Sending a client a whereabouts sheet

A whereabouts is a sheet of who is where: the people (or crews, or sites) down the left, the days across the top, and each cell saying where they are.

It is a different thing from the schedule's other exports. Those give one row per shift, sorted by time — a list, the right shape for a spreadsheet you are going to re-cut. Nobody reads a client a list.

Making one

On the Schedule, open Export and choose Whereabouts… ("Who is where, for a client").

The sheet is not the screen. It fetches the period you ask for, so you can be looking at today and send a client next month.

Start from a saved sheet

The TEMPLATE bar at the top offers Start from a saved sheet. Picking one fills in every choice below; change anything and an Edited pill says the sheet no longer matches the template. With nothing saved yet it reads "No saved sheets yet — set one up below and press Save as template." If the saved sheets couldn't be read, it says so, with Try again.

The period

Period picks the shape of the sheet, and each is a different sheet — not the same table over a longer range:

• Day is blocks. Each row gets its own: the works reference, who is attending, how many have confirmed, and a strip at the top saying how many sites, how many people are out, how many are still to confirm and how many are away. On a Crew sheet, each crew has one heading with its work listed under it, and the strip counts Crews, People and Assignments.
• Week is the grid — a row each, Monday to Sunday, each cell carrying the site, the shift's title and the time (and the job number, with Works reference on), coloured by workstream.
• Month is a planner. Thirty columns can't hold a site name, so each day is a two-letter code in the site's colour, with the legend underneath.

Covering picks the dates: Today or Tomorrow for a day, This week or Next week for a week, This month or Next month for a month — or Date… for any other.

All three are landscape A4 and carry your logo and name where your plan applies them.

Person, crew or site

One row per decides what a row is. It changes the sheet, not just the order of it.

• Person — a row each, with a With column naming who they are alongside.
• Crew — people who share a piece of work share a row, so a gang of three prints its shift once, headed by the three names. Work one of them does without the others keeps a row of its own. The same name can appear twice — once with the gang, once alone — and that is the honest answer: folding the call-out into the gang's row would tell the client all three were on it.
• Site — a row per place, and who is on it.

Work for another client always stays on a row of its own on a crew sheet. The sheet may tell a client that somebody is busy; it doesn't tell them who with.

Who it is for

Prepared for is the important field. Name a client and the sheet becomes theirs:

• their works are named in full — site, job number, the shift's title and times;
• everybody else's work greys to "Other works", keeping the times. The day still reads as busy, so nobody thinks the crew is free, but your other customers' names, sites, job numbers and shift titles don't leave the building.
• a route is named only when every job on it is theirs. A route that mixes clients reads as Other works, and so does one whose details couldn't be read, when the sheet says "Some route details could not be read. Unverified routes are shown as Other works on client sheets."

Leave it on Nobody and nothing is hidden: "Nobody named: this is the internal copy, and nothing on it is hidden." That's the one for the depot wall.

Narrowing to workstreams

Workstreams can narrow the sheet to one or more kinds of work. The sheet then says so under its title — "Inspections only" — so the reader knows what they aren't being shown. On a narrowed sheet, leave on its own doesn't put a person on it — someone else's holiday has no business on a sheet headed Inspections only. Their absence still shows if their work there already gave them a row.

What goes on it

Under Include:

• Leave and absence — "Shown as "Not available" — never the reason". A person with a blank day reads as available, so booked absence is on the sheet — but a holiday says Annual leave and everything else says Not available, whatever it was recorded as. If leave can't be read, the sheet is still produced and says "Leave and absence could not be read and is not shown."
• Times — "Off gives a sheet of places only".
• People with nothing on — keeps the empty rows, to show the gaps.
• Works reference — the job number the client quotes back. A route's jobs print only with this on.
• Saturday and Sunday — for week and month sheets.
• Unpublished drafts — "Off for anything you send out".
• Crew counts instead of names — 4 people rather than a staff list, for a client who isn't entitled to one. It can't be combined with Crew, because a crew row is headed by the names on it.
• Contact numbers — on a day sheet, each attending person's mobile beside their name. On a crew sheet the numbers print under the row heading. None print on a row that is only another client's work or leave, and none with crew counts on. It's off unless you turn it on: these are your people's numbers on a sheet that leaves the building.

A shift's own title — Valve exchange, Night set-up — prints on the week and day sheets and in the Excel workbook, after the job number, so the client reads the work the way the schedule names it. It is left off when it only repeats the job number, and never shown on another client's greyed-out work. The month planner's day codes have no room for it.

People with nothing on and Contact numbers read your workspace directory, so they need Manage users as well. Without it, each says so instead of sitting there doing nothing.

What is never on it

Unpublished drafts, unless you tick them for an internal copy. A whereabouts is something you send; a draft is a plan nobody has been told about.

Every page says which it is, and when it was true: Published shifts only, correct at Tue 22 Sep 2026 08:14. A sheet quoted back at you a fortnight later can be answered with that line.

Rounds count as work

Routes are on the sheet too, otherwise somebody walking eleven chambers reads as having nothing booked. With Works reference ticked, a route shows how many work items it holds. A crew day sheet then lists the route's jobs in a table, with the columns of the workstream's route report, and the Excel workbook lists them on a Route details sheet.

Getting it out

• Export downloads the sheet. Choose Format: PDF, or Excel for the same grid as a workbook, with a Shift list sheet of the shifts behind it for anyone who wants to pivot it.
• Preview draws the PDF so you can check it first.
• Send… emails it now, and Schedule… prepares it now and emails it later, for example at 7am tomorrow. See Emailing a whereabouts sheet now or at 7am.

Saving it as a template

Most workspaces send the same sheet to the same client every week. Set it up once, choose Save as template, and give it a Name — Meridian — weekly, Depot wall — tomorrow.

Saved sheets appear in the Export menu itself, under WHEREABOUTS. Clicking one produces the file with no dialog and no re-picking eight options every Friday. A template stores the period as today, tomorrow, this or next week, or this or next month — never a fixed date — so a click always produces the right one.

When the sheet is prepared for a client whose record has a contact email, the template keeps that address and the Export menu adds Send to {address} beneath it — one click emails the sheet, with no second dialog. See Emailing a whereabouts sheet now or at 7am.

Use this whenever {client} is chosen marks the template as that client's own — a star in the Export menu and a Default for {client} label in the list. Choosing the client in the dialog doesn't load it yet; start from the TEMPLATE bar instead.

Manage templates… in the same menu opens Whereabouts templates: "A saved sheet: the period, who it is for, and what goes on it. The dates are always today's." Reorder with Move up and Move down, Edit (which reopens the export dialog with the template loaded; save with Update template) or Delete. Templates belong to the workspace, not to you, so the office can agree one sheet per client.

Who can do this

Anyone with Manage schedule — the permission that opens the schedule itself — can produce, send and schedule a whereabouts and change the saved templates. People with nothing on and Contact numbers also need Manage users.