A spreadsheet is the right tool while one person can hold the whole week in their head: a handful of technicians, few service windows and changes you can absorb with a phone call.
Software like Crewtide pays off when the weekly rebuild takes a day or more, every-other-week and monthly customers get missed or doubled, moving one customer bumps three others, and nobody but the scheduler knows why the week looks the way it does. Crewtide imports the same spreadsheet, so trying it costs an afternoon.
At a glance
| What matters for recurring routes | Spreadsheets | Crewtide |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Anything. Most teams start here | Recurring commercial service teams of about 5 to 100 technicians who plan the same customers every week |
| Published price | $0 for the software; the cost is the scheduler’s hours and the driving | Core $49 per technician a month billed annually, or $59 month to month. Pro $79 or $95, coming soon |
| What you pay for | Excel or Google Workspace licences you already have | Technicians on a route that month. Office users are free and unlimited. Minimum 3 technicians |
| Free trial | YesAlready open on your screen | Yes14 days, no credit card |
| Recurring visits generated from one customer list | PartlyCycles are flipped on and off by hand each week, or with formulas someone has to maintain | YesCustomer rules hold each visit cycle and usual days, and every week is generated from them |
| Plans a whole week across every technician | NoYou place every visit yourself | YesBuilding the week places every due visit on a route, with route optimization on every plan |
| Service windows per customer | PartlyA column you have to remember to check | YesService windows and no-go times for each customer |
| Crew size per visit | PartlyA note in a cell | YesTime on site set per crew size |
| Shows what a move pushes back or bumps before you commit | NoMoving a customer bumps someone else, found out later | YesFind a spot ranks every option and shows what it pushes back or bumps |
| Change log with a reason for every edit | PartlyVersion history shows what changed, not why | YesEvery edit is logged with a reason, and undo works step by step |
| List of customers to tell when a visit moves | NoPhone calls from memory | YesTo notify list with the old time, the new time and the reason |
| Sends customer texts and emails | NoOne call or text at a time | Coming soonTexts and emails from the To notify list come with Pro |
| Technician mobile app | PartlyA shared sheet or a printed copy | Coming soonRoute sheets to print or export today; the phone app comes with Pro |
| Invoicing, quotes and payments | NoSeparate tools | NoNot the goal: keep your current system for invoicing and customer records |
| Getting your data in | YesIt is the data | YesImport customers from a spreadsheet; QuickBooks and Jobber sync are coming with Pro |
What a spreadsheet does well
- It costs nothing extra and everyone already knows how to use it.
- It bends to anything. Odd customers, one-off notes and color codes all fit.
- It’s a good master list. A clean sheet of customers, addresses, cycles, windows and time on site is exactly what any scheduling tool needs. Keep it, even if you move the planning elsewhere.
Where it breaks for weekly routes
The weekly rebuild usually looks like this: copy last week’s tab, mistakes included; flip every-other-week and monthly customers on and off; check time off, holidays and events across calendars, texts and memory; untangle conflicts where moving one customer bumps another; call every customer whose visit moved; then re-enter every change in the system the business runs on.
| Task | Spreadsheet, whiteboard and phone | Crewtide |
|---|---|---|
| Recurring cadences | Flipped on and off by hand every week | Generated from one customer list |
| Moving a customer | Bumps someone else, found out later | Find a spot shows who moves and what breaks first |
| Conflicts | Found by crews in the field | Flagged live; red must be fixed |
| Drive times | Guessed | Real road times; unknowns flagged instead of guessed |
| Customer notices | One phone call at a time | A To notify list with the old time, new time and reason |
| The record | Lives in one person’s head | Every change logged with a reason; undo step by step |
When software pays for itself
Work it out with two numbers: hours the scheduler spends rebuilding the week, and hours of driving a better plan would save. At about $31.50 an hour for a scheduler (the $24.20 median dispatcher wage plus about 30% for payroll costs) and about $52 an hour for a technician and van on the road ($30 of labor plus 30 miles at the IRS rate of 72.5¢), a 10-technician team that saves 4 scheduler hours and 6 driving hours a week saves about $437 a week, or about $21,800 over 50 weeks. Crewtide Core for that team is $5,880 a year billed annually.
Plug in your own numbers with the route planning cost calculator.
Signs you’ve outgrown the sheet: the rebuild takes most of a day; biweekly customers get missed or doubled; nobody else can build the week when the scheduler is out; customers find out about changes when the technician arrives.
Moving from your spreadsheet to Crewtide
- Tidy the master list.One row per customer with address, visit cycle, usual days, service window, no-go times, time on site and crew size. The free recurring schedule template has every column.
- Import it.Start the 14-day trial and import the sheet (Excel or CSV). See Excel or Google Sheets.
- Build next week and compare.Put it next to the week you built by hand: total drive time, visits that didn’t fit and conflicts.
Questions
Can you plan routes in Excel?
Yes. Many service teams keep the customer list and weekly plan in Excel. It works for small teams; it gets slow and error-prone once cycles, service windows and crews interact across many technicians.
Is there a free route planner for Google Sheets?
Google Sheets can hold the plan, and add-ons can map addresses, but it won’t schedule recurring visits around windows and crews on its own. Crewtide imports your sheet and has a 14-day free trial.
How do I schedule every-other-week customers in a spreadsheet?
Most teams add a column for the cycle and a week number, and filter each week. Our guide to biweekly and monthly service schedules shows the method and its pitfalls.
Do I have to give up my spreadsheet to use Crewtide?
No. Crewtide imports it, and you can export route sheets and change lists back to a spreadsheet after you publish the week.
Sources
Checked October 25, 2026. Plans and prices change; the vendor’s own page is the final word.