Plan your first route in 5 minutesCopy link

This walkthrough needs no account or downloading any data. It uses a small ready-made plan, a bakery van delivering to eight cafés in Berlin, Germany. Every screenshot in this article shows that plan.

Tutorial - First route
A bakery van delivering to eight cafés across central Berlin. No constraints beyond service times — the smallest realistic plan.
Open in app

Every step below works the same on your own data: paste five to ten real addresses instead.

Step 1: Start with your stopsCopy link

Open the app. The Home page offers five ways to start a plan:

The Routing24 Home page with the four new-plan options: build manually, paste an address list, import an Excel file, and import from Google Calendar

  • Start empty plan to add orders one at a time by address.
  • Paste address list for a batch geocoding and simplified setup, one address per line.
  • Import Excel file for customization of any supported constraint and rules from one structured spreadsheet file.
  • Import calendar to import Google Calendar events as orders.
  • AI skill to prompt custom data import from Claude Cowork and other compatible AI assistants from your own format or system.

For this tutorial, press OPEN IN APP on the example card above instead. Routing24 builds the example spreadsheet and runs it through the normal import, so the tutorial goes through the same import path as your own files:

The import review dialog reporting 8 orders, 1 depot, 1 vehicle, and 9 geolocated addresses, with Cancel, Continue, and Optimize buttons

Every manual import will show this review dialog at the end. It reports what was found, what was skipped, and whether every address resolved to a location on the map.

Press Continue to accept it and review data manually, or Optimize to jump straight to route optimization. In this walk-through, we will press Continue and explore what was imported.

Step 2: Review the ordersCopy link

Open Orders in the left menu (see screenshot below). Each row is one order: an ID, an address, and its rules. Each café carries a delivery load (that was loaded at the depot e.g. starting location) and spends five minutes (Service time) on each delivery. The map shows every stop as a clickable pin.

The Orders page listing the eight cafés with service times, next to a map of Berlin with a pin per stop

Click on any row address to select it in the list and on the map at the same time and change its details.

The Orders page with one order selected: its row highlighted in the list and its pin popup open on the map with Find, Edit, and Close buttons

Press Edit button to change any order, or + Add new to create a new one.

Close-up of an order row with its hover action buttons revealed: Edit, Show on map, and Delete

A route can be built from addresses alone; other order properties like load quantity and time windows can be added later.

The top of the order editor: ID and Address fields, with the Order and Limits groups collapsed below

Step 3: Check the fleetCopy link

Open Fleet. The example has one van: capacity of 20, a shift from 08:00 to 16:00, and costs set on the vehicle. The Depots page holds the bakery, the address the van leaves from and returns to.

The Fleet page showing one van with its capacity, cost, and shift

Why the depot matters

The optimizer plans a round trip: depot, stops in the best order, back to depot for additional load if needed, delvier more orders, and back to depot at the end of the day. Set the depot to an address your drivers leave from, because every route distance minimized from there.

Step 4: OptimizeCopy link

Open Optimize page from the left menu and press the Optimize button to start route optimization. Small plans like this finish in a few seconds; the header shows TIME LEFT while it works.

The Optimize page after solving: one route through all eight cafés with ETAs per stop, 14.3 miles, about an hour and a half

The result has three levels:

  • The header strip sums up the plan: orders, routes, total distance, duration, and cost.
  • Each route card shows its vehicle with per-route stats: stops, distance, duration, and load.
  • Each stop row has an ETA, the travel time and distance from the previous stop, the service time, and the load it drops off.

The map draws the route in visiting order, from the depot through every stop and back.

Step 5: Adjust and re-runCopy link

The solution remains editable after a solve:

  • Drag a stop to another position or route and the plan recalculates. Drop it on Drop here to unassign to take it out.
  • If an order could not be served, it appears in a red Unassigned section with the reason and a suggestion for where it would fit best.
  • Undo / Redo cover every manual change.
  • Press Optimize again for a fresh plan.

See Edit routes by hand for the full set of manual editing operations.

Step 6: Export or shareCopy link

  • Export (next to Optimize) downloads the whole solution as an Excel workbook: ordered stops with ETAs, per-route stats, and Google Maps links per stop. Available on every tier.
  • Share route (on each route card) sends a driver a link that opens the route on their phone, with turn-by-turn handoff to their maps app. Route sharing is part of the Starter plan. The free tier allows a limited number of shares.
Saving

Plans save automatically as you work, to your account if you are signed in, or to this browser if not. See Accounts, saving, and sharing.

What to try nextCopy link

The loop is import, review, optimize, adjust, dispatch. Accuracy improves as you add your real constraints:

  • Add time windows and service times so ETAs match reality.
  • Set vehicle capacity and per-order load so routes stay within vehicle capacity.
  • Set shifts so routes fit a real working day.

Each has its own article: start with Time windows, service time, priority, and load and Vehicles & Constraints.