Route planning for flooring estimators, at the moment of booking
Avoidable travel is rarely one bad decision. It builds up from small ones: a Tuesday appointment taken at the counter without knowing the estimator is already forty minutes the other way. Floorcast makes that cost visible while the booking is still being made.
What the ranking actually measures
For each candidate slot, Floorcast compares the estimator's day with the visit inserted against the same day without it. The difference is the extra drive time that booking would create. Slots are then ordered so the least disruptive option is easiest to pick.
- Specific date requested: options for that day are ordered by route efficiency.
- Date flexible: earliest feasible working day first, then least added travel, then earliest time.
- Travel is shown in the diary as blocks, not left as a mental calculation.
- You can ignore the order entirely and book an exact time.
A worked example (hypothetical, for illustration only)
This is an illustration, not a customer result. Suppose an estimator based in Exeter already has a morning measure in Exmouth and an afternoon measure in Cullompton. A new enquiry comes in from Topsham. Two free slots exist: late morning, which sits naturally between the coast and the M5 corridor, and mid-afternoon, which would mean doubling back after Cullompton.
Both slots are genuinely available, so a paper diary treats them as equal. Ranked by extra drive time, the late-morning slot comes first because it adds less to the day. The figures are estimates and local knowledge — school-run roads, a known bottleneck — may still make you choose the other one.
Being clear about the limits
- No live traffic data. Travel times are estimates while fallback routing is in use.
- No whole-day re-optimisation; Floorcast does not shuffle committed visits for you.
- No claimed mileage or fuel savings.
- No vehicle, tachograph or fleet tracking features.
Questions retailers ask
- Does Floorcast optimise a whole route?
- No. It does not rebuild your day into an optimal tour. When you are booking a measure it ranks the available times by how much extra drive time each one would add to that estimator's existing day.
- Does it use live traffic?
- No. Travel times are estimates while fallback routing is in use, not live traffic. They are good enough to compare one slot against another, and you should still apply local knowledge.
- Can we override the suggestion?
- Always. Suggested slots are ordered information, not a rule. Book an exact time, click an empty gap or drag the visit if you know better.
- What happens when the customer names a specific date?
- On a specific date the ranking stays focused on route efficiency for that day. When the date is flexible, earliest feasible working day comes first, then the least added travel, then the earliest time.
- Will it reduce our mileage?
- We make no savings claim. What it does is make the travel cost of each option visible at the moment of booking, instead of after the week has been committed.
- Does travel appear in the diary itself?
- Yes, as blocks around each visit, so a day that looks full on screen is actually full.
Join the Floorcast early-access group
If travel is eating your estimators' week, tell us how you book measures now. Floorcast is in early access with a small number of independent retailers.