Location-Based Scheduling in Alivo

Location-based scheduling in Alivo uses the customer's address and your reps' existing appointments to recommend the smartest time slots. Instead of treating every open slot as equal, Alivo scores each option by how much extra driving it would add to a rep's day. Slots that fit naturally into an existing route rise to the top. Slots that would send a rep across town get flagged or hidden, depending on your settings. This feature is called drive-time optimization, and you turn it on per event type.

What It Does for Your Business

Field reps lose hours every week driving between jobs that could have been booked in a tighter geographic cluster. Location-based scheduling helps fix that at the booking stage, before the appointment lands on anyone's calendar.

When a customer books, Alivo looks at each rep's schedule for that day, figures out where the new job would sit in their route, and calculates how many extra minutes of driving it would add. It then surfaces the best-fit options on the booking page so customers are nudged toward times that keep your crews efficient.

This is separate from service area enforcement. Service areas answer "do we work here?" Drive-time optimization answers "given that we work here, which slot makes the most sense for our route?"

What You Need Before Turning It On

Drive-time optimization needs a few things in place to work correctly:

• A customer address. The booking flow collects the customer's address before showing scored slots. If drive-time optimization is on, the address field is required even if service area enforcement is off.
• A company address. Alivo uses your company's address as the home base for each rep's daily route (start and end of day). Make sure your company address is set correctly in your account settings.
• Reps with calendars connected. The scoring engine works best when reps have Google or Microsoft calendars connected and their existing Alivo appointments include addresses. More geocoded jobs on the calendar means more accurate route scoring.
• Hosts assigned to the event type. For Host Priority scheduling, reps must be assigned as hosts. For Dispatch Advanced, the rep pool you define is what Alivo uses to calculate capacity and score routes.

Heads up: Drive-time optimization recommends slots. It does not automatically assign a rep unless your event type uses Host Priority scheduling. With dispatch scheduling types, the route scoring still runs, but no specific rep is attached at booking time.

Where to Find the Settings

Drive-time optimization is configured on each event type under Settings > Scheduling > Event Types. Open the event type you want to optimize and expand the Drive-time optimization accordion. All settings for location-based scheduling live in that section.

The Settings and What They Do

Recommend Route-Friendly Slots

This is the main on/off switch. When enabled, Alivo scores available time slots based on drive time and schedule load, then highlights the best option on the booking page.

When disabled, all open slots appear equally with no route scoring, no "Top" badge, and no recommended calendar days. This is the default for new event types.

What customers see when it's on: One slot gets a Top badge on the booking page. Calendar days with a strong route fit may show a recommended dot. Your team sees more detail on the internal booking view, including route impact in minutes and color-coded tiers (Best fit, OK, Avoid).

Recency Tolerance

This slider controls how willing Alivo is to push a customer to a later day if that day has a significantly better route.

By default, recency tolerance is set to 15 minutes. That means a slot tomorrow only beats a slot today if it saves at least 15 minutes of driving. A higher number (up to 60 minutes) makes Alivo more willing to recommend a later day when the route is much better. A lower number (down to 0 minutes) means tomorrow only wins if it is outright shorter to drive, with no extra tolerance.

Hide Slots With Too Much Added Drive Time

By default, drive-time optimization scores all available slots and highlights the best one, but still shows every open time. Turn on this toggle when you want to actively hide slots that would create an unreasonable drive.

When enabled, a second slider appears for Maximum added drive time.

Maximum Added Drive Time

This sets a hard cap on how much extra driving a slot can add before it disappears from the booking page. The slider runs from 20 to 240 minutes in 5-minute steps. The default when you first enable hiding is 30 minutes.

Any slot whose route impact exceeds your cap is removed from what the customer sees. Alivo then recalculates which remaining slot gets the "Top" recommendation.

Rule of thumb: Start with recommendations only (hiding off) and watch how slots score for a few weeks. Once you know what "too far" looks like in your market, turn on the cap and set it a little above that threshold so you are not accidentally hiding valid appointments.

How Alivo Scores a Slot

Behind the scenes, Alivo builds a picture of each rep's day using your company address as the starting and ending point. It threads in that rep's existing geocoded appointments and calculates what happens if the new job is inserted at each available time.

Several signals feed into the score:

• Added drive time. The big one. How many extra minutes does this appointment add to the rep's route for that day?
• Nearby same-day jobs. Bonus points when the rep already has another appointment close to the customer's address that day.
• Route compaction. Extra credit when the new job fits directly before or after an existing nearby appointment, keeping the middle of the day open.
• Schedule load. A small nudge toward reps with lighter schedules that day, so work spreads across the team.
• Recency penalty. A small penalty for slots further out in the future, scaled by your recency tolerance setting.

The single highest-scoring slot across all reps and days gets marked as the top recommendation. Your team sees a tier label on internal booking views:

• Best fit (green). Adds 10 minutes or less of driving.
• OK (yellow). Adds 11 to 25 minutes.
• Avoid (red). Adds more than 25 minutes. Still visible unless you have the hide toggle on.

What Customers See vs. What Your Team Sees

Customers are nudged toward the best route, but they can still pick any visible slot. Nothing is forced unless you hide slots with the maximum added drive time cap.

Combining With Service Areas

Location-based scheduling and service area enforcement work well together and solve different problems.

• Service areas only. Out-of-area customers are blocked. In-area customers see all open slots with no route scoring.
• Drive-time only. Any customer who provides an address gets scored slots, but nobody is blocked by territory.
• Both on. Out-of-area customers are blocked first. In-area customers then see route-scored and recommended slots. This is the most common setup for contractors with defined territories who also care about drive efficiency.

Example Scenarios

Metro Roofer, Tight Routes

Turn on Recommend route-friendly slots. Leave recency tolerance at 15 minutes. Turn on Hide slots with too much added drive time and set the cap to +30 minutes. Customers in your territory only see slots that keep reps within a reasonable drive, and the best option is highlighted.

Storm Response, Book Fast

Turn on recommendations but leave hiding off. Set recency tolerance to 0 minutes so today always wins unless tomorrow is genuinely shorter to drive. Customers see every open slot, with today's best route marked "Top."

Rural Operation, Longer Drives Normal

Turn on recommendations. Leave hiding off, or set a generous cap at +60 to +90 minutes. A 40-minute drive between jobs might be normal in your market, and an aggressive cap would hide valid appointments.

Multi-Rep Team With Host Priority

Assign reps as hosts on the event type. Drive-time scoring runs per rep, and Host Priority picks the best available rep for the chosen slot. Reps with a nearby job that afternoon score higher, so the customer tends to get whoever is already in the neighborhood.

Common Questions

Does drive-time optimization block out-of-area customers?

No. That is what service area enforcement is for. Drive-time optimization only scores slots for customers who are already allowed to book.

Do I need to turn on service area enforcement to use drive-time optimization?

No. They are independent. You can use either one or both.

What happens if a rep has no address on their existing appointments?

Alivo can only score routes for geocoded appointments. Jobs without addresses are skipped in the route calculation. The more complete your appointment addresses are, the better the recommendations.

Can customers still pick a non-recommended slot?

Yes, as long as that slot is visible. The "Top" badge is a recommendation, not a lock. If you want to prevent bad routes entirely, turn on the hide toggle and set a maximum added drive time.

Location-based scheduling turns your customer's address into a routing advantage. Turn on drive-time optimization on the event types where route efficiency matters, tune recency tolerance and the drive-time cap to match how your team actually works, and let Alivo surface the slots that keep your crews on the road less and on the roof more.

Still have a question this didn't answer? Reach out to our support team support@alivo.ai and we'll be glad to help.