Plan the day shares a day’s stops between your vehicles. It keeps each stop inside its time slot, each vehicle inside its load and its hours, and puts each route in a good driving order. You check the plan, change what you like, accept it and send the routes to your drivers.
Plan a day #
- Open Plan the day. Pick the day with ‹ and › (or Today), and the Location if you have more than one.
- Click Plan the day. The board shows each vehicle’s route with its stops in order, and a note: “Proposed plan: not saved yet.”, with each vehicle’s distance and driving time before and after, and All vehicles.
- Check the plan. Move a stop to another vehicle or position with Move to, or drag it. Lock a stop to keep it on its vehicle the next time you plan. Undo steps back.
- Click Accept plan. The routes are saved and show on the Schedule.
- Click Send to drivers. The routes go to the drivers’ phones, and the board says “Sent 2 routes to drivers.” Drivers get an email with their routes.
Undo Accept plan, at the top of the page, puts the day back as it was before you accepted the plan. There is one undo.
Reading the board #
| You see | Means |
|---|---|
| Slot 9:00 AM–12:00 PM or Any time | The stop’s time slot. |
| Late by 12 min | The plan reaches the stop after its slot ends. |
| Tight: 6 min to spare | It arrives close to the end of its slot. |
| Locked to Truck 1 | The stop stays on that vehicle when you plan again. |
| Shift, Leaves, Back, driving and waiting time, km and Load | Each route’s hours, distance and how full the vehicle is. |
| Couldn’t place | Stops the plan couldn’t fit, each with the reason. |
Why a stop couldn’t be placed:
- “No vehicle to plan with.”
- “It is locked to a vehicle that can’t take it.”
- “Too big for any vehicle: it needs …, the biggest vehicle takes ….”
- “No travel time to this address (no coordinates).” The stop Needs a pin: see Orders, stops and the Deliveries page.
- “Too far to reach in its slot: the earliest arrival is …, the slot ends at ….”
- “No shift is long enough: it would finish at …, the shift ends at ….”
- “No room left on any vehicle for this stop in its slot.”
Click a stop to see its customer, address, items, notes and phone, and Open order. From the keyboard, arrow keys move between stops, Enter opens one, L locks it and M moves it.
If someone else changes the day while you plan, the board tells you: “Someone changed this day while you were planning. It has been reloaded: plan it again.”
The map #
Click Map to show the day’s routes on a map, each in its vehicle’s colour; Hide map closes it. If the map can’t load, the board says “The map could not load.” and draws the routes as straight lines instead.
Planning settings #
Open Settings and find Planning.
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Vehicles start at and Vehicles finish by | 08:00 and 17:00 | The working hours of vehicles that have no hours of their own. |
| Average speed (km/h) | 35 | For travel times by straight line. |
| Road distance factor | 1.3 | Straight-line distance × this factor gives the road distance. |
| Plan for | Least time | Least time or Least distance. |
| Allowed late (minutes) | 0 | How late a stop may be before it counts as late. |
| Travel times | By road | By road (needs an openrouteservice or Google key under Map look-ups) or Straight lines × road distance factor. |
| Plan with | The built-in planner | The built-in planner, openrouteservice (your key under Map look-ups) or Your own VROOM server (with Your VROOM server address, an https address). |
Below the board, a line says which travel times the plan used: “Travel times: by road.” or “Travel times: straight lines × road factor (add an openrouteservice or Google key under Settings for road times).”
Outside planners #
An outside planner gets numbered places, travel times, time windows and loads, never names or addresses. If it fails or doesn’t answer, the built-in planner plans the day, and a note on the board says why, for example “The route planner set in Settings didn’t answer, so the built-in planner planned this day.” Outside planners come with the Ultimate plan; on other plans the built-in planner plans the day and your choice stays saved.
Good to know #
- Plan the day plans one location at a time. Each vehicle starts and finishes at its own location.
- When a stop’s slot changes on the same day, it stays on its route and its time updates the next time the route is timed. A stop that moves to another day leaves its route.
- Once a route is sent, the order sync no longer rewrites its stops. See Orders, stops and the Deliveries page.
- To change a sent route, use the Schedule: see Schedule, run sheets and reports. The driver’s phone shows the change.
