Crew Workload Balancer
See how the week's hours land across your crews, cover a crew that can't make it, and plan the season.
The file itself stays on this computer. Close the tab and it's gone.
Which week
Every tab only counts visits in the week picked here. If your export covers more than one week, pick one — otherwise hours from different weeks get added together.
How hours are measured
All three tabs use the one formula below. This is the single most important setting on the page — if it's wrong, every hours number on every tab is wrong by the size of your crews.
What does "Budgeted Hours" mean in your export?
Time that isn't on-site work
Which services count
Recurring route work only. Leave as-needed jobs off so they don't distort the picture. (The Cover tab ignores this list and moves every service the missing crew had, so nothing gets dropped.)
Statuses to include
Crews, trucks and yards
One list, used by every tab. Use this crew drives Balance and the Season planner: set it to "don't use" and Balance this week shares its clients out, while the Season planner leaves the truck parked. People this week is who you actually have on it now — Cover and Balance use that. Seats is the truck's limit, which is what the Season planner staffs up to.
| Crew / truck | Use this crew? | People this week | Seats | Yard address | Existing clients | Area |
|---|
Address accuracy
Which crews are out, and when
Tick every day a crew can't make it. Only those visits move — every other crew keeps its own clients. Each box shows what that crew has booked that day.
How the visits get handed out
How it decides: biggest visits are placed first. Each one goes to the crew that adds the fewest extra driving miles on that day, slotted into its route where it fits best. A crew already past the daily target, or past 40 for the week, is avoided while anyone else has room. Overtime is allowed, so every visit gets placed.
Even out the week
Every crew member should end up with about the same hours. A one-person crew gets roughly a third of what a three-person crew gets. The tool moves clients to the closest crew that has room, and tells you which ones are worth leaving alone.
Optimise for balance, or keep faces the same?
Note: this tab levels the week, not each day. A crew can come out level for the week and still have an impossible Tuesday — check the Cover tab's day grid if that matters.
How many crews and people does this work need?
Redraws the territories from scratch by geography and works out the fewest people that keep everyone busy without passing your hours cap — then the fewest trucks to carry them. Use it at the start of a season to decide how many people to bring on.
Trucks committed per area
Commit an area to a fixed number of trucks and all of its work is spread across exactly those trucks. Leave an area flexible and it takes as few trucks as the work needs, out of whatever the committed areas didn't use.
| Area | Trucks | Clients in the file |
|---|
Hours cap per person, per week
Non-productive time per person per day is set once in How hours are measured near the top of the page, so all three tabs agree.