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Lead Time — How Much Notice Your Agents Leave

Updated by Sean Daly

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Lead time is how much notice you need before a job starts. Set it, and your agents stop offering the slot two hours from now that your dispatcher would never actually fill — and stop booking it either, on every path, including the ones that book without anyone watching.

Until recently this lived in four separate places and only half of them were enforced. It's now one setting, and you change it by asking Jenny.

What lead time controls

  • The floor — how soon a booking may land. This is the part everyone wants. Set four hours and the earliest slot an agent offers is four hours out, measured from now in your shop's time zone.

  • The ceiling — how far out a booking may land. Optional, and this is the piece that used to be a separate setting. Leave it unset and there's no ceiling at all.

  • Both can vary. A lead time can read the job type, job-type groups, business units, and the local hour and weekday — so "maintenance can book up to 90 days out, demand work only 14" is expressible, and so is "two hours' notice on weekdays, next day at weekends."

It applies to availability and to booking, not just to what's offered. That matters: an agent can't find its way around the lead time by confirming a slot it already pulled, and the automatic end-to-end booking path is held to the same floor as everything else.

Seeing what yours is set to

Ask Jenny: "what's our lead time?" She reads the saved setting and answers in plain language.

If nothing is set, she'll tell you so — "No lead time: bookings may land any time from now". That's the default, and it means an agent may offer a slot starting in the next few minutes if ServiceTitan says the capacity is there.

If the setting exists but nobody wrote a description when it was saved, you'll get "This lead time has no description yet". Ask Jenny to re-save it with a sentence that says what it does, so the next person who asks gets a real answer.

Changing it

  1. Tell Jenny what you want, in plain language: "we need at least four hours' notice on any booking", or "don't let anyone book a tune-up more than 60 days out."

  2. Ask her to check it against a real job type before you save — she can work out how soon and how far out a booking for that job type could land right now, without saving anything.

  3. When she's ready to save, she shows you a confirmation card. On a first-time setup it's headed Confirm: set the lead time and reads "Sets a lead time."; on a change it's Confirm: change the lead time and reads "Changes how soon bookings may land."

  4. The card has a What it does section showing your current setting against the proposed one, in sentences rather than numbers, and a warning: "Takes effect for availability and booking as soon as it is saved. Nothing changes in ServiceTitan."

  5. Confirm, and it's live immediately.

How it stacks with your other rules

Lead time is one of several things narrowing what an agent may offer, and they don't override each other — the most restrictive wins:

  • Against an availability policy rule, the larger lead time wins. If a policy rule and your lead-time setting disagree, agents use whichever demands more notice.

  • Job limits, capacity caps, closed days and holidays still apply. Lead time says how soon; those say how full and which days. See Job Limits, How Capacity Autopilot works and Closing Days and Hours.

  • ServiceTitan still decides what's actually open. Lead time can only narrow what your schedule already offers — it never creates capacity.

  • Office hours are a different thing. They set how callers are greeted and transferred, not which times can be booked.

What it doesn't do

  • It won't move a booking that's already on the board. Changing the lead time changes what agents offer from that moment on. Appointments booked under the old setting stay where they are.

  • It isn't a per-campaign setting. It's one decision for your organization, which can then vary by job type and business unit. If you want a campaign to stop offering near-term slots, the lead time is the lever — a campaign's own day settings don't act as a booking floor, and setting one there won't stop an agent offering today.

  • It doesn't stop your office booking anything. Nothing here reaches ServiceTitan. Your dispatchers carry on as normal.

Troubleshooting

An agent offered a slot sooner than your lead time allows. Ask Jenny to check the lead time against that exact job type — a lead time that reads job type or business unit may simply not apply to the one that was booked. If it should have applied, send us the conversation at support@upsmith.com.

Agents stopped offering anything at all. A floor set too high against a thin schedule leaves nothing to offer. Ask Jenny what the setting is, and lower it or scope it to the job types that really need the notice.

Jenny says the change wouldn't be valid. You'll see "This lead time would not be valid: {reason}", with the specific problem in place of {reason}. Nothing was saved. Tell her what the message said and she'll redraft it.

Jenny can't read the current setting. "The lead time could not be read: {reason}" means she couldn't reach it rather than that it's unset. Nothing changed. Try again in a few minutes, then email support@upsmith.com.

You used to have a maximum days-in-advance setting and can't find it. It's been folded into this one as the optional ceiling, and the ceiling can now vary by job type, which the old setting couldn't. If your old value doesn't seem to be in force, ask Jenny what the lead time is now and have her set the ceiling explicitly.

Common questions

Is lead time in minutes or days? It's held in minutes, so you can express an hours-and-minutes floor as well as a days-ahead ceiling. Tell Jenny in whatever units you think in and she'll convert.

Can I set a different lead time for emergency calls? Yes — that's what scoping by job type is for. A demand or emergency job type can carry a shorter floor than maintenance.

Does it apply to every agent? It's enforced where availability is worked out and again where the booking is written, rather than inside any one agent — so an agent that books is held to it however the conversation started.

Who can change it? It's one setting for your whole organization, so it's not something to change casually — and like other organization-wide settings it's gated on your role. See Who Can See What — Roles and Permissions.

Where to go next