# Travel time between jobs Source: https://help.mucka.ai/schedule/travel-time-between-jobs Category: Schedule Last updated: 2026-09-19 > Mucka can work out the drive between two bookings and show it in the gap on your day view, with the spare time left after it. It tells you, it never moves your jobs about. Book two jobs twenty miles apart with ten minutes between them and nothing stops you. Travel time is Mucka working out the drive and putting it on the day view, so you can see it. It is **off until you switch it on**, and it only ever tells you things. It will never move a job, reorder your day or re-plan anything behind your back. > **What this does today.** It labels the gaps on your **day view**, warns you when you book something that cannot be reached in time, and has your phone receptionist say so to a caller before it pencils one in. ## Switching it on **Settings → Work → Diary → Travel time.** Two things happen first. **Mucka needs your office postcode.** It is where the first drive of the day is measured from for anybody who does not start from home. If you have not got one on file the row says so and links you straight to it — [**Settings → Business → Details**](/settings/business/details#set-address). **Then it asks where your engineers set off from.** Two answers: - **The yard.** Everybody starts from the office postcode. Simplest, and right for most firms with a unit. - **Their own homes.** Each engineer's first drive is measured from where they live. More accurate if your team goes straight out in the morning. Pick homes and Mucka shows you your team with a box against each name. Type a postcode for the ones you know and leave the rest — **anyone you leave blank is measured from the yard**, which is usually about right anyway. You are not stuck with your first answer; the same row reopens whenever somebody joins. ### What Mucka keeps **A postcode. Never an address.** Mucka needs to know roughly where somebody starts, and a postcode answers that — so a postcode is the only thing it stores and the only thing the box will take. Each engineer can see and change their own under **You → Profile → Where your day starts**, and anybody who manages the team can set it from the team member's page. ## What you see On the **day view**, the gap between two bookings stops saying *"45 min gap"* and starts saying: > **18 min drive · 27 min spare** If it does not fit, it says that instead: > **40 min drive · 15 min short** ### When it says nothing Sometimes the gap keeps its plain *"45 min gap"*. That is deliberate. It means Mucka could not work the drive out — usually because one of the two jobs has no postcode on it, or the postcode is a typo it cannot place. **Mucka would rather say nothing than guess.** A made-up drive time is worse than no drive time, because you would believe it. ## What it will not do **It will not reorder your day.** Plenty of software will offer to. A trades diary is a set of promises to customers, not a puzzle to be re-solved every morning, and shuffling jobs about is how a customer gets rung up and let down. **It will not stop you booking anything.** When it spots a drive that cannot be made it says so and offers **Book anyway** — one tap and it goes straight through. You know things Mucka does not: he is popping home on the way, the 2 o'clock will probably run short, they swapped it between them on the day. ## When you book something too tight Book a job the engineer cannot reach in time and Mucka says so before it saves: > **Heads up — that is a long way in a short time** > That's at least a 40 min drive from the job before it, into 10 min. > The diary is free, so you can still book it — Mucka is only saying the drive is tight. **Book anyway** puts it in. That is the normal answer as often as not, and Mucka does not ask twice. It shows up wherever a job gets booked or moved: the new job form, dragging a job across the diary, and asking Mucka to do it in chat, on voice or over WhatsApp. **It errs heavily on the side of saying nothing.** The test is not whether the drive is likely to be tight, it is whether the drive can be made *at all* on the best run it could have. A journey that might just about fit says nothing, deliberately — a warning you see every day is one you stop reading. ## On the phone Your AI receptionist checks the same thing before it pencils anything in. If somebody rings asking for four o'clock and the engineer would be coming from the other side of town, it says so on the call and offers a time that works. **It still books the one they asked for if that is what they want.** Everything the receptionist takes is pencilled in for you to approve, so nothing is promised either way. One thing worth knowing: it checks at the moment it takes the booking, not when it is reading times out. It does not know the address until the caller gives it, so it can mention a time and then say "actually, that one's tight" once it knows where the job is. That is the right way round — better a second thought on the call than a van that cannot get there. ## If nothing appears - **Check the job has a postcode on it.** No postcode, no drive time. Mucka uses the property's postcode when a job has a property on it, and the client's only when it has not — so a job on a rental with a blank property postcode shows nothing rather than measuring the drive to the landlord's house. - **Check you are on the day view.** Drive times show in the gaps between bookings, which only the day view draws. - **A gap under 15 minutes has no strip.** There is nowhere to put the label.