Can software automatically slot a new job into an existing recurring route by address?

Yes. It needs the address as a map pin, the job's cycle and duration, and each run's current day total. With those it can rank the runs by detour and show which ones still have room.

Can it suggest booking time slots based on the routes we already have?

It should. Jobber's Find a Time, for example, highlights slots with the shortest drive times. Check whether the suggestions count the drive from the yard and whether online bookings use the same logic.

Should I re-optimize the whole route when I add one job?

Usually not on a recurring route. Inserting the stop keeps every other customer on their day and close to their usual time. Run a full re-optimize at a planned moment, such as the start of a season, and tell customers before their times change.

What happens to the route when a recurring customer cancels?

The stop comes off and its time becomes room on that run. The next new job near that run fills the gap, and nothing else moves.

How do I handle a fortnightly job on a weekly run?

Put it on the weekly run in alternate weeks and count it in both weeks' totals, so the heavier week does not go over the limit. Some teams balance this by pairing two fortnightly sites on the same run, one in each week.

Do we have to replace our booking tool to get route-based slots?

Only if the booking tool cannot read your routes. If it has no API and its booking form cannot be changed, bookings will keep landing where the customer clicks, and the office will keep fixing the route afterwards.

Can a dispatcher see all crews for a day on one screen?

Ask to see it in the demo with your real number of crews and stops. A day view with every run, its total and its map is what makes a manual override safe.

FieldproxyAI-native field service software

Scheduling

How do I fit a new job into an existing recurring route?

Match the new job's frequency to a run that repeats on the same cycle, then compare only those runs by detour: the extra drive to visit the new address between two stops that are already on the run, minus the drive those two stops had between them. Pick the run with the smallest detour that still has room for the job's duration inside the day limit, insert the stop there, and leave every other stop's order alone. If no run has room, the job waits for a capacity change or starts a new run, and the customer is offered the days that do fit rather than any day they like.

Frequency first: a fortnightly site only fits a fortnightly run, or a weekly run every other week.
Detour = drive in to the new stop + drive out to the next stop, minus the drive that leg used to take.
Room = the day limit minus current stops, durations and drives. The detour and the new job both have to fit.
Insert, do not re-optimize: the other customers keep their day and their rough arrival time.
Offer the customer the slots that fit the route, not an open calendar.

Fieldproxy

This page is about recurring routes such as maintenance, mowing, cleaning and pest runs. Planning a whole week from scratch is a different job, covered on our weekly crew runs page.

Facts checked as of November 2026. Sources at the end of the page.

Step by step

How fitting a new job into a recurring route works, step by step

Whether a planner does it with a map or software does it on save, the same six checks decide where a new recurring job goes. Each one needs a field you can read off the job or the run.

1. Geocode the address before anything else

Turn the new site's address into a map pin and check it is the gate or the service entrance, not the middle of a big commercial lot. Every later step is drive time from this point, so a wrong pin puts the job on the wrong run.

2. Filter runs by frequency and day rules

List only the runs that repeat on the job's cycle: weekly, fortnightly, monthly, or a contract count such as 26 visits a year. Remove runs on days the site cannot take (no Monday access, a school site closed on Wednesdays, a strata garden that bans mowing before 8 am).

3. Work out the detour for each remaining run

For every pair of stops next to each other on a run, add the drive from the first stop to the new site and from the new site to the second stop, then subtract the drive the two stops had between them. The smallest number on that run is its best insertion point. This is the same idea route engines use when they insert jobs into existing routes without changing the order of the stops already there.

4. Check room in the day

Add the job's planned duration and the detour to the run's current total (durations plus every drive, including back to the yard). If the total passes the day limit, the run is full for this job even if the detour is small. Check crew skills and equipment too: a run without a spray licence cannot take a spray job.

5. Insert the stop and keep the rest fixed

Put the job at its best insertion point and leave the other stops in their order. A full re-optimization might save a few minutes more, but it moves existing customers to new arrival times, and on a recurring route customers notice. Routing APIs separate the two on purpose: Routific's insert endpoint finds the best place for a new visit while keeping the rest of the solution the same.

6. Offer the customer the slots that fit

Give the customer the 2 or 3 days and arrival windows where the job fits with the smallest detour, ranked. If they pick one, it becomes their recurring slot. If none suit, the next best run is offered with its real detour, so the office can see what the exception costs.

Failure modes

Why it goes wrong

These are the problems buyers described on our sales calls, by trade and size.

Run sheets cannot see the map

A New Zealand commercial landscaping company with about 15 maintenance staff, planning to grow to about 30, ran its maintenance from run sheets made in Excel. When a new contract was signed, someone had to work out by hand which run it belonged on, and visits were getting missed. A spreadsheet row has no idea that a new site sits two streets from the Thursday run.

Idle gaps between recurring jobs

A US residential cleaning company with most of its clients on recurring cleans said cleaners were waiting around between jobs because new bookings were placed wherever the customer asked, not where the route had room. It wanted booking times suggested from the existing route instead.

