Every drive distance in LocoBase is measured from a production office. Until one is set, distance columns stay empty and distance sorting has nothing to sort on.
There are two places it can be set, and the difference matters once you are running more than one job.
The default, in Settings
- Go to Settings, then the Location tab
- Fill in Default Production Office Address
- Check the map preview lands where you expect
- Save Changes
Distances then calculate in the background for your whole library, including locations you add later.
Use a full street address. A city name geocodes to somewhere near the middle of that city, which is a few miles off in a way that quietly skews every distance you then sort by.
The per-project override
Each project carries its own production office, set in the project form. When a project has one, that address is what its scout days route from and what its distances reflect.
This is the setting you actually want most of the time. The default in Settings is a sensible fallback for your own library; a job with a unit base across town needs its own, or every distance in that project is measured from the wrong side of the city.
Changing it later
Change either address and distances recalculate on their own. Nothing needs re-triggering, and no location needs editing.
The recalculation is not instant across a large library. Distances update in the background, so a library of several hundred locations takes a little while to settle after a move, and some rows will show the old figure until they are refreshed.
What the numbers do and do not include
Distances are driving estimates from Google, point to point, without traffic on the day. They are the right tool for grouping locations and ruling out the far side of the city, and the wrong tool for promising anyone an arrival time.
For the actual running order of a day, with drive times between consecutive stops rather than from the office, use a scout day. Scout Day Planning covers that, and Distance Calculations covers where the figures appear and why one might be blank.