a header, billing rows for lane closure, flagging, truck-mounted attenuator and queue trucks, lane events, and the trucks on the job.
• Prices, from your price sheet, as a priced catalog for quotes, tickets and invoices.
• Customers and vendors, up to 500 records.
• Yards, each with its own address, tax rate and number prefix.
• Kits, the sets of devices a crew takes for a typical setup, so a kit can be applied to a job in one click.

Your part during these five days is answering questions quickly. A question that sits for two days is two days off the schedule.

Day 6: office training

The office team is trained on Traffic OS. Bring the people who will do the work, not only the person who bought the software, and make sure each of them leaves able to do their own daily tasks: creating quotes and jobs, scheduling crews on the dispatch board and calendar, turning a signed ticket into a draft invoice, sending invoices and recording payments.

Our advice for the day between the two trainings: have the office build a few real upcoming jobs, so the field training on day 8 uses jobs the crews will actually work.

Day 8: field training

Crews are trained on their own phones. The tasks they need are clocking in and out, checking in at a job, filling in the daily ticket and getting the customer's signature; a foreman can also clock in the whole crew at once. Keep it short and hands-on; drivers learn by doing one ticket, not by watching slides. Our post on rolling out traffic control software to your crews covers how to make that stick.

Days 9 to 13: real jobs beside paper

Crews run real jobs in Traffic OS while the paper ticket still goes in the truck. Each evening, the office compares the two: did the times match, did the billing rows match, did the signature get captured. Every mismatch is either a training gap or a setup problem, and both are cheap to fix this week.

Day 14: go live

Paper stops. New jobs, tickets and invoices run in Traffic OS. Keep the paper tickets from the parallel week with the job records in case a customer asks about them.

The launch guarantee

Traffic OS commits to having you live in 14 days or refunding the launch fee, when you send the customer list, price sheet and sample ticket within 3 business days of kickoff and attend both trainings. The launch fee is $1,000 on Starter, $1,750 on Pro and $2,500 on Enterprise. Traffic OS plans are $499, $949 and $1,499 a month with every feature, seats included, extra drivers $20 a month (as of November 2026). The how it works page and the pricing page have the details.

Advice for any switch

Clean the customer list before it moves

Old systems collect duplicate customers, dead contacts and addresses for sites finished years ago. Merging duplicates and dropping customers you will never work for again before the list moves is quick. Doing it afterwards is slower, because every duplicate by then has jobs and invoices attached.

Reconcile prices once

Many companies find that their prices live in three places that disagree: the signed rate sheet, the estimator's spreadsheet and the memory of whoever invoices that customer. Settle them before the price sheet is loaded. Our post on master service agreements and rate sheets covers how to structure them.

Run in parallel for a few days, not a few months

A parallel week catches the real problems. A parallel quarter means everyone keeps using the old system and the new one never takes over. Set the end date in advance and keep it.

Keep the old records for as long as you must

Switching software does not end your duty to keep records. The Department of Labor's recordkeeping fact sheet says employers keep payroll records for at least three years and the records wages are computed from, such as time cards, for two. The IRS guidance on how long to keep records says to keep employment tax records for at least 4 years after the tax is due or paid, whichever is later. State law and your contracts may require longer. Before you cancel the old system, export what you need in a format you can open without it. Our post on data ownership and export covers what to ask for.

Collect open invoices where they started

An invoice sent from the old system should be paid against the old system's record, or your accounts receivable will show the same debt twice. Collect those, then let the old system go.

Tell your customers what changes

Customers will see a new invoice layout, a new payment link and, if they sign tickets, a new signature screen. A short note before go-live saves a round of "is this real?" calls from accounts payable.

Do not change everything at once

A new system is not the moment to also change your rates, your payment terms and your crew structure. Change the software first, run it for a month, then improve the rest.

What two weeks does not include

Two weeks gets you live: crews ticketing on their phones, the office invoicing from signed tickets, and payments recorded against invoices. It does not make everyone fluent. Expect a month before the office stops reaching for the old habits, and expect a few questions from the field in the first weeks. Keep the support videos handy; Traffic OS has 47 step-by-step support videos for the common tasks.

If you want to see the plan against your own ticket and price sheet, book a demo and bring both.