Overbooking is scheduling more jobs, or longer jobs, into a technician's day than can actually be completed within the working hours and promised arrival windows, once job duration and travel between sites are counted.
How overbooking is measured
Compare the booked day with what the day really takes.
Required time = Sum of job durations + Sum of all drives, including the first one
Overbooking ratio = Required time ÷ Available working time
Say a technician has an 8-hour day and five jobs booked at 1.25 hours each. That is 6.25 hours of work, which looks fine. Add four drives of 30 minutes plus 20 minutes from the shop: 2 hours 20 minutes. Required time is about 8.6 hours. The ratio is 8.6 ÷ 8 = 1.07. The day was overbooked the moment it was booked, but only the drive arithmetic shows it.
Afterwards, overbooking shows up as missed windows, overtime and jobs moved to the next day.
Why it matters
Overbooking is rarely deliberate. It comes from looking at a calendar of job blocks with nothing between them. Each job fits; the drives between them do not. This is the gap between booked utilization and real utilization, covered in Booked vs. utilized.
The costs land on the customer and the crew:
- Late arrivals. Your on-time arrival rate falls, usually on afternoon jobs.
- Rescheduled jobs. The last job of the day gets pushed, which raises your rescheduling rate.
- Overtime. Crews finish the day anyway and you pay for it.
Some industries overbook on purpose, expecting cancellations. In field service the customer has usually taken time off to be home, so overbooking that does not get absorbed is expensive in goodwill.
The fix is checking the drive before a slot is offered. That is travel-feasible scheduling, and it is what CrewLink does: it computes travel from where the truck will actually be, the previous job, and only offers slots a crew can reach. See travel-time scheduling.
A common mistake
Fixing overbooking by widening arrival windows. Wider windows hide the problem from the customer for a while but do not add hours to the day. The jobs still do not fit.
Related terms
- Booked utilization measures how full the schedule looks.
- Overtime cost is a common result of overbooking.
- Same-day service squeezed into a full day is a frequent cause.
Common questions
Is overbooking ever a good idea in field service?
Only if you have reliable data on cancellations and no-shows. Even then, have a plan for days when everyone shows up.
How do I know if my schedule is overbooked?
Add the drive between every job to the booked job time. If it is more than the working day, it is overbooked.
Does overbooking cause technician burnout?
It can. Days that always run long, with customers already frustrated at arrival, wear people down.