One cancellation rebuilds the week

The same company said a cleaner cancelling meant recalibrating the entire schedule. That is what happens when the only tool is a full re-optimize: every gap or new job reshuffles every customer.

No single view of the day's crews

A US residential lawn care company with 55-60 staff at peak, whose mowing crews do 20-30 stops a day, asked to see the whole crew roster for a day in one view. Without it, a dispatcher fitting in a new property cannot see which crew is already near it.

Booking tools that do not know the route

Online booking widgets and customer-picked calendars fill any open hour. The cleaning company above could not change its booking form at all, so every online booking landed wherever the customer clicked, and the office fixed the route afterwards.

Route fit is invisible to the dispatcher

A pest control group with 400-500 technicians, built by acquisition, asked for a full schedule with route fit for its dispatchers. At that size, nobody can eyeball which of dozens of routes has room near a new address.

Options

Ways to do it

Real approaches, as their own documentation describes them in November 2026. Test each one by adding a real new customer to a real week of your routes.

Approach	How a new job finds its route	Watch for
Run sheet plus Google Maps	A planner looks at each run's suburbs and checks one or two candidate legs in Maps	No detour number, no day total, and it depends on one person who knows the runs
Jobber master route and Find a Time	The master route is a running list of clients you insert a property into; Find a Time highlights slots with the shortest drive times in green	Route optimization only arranges anytime visits; Find a Time is on Grow and Plus, and does not count the drive from home or HQ for the first or last job
FieldRoutes route slots	Routes have a set number of spots; Recommended Routes suggests routes by distance, and Recommend Appointments pulls jobs from the Job Pool into a route	Fit is judged by distance and spot count, so check how it treats long and short jobs
ServiceTitan Adaptive Capacity	Calculates available slots from shifts, zones, skills and existing job load; the CSR clicks Get Availability and sees open windows	Every job type needs a default duration, or the capacity algorithm overbooks badly
Dynamics 365 schedule assistant or a routing API	Dynamics recommends resources by availability, skills and location with travel time; APIs like Routific and Telogis insert jobs into existing routes	Dynamics does not enforce capacity or time windows if you book outside its suggestions; an API needs someone to build and run it
Fieldproxy	Recurring jobs sit on runs set up to your cycles; route planning and the Dispatch agent look for the nearest run with room, and the Command Center answers fit questions in plain English	Set up to your rules, so write down your day limit, cycles and crew skills before the first test

Vendor facts come from each vendor's help center or docs, linked in Sources. Features change; confirm in a demo with your own routes.

Worked example

A worked example: one new commercial site, three candidate runs

Say you run commercial grounds maintenance with 5 crews of 2 from one yard. Each crew has a fixed run for each weekday, and most sites are on a fortnightly cycle. Your day limit is 8 hours including all driving. You sign a new office park that needs a 45 minute fortnightly visit, with no access on Mondays.

Step one removes the Monday runs and any weekly-only runs. Three fortnightly runs are left that pass within a few kilometres: Crew B's Tuesday, Crew C's Thursday and Crew E's Thursday.

Crew B's Tuesday: the best place is between stop 4 and stop 5, which are 10 minutes apart. Yard order says stop 4 to the new site is 8 minutes and the new site to stop 5 is 9 minutes. The detour is 8 plus 9 minus 10, or 7 minutes. The run currently totals 7 hours 20 minutes, so adding 45 minutes plus 7 minutes of detour gives 8 hours 12 minutes. It is over the limit, so Crew B's Tuesday is out, even though it has the smallest detour.

Crew C's Thursday: the best place is between stop 2 and stop 3, which are 12 minutes apart. The legs in and out are 11 and 15 minutes, so the detour is 14 minutes. The run totals 6 hours 50 minutes, and 6:50 + 0:45 + 0:14 is 7 hours 49 minutes. It fits.

Crew E's Thursday: the detour is 21 minutes and the run totals 6 hours 10 minutes, so it also fits, at 7 hours 16 minutes. It is the second choice. Offer the customer Thursday mornings with Crew C first, and Crew E as the fallback if C's arrival window does not suit. Stops 3 to 9 on Crew C's run move about 59 minutes later; stops 1 and 2 do not move at all. Nobody else's day changes.

If Crew B's Tuesday had been the only option, the right move would be to look for a small job on that run that could swap to another run, not to squeeze the office park in and push the crew into overtime every second Tuesday.

Buying checklist

What to check before you buy

Good signs

Recurring routes are a real record with a cycle (weekly, fortnightly, monthly), not just repeated jobs that happen to land on the same day.
A new job shows the 2 or 3 best runs with the detour in minutes and the new day total.
Inserting a job keeps the order of the other stops unless you ask for a full re-optimize.
The day total counts the drive out from the yard and back.
Skills, equipment and access days are checked before a run is suggested.
Office staff and online booking both see slots that fit the route, not an open calendar.
A cancellation leaves a gap that the next new job can fill, without rebuilding the week.

Red flags

The only routing button re-optimizes the whole day and moves every customer.
Only flexible anytime visits can be routed, so fixed customer windows sit outside the route.
Route fit uses straight-line distance, not road drive time.
Fit is counted in stops per day, so a 3 hour site and a 15 minute site count the same.
Recurring jobs are copied forward as separate jobs, so changing a run means editing every future visit.

