Acumatica Route Planner for Field Service Crews and Staff

Plan Acumatica field service routes with Google Route Optimization, crew or staff selection, optional priority rules, and appointment creation.

Planning a field service day involves more than finding the shortest path between customers. Dispatchers must balance travel time, estimated service duration, available resources, and the importance of each job.

Route Planner for Acumatica connects these decisions in a planning workflow. Dispatchers select service orders and crews or individual staff, calculate proposed routes using Google Route Optimization, review the results, and create scheduled Acumatica appointments.

Delivered as a separate add-on to Crew Dispatch Board, Route Planner extends the dispatch workflow without crowding the Service Order Dispatch Map.

Every planning session starts with a branch location, dispatch date, and shift start and end times. The selected branch location serves as both the route’s departure point and return destination.

Dispatchers can filter service orders by branch location and order-date range, then select the work to include.

The All / Unscheduled selector provides additional visibility. Unscheduled shows open orders without non-canceled appointments. All also displays already-scheduled open orders, which are identified and excluded from new route appointment creation.

Why it matters: Dispatchers can focus on eligible work while maintaining visibility into orders that have already been scheduled.

Route Planner supports two mutually exclusive assignment modes:

• Crews: Select established teams and use their configured staff assignments.
• Individual Staff: Select multiple people, with a separate route calculated for each person.

Individual Staff mode includes Skill and License Type filters, plus availability indicators. Generated unavailability is highlighted in red, while existing appointment overlaps are highlighted in orange, with text explaining each condition.

Order-specific qualification checks help ensure that selected staff meet the service requirements and native appointment-selection restrictions.

Why it matters: Dispatchers can plan for established teams or individual technicians without treating separately selected people as one traveling crew.

Not every planning day requires the same scheduling rules. Route Planner provides independent Include Priority and Include Severity options.

When both are enabled, priority takes precedence over severity. When either option is disabled, that factor is ignored.

Ordering applies within each crew’s or person’s route, rather than forcing all resources to follow one shared sequence. This allows separate teams to work simultaneously.

Dispatchers can also select an optional First Service Order for each crew or individual. That chosen first stop overrides urgency ordering for itself, while the enabled rules apply to the remaining stops.

The planning calculation considers both road travel and time spent performing the work.

Service duration comes from the service order’s estimated duration. When no positive estimate is available, Route Planner uses the default service duration configured in Routing Preferences.

Google Route Optimization calculates the proposed road routes with traffic consideration. Individual Staff mode also accounts for known bookings and generated unavailable periods when constructing the planning model.

Why it matters: The proposal considers the time required to complete service work, not just the distance between addresses.

Route results appear in a dedicated Results view, keeping the planning process separate from the dispatch map.

Dispatchers can review:

• A separate route for each selected crew or staff member.
• Ordered stops and proposed appointment times.
• Estimated travel time, total route duration, and distance.
• A map showing the branch location and numbered service stops.
• Scheduling warnings and service orders that were not routed.

Calculating a proposal does not automatically create appointments. Dispatchers review the results and explicitly choose when to proceed.

After review, Route Planner creates native Acumatica appointments with the proposed scheduled times and assignments.

Crew routes use the crew-assignment workflow. Individual Staff routes assign the selected person directly, without adding a crew or fleet vehicle.

Before creation, the customization rechecks service-order eligibility and resource information. Individual Staff routes also recheck qualifications and availability at the proposed appointment times. Scheduling conflicts follow the configured Prevent, Warn, or Allow behavior, while missing schedule coverage is identified for review.

Why it matters: Dispatchers can move from a reviewed proposal to scheduled appointments without manually reentering every stop and assignment.

Crew Dispatch Board helps dispatchers understand the backlog. Route Planner adds a separate workflow for organizing selected work into daily routes.

Together, they support a practical progression: identify eligible service orders, select the people doing the work, review proposed routes, and create appointments within Acumatica.

Request a Route Planner demo to see how your team can turn unscheduled service orders into reviewed daily routes and scheduled appointments.

What is Route Planner for Acumatica?
Route Planner is a separate add-on to Crew Dispatch Board that uses Google Route Optimization to propose routes for selected service orders, crews, or individual staff.

Can I plan routes for multiple crews?
Yes. Dispatchers select specific crews and review a separate proposed route for each. Individual Staff mode similarly creates one route per selected person.

Can I choose the first appointment for each route?
Yes. An optional first service order can be selected for each crew or person. It overrides urgency ordering for that stop, but not qualification or availability requirements.

Does calculating a route automatically create appointments?
No. Calculation produces a proposal. Appointments are created only after the dispatcher reviews the results and explicitly confirms creation.

Does Route Planner automatically reschedule existing appointments?
No. Already-scheduled orders can be displayed for visibility, but the current workflow creates appointments for eligible unscheduled work rather than moving existing bookings.