New to Routerra Teams, or handing it to a teammate? Here's the vocabulary, defined once. Terms link to the guide where each one does its real work.

Core objects

Plan — the container for one day's work. A plan holds stops, and after optimization it holds the routes built from them. One plan usually equals one day. See Create, find, and manage plans.

Cancelled plan — a plan cancelled through the API or by an AI assistant. It's hidden from the plans list unless you tick Show cancelled, and a banner on the plan offers Restore. The web app has no Cancel button. See Plan statuses.

Stop — a single delivery: an address plus its settings (service time, arrival window, load, notes, attachments). See Stop settings.

Route — one driver's ordered path for the day, produced by optimization: their stops in driving order with ETAs. One route per driver. See Assign drivers and optimize.

Depot — a fixed location where routes start and finish (warehouse, store, kitchen). Each driver has a start and finish depot. See Depots.

Zone — a delivery area drawn on the map as a polygon, used to keep drivers in or out of specific neighborhoods. See Zones.

Overdue route — a route from an earlier day that is still open. The dashboard lists overdue routes under Not closed from previous days, where you can close each one with Mark as completed. See Follow delivery progress live.

People and access

Owner — the admin who runs billing and the team itself, in addition to dispatching. See Roles.

Manager — a dispatcher: full access to plans, fleet, address book, and activity, but not billing or team deletion.

Driver — a field user who only ever uses the driver app to receive and run routes. Never touches the web app.

Seat / driver slot — one unit of your subscription: one driver who can receive routes. You're billed per seat. See Trial, seats, and billing.

Activity — the team's audit trail under Settings → Activity: who changed what, and when, including changes drivers make in the app and changes made through API keys. Each plan has its own History. See The Activity log.

Building and dispatching

Import — getting stops into a plan: Paste List, Upload File, Upload Image, Team Address Book, or Pull from data source. See Import stops.

Geocoding — turning an address into a map location (a pin). Occasionally guesses wrong; fixable via coordinates. See Import problems.

Optimize — building routes from stops with Assign drivers & optimize, respecting every constraint you've set.

Distribution Strategy — how work is split across drivers during optimization: Balance by Stops, Balance by Time, Fastest Overall (recommended default), or Balanced Mix. See Assign drivers and optimize.

Unassigned Stops — stops the optimizer couldn't place without breaking a constraint (a window, capacity, a shift). They wait here instead of ruining a route.

Dispatch failed — the plan status when optimization didn't complete. A dialog gives the reason, for example stops the optimizer couldn't reach by road. See When routes won't optimize.

Dispatch / Send routes to drivers — making optimized routes visible in the driver app. Flips the plan to Approved. See Send routes to drivers.

Revoke from Drivers — pulling routes back out of the driver app.

Refine — reshaping the path a route drives by dragging points on its line on the map. Refine changes the roads, not the stop order. See Refine routes.

Reassign route — moving a whole route to another driver, or swapping routes between two drivers. The stop order and arrival times stay as optimized. See Refine routes.

Move to driver — moving selected stops onto another driver's route, either re-optimizing both routes or adding the stops to the end. See Bulk operations.

Lasso — Lasso select on the plan map: draw a loop around pins to select those stops. See Bulk operations.

Driver workflow — the team setting that decides how much drivers may change their stop order. The web app calls the three levels Follow the plan, Reorder stops, and Reorder and re-optimize; the driver app calls the last two Change stop order and Change and re-optimize. Owners and Managers set it in Settings → General → Team defaults. See When drivers change their stop order.

Reordered by driver — a route whose driver changed the planned stop order. The route shows a strip such as "Alex reordered the stops at 10:42" with a Restore plan button. See When drivers change their stop order.

Restore planned order — putting a driver-reordered route back into the order you dispatched. Delivered and failed stops stay where they are, and arrival times are recalculated. See When drivers change their stop order.

Tracking and evidence

POD (Proof of delivery) — the driver's evidence for a stop: the status they set, plus photos, files, and notes. See Proof of delivery.

Keep proof of delivery — the team setting for how long stop photos and files — from drivers and from the office — are kept before they're deleted automatically. See Proof of delivery.

Needs attention — the dashboard counter for overdue routes, idle routes (not started although the driver's shift has begun), and failed stops; the number to keep at zero. See Follow delivery progress live.

Live driver tracking — the team setting that lets drivers share their GPS location while a route is in progress. With it on, the plan map shows each driver's live position and recorded track, and each route shows a tracking status: Moving, Parked, Signal delayed, Connection lost, or Not tracking. Tracking stops when the route is finished. See Live driver tracking.

Customer updates — email and SMS messages Routerra sends your customers about their delivery. The plans list's Customer updates column shows, for each plan, whether its customers get them; Routerra works this out from the contact details on the plan's stops. See Customer notifications.

Delivery log — the list of every notification message Routerra sent, to your team and to your customers, under Settings → Notifications → Delivery log. See Team notifications and the delivery log.

Offline-first — the driver app keeps working with no signal and syncs when it returns. See Offline: what syncs and when.

Configuration and platform

Address Book — team-wide saved addresses with their settings, reusable in any plan. When you edit a stop that came from the address book, tick Update in address book to save the change back to the saved address too. See The Team Address Book.

Labels — tags you attach to address book entries, then use to filter and select them. See Address book tools.

Arrival window / Arrival Priority — the time range a stop must be served in, and whether to aim Earliest / Latest / Auto within it. See Stop settings.

Load / Vehicle Capacity / Max Stops — how much a stop consumes, how much a vehicle holds, and the hard cap on stops per route. See Drivers.

Live road data — real-time traffic (TomTom) factored into optimization when enabled. See Route preferences.

API key — a credential that lets your own systems optimize via the Routerra Teams API. Webhook — a signed JSON POST Routerra sends your systems when things change. Data source — an endpoint Routerra pulls stops from. See API keys and Webhooks.

What's next

Plan, route, and stop statuses — the status vocabulary
A typical morning — the terms in action, end to end