Fieldproxy

Setting it up in Fieldproxy

Fieldproxy is set up around how your runs work today, so the setup starts from your current run sheets. Settings marked e.g. are examples.

Runs as recurring maintenance

Each site carries its recurring maintenance or contract with its cycle (e.g. fortnightly, Thursday, Crew C) and a planned duration. Your current run sheets are imported, so the runs start exactly as your crews know them.

Durations from real visits

The technician app records GPS check-in and check-out on every visit, so each site's planned duration can be updated from what actually happened (e.g. a Last visit duration field on the site) and the day totals stay honest.

Finding the run for a new job

When a new site is added, route planning and the Dispatch agent (/agents/dispatch-agent) look for the run that passes closest with room, checking distance, skills and inventory. In the Command Center (/agents/command-center) you can ask, for example, which fortnightly Thursday run has room for a 45 minute site at this address, and adding it comes with a confirm card and Undo.

Offering the slot

The customer gets the offered day and window by customer link, text or email. The Text agent (/agents/text-agent) answers replies against the real job, so a customer who asks for a different day gets the days that actually fit.

Gaps and overloads

The Watcher agent (/agents/watcher-agent) flags runs that go over the day limit after a change, and recurring visits that are due but have no run.

Price

One price per company with unlimited users, so every crew lead and office scheduler has a login. See /pricing for the plans.

How switching works

How switching to Fieldproxy works

We move your data over and set the system up to the way you already work. Fieldproxy replaces the old tool; it does not run alongside it.

Send us your run sheets
Share your current runs with each site's address, cycle, day and typical duration, plus your yard or yards. We use them as the test data.
We set up your rules
Cycles, day limit, crew skills and equipment, access days and the statuses you use for new, offered and confirmed.
We add a real new customer
Take your next signed site and we show where it fits, with the detour and the new day total, next to where your planner would have put it.
Crews go live on their runs
Crews get the Android or iOS app with their runs and the run sheet is retired.

Recurring jobs Dispatching and scheduling Dispatch agent Pricing

FAQ

Questions people ask

Can software automatically slot a new job into an existing recurring route by address?: Yes. It needs the address as a map pin, the job's cycle and duration, and each run's current day total. With those it can rank the runs by detour and show which ones still have room.
Can it suggest booking time slots based on the routes we already have?: It should. Jobber's Find a Time, for example, highlights slots with the shortest drive times. Check whether the suggestions count the drive from the yard and whether online bookings use the same logic.
Should I re-optimize the whole route when I add one job?: Usually not on a recurring route. Inserting the stop keeps every other customer on their day and close to their usual time. Run a full re-optimize at a planned moment, such as the start of a season, and tell customers before their times change.
What happens to the route when a recurring customer cancels?: The stop comes off and its time becomes room on that run. The next new job near that run fills the gap, and nothing else moves.
How do I handle a fortnightly job on a weekly run?: Put it on the weekly run in alternate weeks and count it in both weeks' totals, so the heavier week does not go over the limit. Some teams balance this by pairing two fortnightly sites on the same run, one in each week.
Do we have to replace our booking tool to get route-based slots?: Only if the booking tool cannot read your routes. If it has no API and its booking form cannot be changed, bookings will keep landing where the customer clicks, and the office will keep fixing the route afterwards.
Can a dispatcher see all crews for a day on one screen?: Ask to see it in the demo with your real number of crews and stops. A day view with every run, its total and its map is what makes a manual override safe.

Sources

Competitor details on this page come from the vendors' own pages and documentation, checked as of November 2026. Plans and prices change, so check the vendor's current page before you decide.

Jobber Help Center: how to route: https://help.getjobber.com/en/articles/how-to-route/
Jobber Help Center: new schedule (Find a Time): https://help.getjobber.com/en/articles/new-schedule/
FieldRoutes knowledge base: how to schedule appointments: https://knowledgebase.fieldroutes.com/docs/how-to-schedule-appointments
ServiceTitan Help: plan your team's capacity: https://help.servicetitan.com/docs/plan-your-team-s-capacity
Microsoft Learn: schedule assistant: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/field-service/schedule-assistant
Verizon Connect: assigning jobs to routes: https://platform-help.verizonconnect.com/plan_assigning_jobs_to_routes.htm
Telogis RouteCloud: inserting jobs: https://routecloud.telogis.com/docs/guides/introduction/inserting_jobs.html
Routific API: insert new order in existing routes: https://docs.routific.com/reference/re-optimize-solution
Google Route Optimization API: optimizeTours: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/route-optimization/reference/rest/v1/projects/optimizeTours
ServiceMinder: route optimization: https://serviceminder.knowledgeowl.com/help/route-optimization
Detrack: add jobs to an existing route: https://help.detrack.com/en/articles/12291232-how-to-add-jobs-to-an-existing-route
Service Autopilot: Smart Routes: https://www.serviceautopilot.com/?p=24579

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