Every setting, in detail

Settings → Jobber connection. One click authorizes RugRoutes against your Jobber account. If the connection ever needs re-authorizing (Jobber tokens expire periodically), the dashboard shows a banner and Settings shows the reason - reconnecting takes the same one click.

Disconnecting stops RugRoutes from reading or writing anything in your Jobber account.

Settings → Depots. A depot is where routes start and end. You need at least one before you can optimize, and you can add as many as you like - give each one a name and an address.

If your team dispatches out of more than one location, every route picks its own depot at optimize time from the Choose depot control next to it on the day view. Routes that share a depot are planned out of the same address; routes on different depots are planned independently.

A default duration fills in whenever a job’s own duration isn’t set in Jobber. Each stop type carries its own (Settings → Stop types); anytime tasks and requests have theirs under Settings → Scheduling defaults.

Max shift length (Settings → Scheduling defaults) is how long a route’s day is expected to run, counted from its start time and never past end of day. It is the main thing that spreads work across routes instead of piling it onto one.

Settings → Stop types. A stop type is a kind of work your crew does - Pickup, Delivery, Measure, Repair, whatever your team actually calls them. You define the whole list yourself.

Each one carries a default duration, and that is what makes them worth setting up. Tell RugRoutes once that a Pickup takes 20 minutes, and every pickup on every day is planned at 20 minutes without anyone entering a number. A job only needs its own “Est. Duration (min)” when it genuinely runs longer or shorter than the standard.

A stop type’s name has to exactly match the option text on Jobber’s own “Stop Type” custom field dropdown - RugRoutes reads whatever value is already set on a job, it doesn’t manage the dropdown itself.

Settings → Calendar sync. Jobs (Visits) are always included. You can also opt in to:

• Tasks - pulled directly, same as jobs.
• Requests - a bare Request has no date or time of its own in Jobber; what shows up here is the scheduled on-site estimate (Assessment) attached to it. A Request with no assessment booked has nowhere to plot on a map and won’t appear.
• Completed items - shown for visibility but excluded from routing by default. Turning this off drops them from the day view entirely instead of just excluding them.

Events read the same as Tasks but Jobber’s API has no way to reassign an existing event, so they display for planning purposes only and Approve never touches them.

Settings → Scheduling defaults, under Stops already scheduled in Jobber. A stop that already has a time in Jobber is a commitment somebody made, so RugRoutes does not move it. How much room it has depends on whether it has an arrival window in Jobber:

• With an arrival window - it can be scheduled anywhere inside that window, as close to its scheduled time as the day allows.
• Without one - it keeps its exact Jobber time.

Both settings below apply only to stops without an arrival window, and both exist to keep other stops from crowding them. Arrive up to (min) early allows an early arrival, never a late one. Extra time at the stop (min) holds a buffer afterwards so the next stop isn’t planned on its heels.

Settings → Arrival time in instructions. When enabled, Approving an optimized route adds a line like “Estimated arrival: 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM” to the job/task/request’s instructions - prefixed or appended, your choice.

Re-approving replaces this line instead of stacking a new one on top every time.

Settings → Billing shows your current plan, when the trial ends or the next renewal falls, and a link through to manage the card, switch plans, or cancel.

Your plan sets how many routes you can run in a day and how many optimize runs you get each month. The Stops card keeps a running count - “N of M optimize runs this month” - so you can see where you stand without opening Settings.

The day is planned as a set of routes - Route 1, Route 2 and so on - rather than as a list of drivers. Each route has its own depot and its own set of people assigned to it, and it is the route that gets a stop order, a drive time and a mileage total.

The bar across the top of the Stops card tracks the day through three stages, and the colour of the filled portion tells you which one you are in:

• Queued - stops are selected but nothing has been planned yet.
• Optimized - a plan exists but nothing has been sent to Jobber.
• In Jobber - Approve has landed. While a write-back is still in flight this reads Sending and that section of the bar moves.

Each stop in the list can show:

• A type badge (Task / Request / Event) for anything that isn’t a Job.
• Its Stop Type, or “Stop type not set” if Jobber’s field is blank.
• “Anytime” if it has no real time of its own in Jobber.
• “No arrival window” if Jobber gave it a time but no window around it.
• “Completed” if Jobber already marked it done.
• “Address not found” if it couldn’t be geocoded - see below.
• A lock marker, with the reason for the lock called out - see below.
• A badge when the plan can’t honour its time: one for a stop that falls outside its customer arrival window, and a separate one for a stop already fixed to a time that the route can’t reach by then.
• “Write-back failed” or “Not written back” after Approve, if that specific stop didn’t save to Jobber.

A stop is locked when moving it would break something a person already decided. Locking does not depend on whether the stop is selected, and it does not depend on which routes you picked for the day - it is about what Jobber already says. There are two reasons a stop locks, and the card tells you which one applies:

• Somebody is already assigned to it in Jobber. Approving a plan would otherwise reassign it, so RugRoutes leaves the assignment alone and routes the rest of the day around it.
• It already has a set time in Jobber. The time is treated as a commitment; Optimize keeps it and picks the driver.

Either lock can be lifted on the stop itself when you actually do want it moved. Release hands the assignment back to the optimizer, which means approving a new plan will change who it’s assigned to in Jobber. Unlock gives up the fixed time so the stop can be rescheduled. Both are reversible until you approve, and a released stop becomes an ordinary draggable stop in the list.

A Task, Event, or Request with no Property attached in Jobber has no address at all, so it can’t be geocoded or routed. When that happens, an input appears right on the stop where you can type one in.

Pick the date with the arrows either side of the date picker, choose which routes are running and each one’s depot, select the stops you want planned, then Optimize. Each route comes back with its own ordered stop list, shown in the list and on the map.

Locked stops are honoured first and everything else is planned around them, including waiting rather than arriving early. Customer arrival windows are respected per stop. Work is spread across the routes you staffed rather than loaded onto the first one, and the emptier the day is the less weight driving time carries, so a light day gets balanced routes instead of one long loop.

Changing the date clears the working plan for the day you left, so a half-finished plan never leaks onto another date.

Anything Optimize couldn’t place lands in a “couldn’t be scheduled” list with the reason: it doesn’t fit in the time available, it’s outside every staffed route’s shift, its address couldn’t be located, or there’s no eligible route for it. A stop locked to somebody who isn’t working today is listed separately, since that isn’t a routing failure.

If it has usable coordinates you can add to route anyway. RugRoutes picks the route that fits it best rather than asking you to choose, inserts it in time order rather than appending it to the end, and pulls that route’s start earlier if that’s what it takes to cover a fixed time. ETAs for the rest of that route recalculate straight away.

Drag a stop within a route to reorder it, or drag it to a different route entirely. ETAs, drive time, and mileage recalculate after every drag - no need to re-optimize just to move one stop. Locked stops on that route are accounted for during recalculation too, so a dragged stop won’t land on top of one, and a stop that only just squeezes in ahead of a fixed appointment gets moved after it instead.

Reset to optimized throws away your hand edits and puts the route back to what Optimize produced.

Approve writes driver assignment and scheduled time back into Jobber for every selected stop. A stop that already had a time in Jobber keeps that exact time - approving never drifts it, even by a few minutes.

You’ll see a live count of successful, failed, and (for Events) intentionally-skipped write-backs. A Retry button appears if anything failed, and only retries the stops that actually failed - not the whole plan.

If anything changes in Jobber after you’ve optimized - a job rescheduled, canceled, or newly added - a banner appears telling you so. Optimize again to re-plan just what’s left; completed jobs stay excluded automatically.