Scheduling Overview: Two Ways to Schedule Work
Last updated July 6, 2026 · Admins, office staff, and crew managers
The product supports two different styles of scheduling, and which one you use for a given crew is decided by a single setting on the crew itself. Understanding the two modes — and the pages that go with them — makes everything else in scheduling click into place.
The two scheduling modes
1. Time-based calendar (appointments with clock times)
For crews that work by the clock (e.g. an install crew booked 9:00–11:30 at one property, 1:00–4:00 at another). Appointments have a start time and end time on a specific day, and you manage them on a familiar drag-and-drop calendar with Day, Week, Work Week, Month, and Agenda views.
Use this mode when:
- Jobs are booked into specific time windows
- You quote or bill by scheduled hours
- Customers are told “we’ll be there at 10:00”
2. Route-ordered visits (a stop list, no clock times)
For crews that run a route (e.g. a mowing crew with 14 lawns on Tuesday, or a plow route). Visits land on a date only — no times — and instead of times you control the stop order: which property is stop #1, #2, #3, and so on. You manage the order on the Route Management page, where you can also optimize the drive order, save a favorite order as a reusable template, check whether the day fits in the crew’s capacity, and shift a whole route forward after a rain day.
Use this mode when:
- The crew works down a list of stops in order
- Drive-time efficiency matters more than exact arrival times
- The same loop of properties repeats week after week
How the system picks the mode
The mode follows the crew, not the appointment. Every crew has a Time Based setting (Yes/No) on its crew page:
| Crew’s “Time Based” setting | Calendar you get | Where you manage the day |
|---|---|---|
| Yes | Hour-by-hour calendar with start/end times | Daily Dispatch calendar |
| No | Date-only calendar (“route-style”) | Daily Dispatch calendar + Route Management stop ordering |
On the Daily Dispatch board each crew card is labeled “Time-based calendar” or “Route-style calendar” so you always know which kind you’re opening. A crew can only appear in one mode at a time.
The scheduling pages
Everything below lives under Schedule in the left-hand menu, and the ones you use together are also linked from each other’s headers.
| Page | Where to find it | What it’s for |
|---|---|---|
| Daily Dispatch | Schedule > Calendar | Your day-to-day hub. Crew cards for Today/Tomorrow, the drag-and-drop calendar, and the “Non Scheduled Jobs” sidebar for placing unassigned work. |
| Appointments (directory) | Schedule > Appointments, or “All Appointments” on Daily Dispatch | Every appointment across all crews and dates in one searchable grid — filter chips including a Past Due preset that surfaces open visits past their date, bulk complete, exports, and a per-visit change History. |
| Route Management | Schedule > Route Management | The route planner for non-time-based crews: load a crew’s day, reorder stops, optimize, memorize/apply route templates, check capacity, and run a Rain / Delay Shift. |
| Schedule Templates | Schedule > Schedule Templates | Saved visit patterns you can apply when creating an appointment, instead of rebuilding the same recurrence by hand. |
| Storm Events | Schedule > Storm Events | Weather and snow response work dispatched outside the normal schedule — see Storm Events. |
| Weather | Schedule > Weather | The forecast your dispatch decisions depend on, in the product rather than in another tab. |
| Schedule History | Schedule > Schedule History | The audit log of schedule changes: who moved what, and when. The place to look when a crew says a visit “disappeared”. |
| Create Appointment | “Schedule Appointment” button on a Job or Customer page | The full appointment form — pick the job, crew, date/times, and an optional recurrence pattern. |
| Crew Day (“Today”) | “Today” in the menu, or “Crew Mobile View” on Daily Dispatch (when mobile/crew features are enabled) | A phone-friendly stop list for one crew and one day, with Map, Arrived, and Complete buttons per stop. |
Visit statuses
Every visit carries a status you’ll see as a colored badge throughout the product:
- Scheduled — on the calendar, not started
- Unscheduled — created with “Schedule Later,” waiting in the Non Scheduled Jobs sidebar for a date
- On My Way / In Progress — set by crews from the crew mobile app
- Completed — done (set by the crew, or by office staff with the Complete buttons)
- Skipped — the crew skipped the stop (set from the crew mobile app, with a reason)
- Rescheduled — moved to another day
Completing a visit can also roll the parent job up to Completed once all of its visits are done, and — if the job is opted in to auto-invoicing — create the invoice automatically.
Which mode should I use?
- Both. Most companies run both at once: a route-style mowing/maintenance crew and a time-based install or enhancement crew. Just set each crew’s Time Based flag to match how that crew actually works.
- If you’re not sure, start with route-style (Time Based = No) for recurring maintenance and time-based (Yes) for one-off booked jobs.
- Changing a crew’s Time Based setting later changes which calendar its work appears on, so pick deliberately when you create the crew.