Advanced Scheduling: How Visits Are Generated

HWIT uses Advanced Scheduling for every company on the web app. It is a “set-it-and-forget-it” approach: instead of waiting for a visit to finish before planning the next one, the system plans your calendar ahead of time. It generates a full series of upcoming visits based on the frequency you set on each schedule, giving you and your team a clear, long-term roadmap of your obligations.

By creating the calendar in advance you can spot schedule gaps, optimize your routes weeks ahead, assign work to team members long before the job is due, and let your customers see their upcoming visits in the Customer App.

Coming from the previous desktop app?

The older desktop app offered a second, “just-in-time” mode called Horizon (Standard) Scheduling, which only created the next visit once the current one was completed. That mode is not available in the web app. If your company still uses it, the Scheduling page shows a notice that Advanced Scheduling is required and is read-only until the conversion is done — contact support@homewatchit.com and we will convert your company for you. Completed visits are never affected by the conversion.

The rolling window

The system maintains a forward-looking window of upcoming visits. Each morning an automated job checks all active schedules and extends the window as needed, so there is always a meaningful horizon of planned work ahead of you. Two settings on Settings → Integrations → Reporting Integration control how far ahead this happens:

• Report Creation Horizon — how many days ahead the scheduled reports and tasks are created in HWIT. The default is 60 days. This is the window you see on the Reports/Tasks list, the Scheduling calendar and in the Customer App.
• Visit Form Generation Horizon — how many days ahead the report form is generated in your integrated reporting platform (MonitorQA or SafetyCulture). The default is 7 days, so by the time your team is ready to perform a visit the inspection is already waiting for them in the reporting app. This setting only appears when MonitorQA or SafetyCulture is connected; HWIT’s built-in reporting does not need it.

Both accept a whole number of days (1 or more) and are covered in more detail in Report Creation and Visit Form Horizons.

Drift correction

If a visit is completed and the report date differs from the scheduled date, the system automatically shifts all future uncompleted visits for that schedule forward or back to maintain the correct cadence. You don’t need to adjust anything manually. For example, a weekly Tuesday visit completed on Wednesday moves the following visits to Wednesdays; complete one on a Tuesday again and they move back.

In Residence

Entries on the In Residence list block out the dates your customer is at the property, and the scheduler moves visits around those dates automatically. Every visit made by a schedule, One Time schedules included, is cancelled if it falls inside the stay. A report or task you add yourself with Add Report or Add Task is never cancelled. See In Residence Processing.

Frequently asked questions

Can I still edit individual visits? Yes. Open any visit from the Reports/Tasks list, the Scheduling calendar or the property’s Reports tab and edit it as usual. Changes to a single report do not change the schedule behind it — see Editing the Current Report of a Schedule.

What happens if a schedule changes (frequency, technician, etc.)? When a schedule is updated, the system removes the old future visits and regenerates them based on the new settings.

What happens if a schedule is deleted? All uncompleted visits generated by that schedule are removed, past and future. Completed reports are not affected.

Do clients see this calendar? Yes — the Customer App shows all future generated visits within the Report Creation Horizon.

Does changing a horizon affect existing reports? Lengthening the Report Creation Horizon creates the additional reports on the next morning run. Shortening it does not delete reports that were already created.