Short answer
Recurring field service scheduling has its own vocabulary: cycles and anchor dates decide which weeks a customer is due; service windows, no-go times and time on site decide where a visit can go; route optimization and route density decide how much driving it takes; and the change log and To notify list keep track of what moved and who to tell.
Terms
- Anchor date (first due date)
- The date a recurring service is first due. Every later visit in its cycle is counted from it, which keeps every-other-week and monthly customers on the right weeks.
- Arrival window
- The time range a customer is told to expect the technician, such as 8–10 AM. Often the same as, or inside, the service window.
- Backlog (needs a spot)
- Visits that are due but not yet placed on a route, for example after a day is closed or a technician calls out.
- Biweekly
- Every other week: 26 visits a year. Not the same as twice a month (24 a year).
- Call-off
- A technician telling you on short notice that they can’t work. Their stops need to be covered, moved or skipped.
- Change log
- A record of every change to the schedule: what moved, who moved it and why.
- Clock-out
- The time a shift must end. A route that runs past clock-out means overtime or a missed stop.
- Crew size
- How many technicians a visit needs. Time on site usually drops as crew size rises.
- Cycle (cadence, frequency)
- How often a recurring service repeats: weekly, every N weeks, monthly, quarterly, twice a year, yearly or seasonal.
- Dispatch
- Assigning and sending technicians to jobs, usually the same day. Different from building the recurring week ahead.
- Drive time
- The time to travel between stops on real roads, as opposed to straight-line distance.
- Find a spot
- In Crewtide, the tool that ranks every place a visit could go and shows what each option pushes back or bumps.
- Master customer list
- One list of every recurring customer and their rules, from which each week is generated.
- Night route
- A route that runs overnight and crosses midnight, such as 10:30 PM to 4:00 AM, treated as one shift.
- No-go time
- A day or time a customer must not be served: lunch rush, event days, school days.
- Preventive maintenance (PM)
- Recurring maintenance visits under an agreement, such as quarterly HVAC service.
- Published week
- A version of the week that’s frozen for the team to work from. Later changes are tracked as updates.
- Recurring route planning
- Building each week’s routes from customers that repeat on cycles, so every due visit fits its window and routes stay short.
- Ripple
- The knock-on effect of moving one visit: later stops pushed back, another stop bumped, a route past clock-out.
- Route density
- How close together a route’s stops are. Denser routes mean less driving per visit.
- Route optimization
- Software that decides which technician serves which stops and in what order, to cut driving while keeping every rule.
- Route sheet
- A printed or exported list of a technician’s stops for the day, in order, with times and notes.
- Service window
- The hours a customer allows service, such as 5:30–9:00 AM before a restaurant opens.
- Time on site
- How long a visit takes once the technician arrives. It often depends on crew size.
- To notify list
- In Crewtide, the list of customers whose visit moved, was skipped or was added, with the old time, the new time and the reason.
- Usual day
- The day a customer normally gets service. Keeping it is a big part of customer satisfaction.
- Usual technician
- The technician who normally serves a customer. Continuity matters for access and quality.
- Vehicle routing problem (VRP)
- The mathematical problem behind route optimization: finding the lowest-cost routes for a fleet given customers and constraints.
- Weather day
- A day closed for weather. Its visits need to move into the rest of the week.
- What-if week
- A second version of a week used to compare options before publishing. Coming with Crewtide Pro.