The workspace: pages, map, and routesCopy link
All data you are entering or importing to Routing24 is connected inside one Routing Plan.
A plan holds your orders, your depots, your vehicles, and the optimization result. The pages in the left menu are different views of that one plan, and the map is shared across all of them.
The screenshots below use the ready-made Time windows plan (12 orders, 2 vans). Load it to work from the same data.
A plan is one workbookCopy link
You can think about one plan as one project or one Excel workbook with three sheets:
| Sheet | Page in Routing24 | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| Orders | Orders | The stops to visit, with time windows, load, service time |
| Depots | Depots | Where vehicles start and finish |
| Vehicles | Fleet | The vehicles and their capacity, shift, and costs |
That is what an Excel export of the plan contains, and what an Excel import fills in. See Import from Excel or CSV.
Three points to remember:
- A plan is self-contained. Everything the optimizer needs is inside it.
- Nothing is global. There is no company-wide vehicle list and no company-wide address book. The 5 vans you set up in yesterday's plan are not in the empty plan you start today; you copy them over from that plan. See Carrying data into a new plan.
- An plan exported contains all data it was built from, so an exported Excel file can be re-imported if needed.
One browser tab, one planCopy link
A tab always shows exactly one plan, and every page in the left menu edits that same plan.
To work on two plans at once, open a second tab:
- On My Plans, select the plan and ⌘/Ctrl-click the Load plan button.
- Or ⌘/Ctrl-click (or middle-click) a plan card under Recent Plans on Home.
Each tab then keeps its own plan, and each saves on its own.
Two tabs on different plans are independent. Two tabs on the same plan both write to the same record: the tab that saves last wins, and the other tab reloads whatever was saved. Keep one plan in one tab.
Starting a new plan works the other way around: Home > Start empty plan replaces the plan in the current tab, offering to save unsaved changes first. To keep the old plan on screen, open the new one in a second tab instead.
The plan ID lives in the URLCopy link
A brand-new plan has no ID yet, and the URL says so:
/app/plan/new/orders
A few seconds after your first edit the plan auto-saves, and the placeholder is replaced by the plan's permanent ID:
/app/plan/8f2c41d6-9a07-4be1-b3f2-51c0d7e8a934/orders
Bookmark it, paste it into another tab, or keep it with the notes for a plan you re-run every week.
The link is not public. Opening someone else's plan ID shows Cannot Open Plan error. Plans made without an account live in that one browser, so the URL will not open them on another machine. See Accounts, saving, and sharing. To hand a route to a driver, use Share a route, not the plan URL.
The header: plan name and save stateCopy link
The top bar reads left to right: the Routing24 logo, then the page you are on, then the name of the plan you are editing, then its save state.
To rename a plan, click its name in the header and type. Press Enter or click outside to commit; the new name saves like any other edit.
- New plans are called New planning until you name them. A plan created by
an Excel import is named after the file, so
Monday routes.xlsxbecomes the plan Monday routes. - Leave the field empty and it falls back to the default name.
- You can also rename from My Plans: select the plan and click its name in the details panel on the right. That name is editable only for the plan currently loaded in this tab; other plans show it read-only.
The badge next to the name reads SAVED, SAVING, or UNSAVED. Plans save automatically as you work; there is no save button.
The left menu: pages of one planCopy link
The narrow icon column on the left is the app menu. From top to bottom: Home, My Plans, Address Book, Orders, Depots, Fleet, Optimize, and Settings pinned at the bottom. Hover any icon for its name. The middle five all edit the plan you currently have open.
The recommended order of work is Orders > Depots > Fleet > Optimize. Orders carry the real data (addresses, time windows, weights), and the rest of the plan is built around them.
OrdersCopy link
Each row is one order with its rules: time windows, service duration, load, priority, etc. Add rows one at a time with + ADD NEW, or in bulk via the MORE menu. The list and the map stay in sync: select a row and its pin highlights.
DepotsCopy link
Where vehicles start and end their day. A plan can have several depots, and each vehicle picks its own start and finish.
FleetCopy link
Your vehicles: capacity, how many are available, costs, and working-hour limits. The optimizer only uses vehicles listed here.
OptimizeCopy link
The output side. The metrics strip sums the whole plan (orders, routes, distance, duration, cost). Below it, one card per route with its stops in visiting order and an ETA for each. Orders that could not be served appear in a red Unassigned section with the reason. This page is also where you edit routes by hand and press Export to download the result.
Address BookCopy link
The Address Book is not a step in the workflow. It is a single place that holds every address used by this plan, whether it got there from an order or from a depot, each with its geocoding status.
That makes it the page to open when an address is the problem, not the route: one stop landed in the wrong city, or a row came in from Excel that Routing24 could not recognize. Fix the address once here and every order and depot pointing at it follows. Details in Fix unrecognized or mislocated addresses.
The Address Book belongs to one plan. It is not a customer database shared between plans.
HomeCopy link
The launcher for new work. Start empty plan replaces the current tab's plan with a blank one; the other cards start a plan from a pasted address list, an Excel file, or a Google Calendar. Below that, Recent Plans shows your last plans as cards (⌘/Ctrl-click for a new tab) and Explore local examples loads ready-made datasets.
My Plans: every plan you have savedCopy link
My Plans is the plan manager: a filterable list of your saved plans on the left, grouped by date, and a details panel for the selected one on the right. Clicking a row in the list only selects the plan; loading it into the tab is a separate click. The plan you have open is marked LOADED in both the list and the panel, and each plan carries an OPTIMIZED or UNOPTIMIZED badge.
The details panel is where the per-plan actions live:
- Load plan opens it in this tab, or in a new tab with ⌘/Ctrl. It is greyed out for the plan already open.
- Export Excel downloads the workbook without loading the plan, with the optimized routes if it has any.
- Copy all creates a new plan named Copy of … with everything from this one: orders, depots, vehicles, addresses. The optimization result is not copied.
- Copy vehicles creates a new plan with the depots, vehicles, and addresses but no orders: same fleet, tomorrow's stops.
- Delete plan, under Danger zone, is permanent.
Both copy buttons work on the plan currently loaded in this tab, so load a plan before copying from it. The new copy appears at the top of the list and is selected; click Load plan to start working in it.
The panel also shows what is inside the plan (orders, vehicles, depots, addresses), the optimization stats if it has been solved (routes, distance, duration, unassigned orders, problems), and when it was created and last updated. Plans are also listed under Recent Plans on Home.
Carrying data into a new planCopy link
Because a plan is self-contained, a new plan starts with no vehicles and no depots. Two ways to bring them across:
- From My Plans: select yesterday's plan, load it, then My Plans > Copy vehicles. The new plan has the fleet, the depots, and their addresses in place.
- From inside the plan you are building: on Orders, Depots, Fleet, or Address Book, use More > Import from another plan. Pick the source plan and tick which parts to pull in (addresses, orders, depots, vehicles). Use this when the new plan already has data you want to keep, since it merges instead of replacing.
Keep one plan as your template: the right depots, the right vans, no orders. Each morning, load it, Copy vehicles, then import the day's stops into the copy. The template stays untouched.
The mapCopy link
The right half of the screen is the same map on every page:
- Before optimizing, it shows your orders as pins.
- After optimizing, it draws each route in its own color, numbered by visiting order.
- Click a pin to inspect and edit that stop. Drag a pin onto a route to move it. Right-click anywhere to look up "what's here".
- Search the map with the address box in the corner.
Most sessions walk the menu in order: orders in, depots and fleet checked, then optimize and fine-tune. A change on any page ripples to the rest; edit an order and the next optimization sees it.
The 5-minute first route walks the whole flow with an example.