Every location with an address gets a driving distance from your production office, calculated in the background and shown wherever the location appears.
These are driving distances from Google's Distance Matrix, not straight lines, so a location across a river reads as far away because it is.
Turning it on
There is one setting, and nothing works before it:
- Go to Settings, then the Location tab
- Enter your production office address
- Save
A project can override this with its own office, which is what you want when a job's unit base is nowhere near yours. See Production Office Setup.
Distances then calculate on their own, including for locations you add later. Nothing needs triggering by hand.
Where the numbers appear
Distances show as a mileage figure with a navigation arrow beside it: on location cards, in the list view's distance column, on the location detail page, and in project views. You can sort by it to shortlist by proximity, and filter by distance band to exclude anything past a sensible drive.
When a distance is blank
A location shows no distance in three cases, and the fix is different each time:
- No production office set. Nothing has anywhere to measure from. Set it in Settings.
- The location has no address, or the address did not geocode. Add or correct the address and it will recalculate.
- The calculation has not run yet. A location added seconds ago shows a placeholder while the lookup completes in the background. Reload and it will be there.
A blank distance never means zero, and nothing is sorted as though it were. Locations without a distance sort to the end.
What it is good for, and what it is not
The mileage is enough to group locations sensibly and to rule out anything on the wrong side of the city. It is a distance from the office, though, which is not the same as the distance between two locations on a shoot day. For the drive from stop to stop, use a scout day, which routes the whole run in order. Scout Day Planning covers that.
Treat the figures as planning numbers rather than a schedule. They are point-to-point drive estimates without traffic on the day, without the truck, and without the twenty minutes spent finding the parking.