Scheduling a Job
How due dates, specific times, one-off jobs, and recurring schedules work on a job in Work Planner.
Scheduling decides when a job should appear, how it repeats, and what Work Planner should do after each visit. The job form splits this into a few separate controls, so it helps to think of the due date as the anchor and the schedule rule as the pattern built on top of it.
The Main Scheduling Controls
- Due Date: This is the first date the job is due. Without it, Work Planner has nothing solid to calculate from and the job does not show on your planner, so creating a job without one shows a small Heads up! note first. On a new job it has to be today or later. A job you are editing can keep an earlier date, which is how overdue work holds its place until it is done or moved.
- Specific Time: Turn this on when the job needs a fixed time rather than just a day. Once enabled, the Due Time field appears.
- No Schedule / Has Schedule: Use No Schedule for ad hoc work. Use Has Schedule when the job should keep coming round automatically. A new job starts on No Schedule, so pressing Create without choosing one shows a small Heads up! note asking whether that is right.
- One Off: Use this when the job should stop cycling forward after it is done.
Building a Repeat Rule
- Schedule Frequency: Choose daily, weekly, or monthly.
- Schedule Interval: This is the gap between repeats. Weekly with an interval of 2 means every two weeks.
- Schedule Days of Week: Appears for weekly schedules. Pick the day or days the job can land on.
- Schedule Day of Week (Optional): Appears for monthly schedules when you want patterns such as Monday or Friday.
- Schedule Week of Month: Works with monthly schedules so you can describe patterns like first week, last week, and similar setups.
- Keep on its scheduled day, even on a non-working day: Tick this when the job is meant to land on a day your business doesn't usually work. Work Planner then leaves its visits where the schedule puts them.
Next Due and Working-Day Rules
Once a schedule exists, Work Planner calculates the next due date from the current due date and the rule you have chosen. That next due can be adjusted by your organisation working-day settings, so the date you see may move away from a non-working day.
Some work only ever happens on a day you don't usually work, such as a job you always do on a Sunday. Switching that day on in your working days would let other jobs land there too, so tick Keep on its scheduled day, even on a non-working day on that job instead. Its visits then stay on the days its schedule gives them, and every other job is still moved as normal.
Things That Turn Scheduling Off
- Switching to No Schedule: Clears the stored repeat rule.
- Clearing the due date: Also stops the schedule because the rule no longer has a date to calculate from.
- Transferred jobs: These cannot be edited, so the schedule has to be changed in the business that now owns the job.
Good Setup Examples
- Ad hoc visit: Due date filled in, No Schedule, and One Off turned on if the job should end when done.
- Regular weekly work: Due date, Has Schedule, weekly frequency, interval, and one or more weekdays.
- Monthly pattern: Due date, monthly frequency, interval, and a week-of-month pattern when the day is meant to follow a rule instead of a simple date count.
- Work on a day you don't usually work: Weekly frequency with that day picked, and Keep on its scheduled day, even on a non-working day ticked so the job stays on it.
Related articles
- Creating a Job from the Dashboard: Shows where the scheduling section sits in the full job flow.
- Editing a Job: Useful when you are correcting a live schedule rather than setting one for the first time.
- Jobs List: Useful when you want to find scheduled or unscheduled work in bulk.
- Job Detail View: Lets you review due, next due, and schedule history after the job has been saved.