Free rota and travel time calculator
See what travel between visits really costs your service each week and year, how efficient your rota is, and what every saved minute is worth.
- ✓ Free
- ✓ No sign-up
- ✓ Takes 1 minute
- ✓ Nothing saved or sent
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Step 1 of 2: Your week
What does a typical week look like?
Start with the care you deliver. Shorter visits mean more journeys for the same care hours.
Contact time only – the hours you invoice for.
Helpful check: if you’re not sure, keep “Mixed (typical)” – it reflects the average visit mix the Homecare Association uses for the sector.
Your answers stay on this page – nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
A note on this calculator
This tool is a guide built on sector averages and verified 2026/27 figures. The travel cost it shows is deliberately conservative: carer pay for travel time, statutory holiday accrual on that pay, and mileage. It leaves out employer National Insurance and pension on travel pay, so your true cost is higher. It is not financial advice – check the results against your own rota data before making decisions.
Book a free tour
Shave minutes off every journey, automatically.
PASS plans rotas around real locations and real travel times, tracks every visit as it happens, and shows you exactly where the empty miles are. See it working with a free tour, guided by a real person.
👉 Get started with PASSTrusted by 1,250+ home care providers nationwide.
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How to use this calculator
- Enter your weekly care hours. Just the contact time you invoice for – the calculator works out the journeys behind it.
- Pick your visit mix. Shorter visits mean more journeys per care hour, which is why 15-minute calls cost so much more to deliver.
- Use your real travel figures. The sector averages are a starting point. Your own rota data will make the answer sharper.
- Look at the saved-minute line. The result shows what one minute off the average journey is worth per year – that’s your business case for smarter scheduling.
Worked examples
500 care hours a week, 30-minute visits
1,000 visits a week at sector-average travel (8.1 minutes, 2.7 miles) and National Living Wage pay.
About £163,000 a year
spent on travel time and mileage
250 care hours a week, mixed visits
A mid-sized service on the typical visit mix, sector-average travel and National Living Wage pay.
About £68,000 a year
spent on travel time and mileage
One minute saved per journey
For the 500-hour service above, trimming the average journey by a single minute is worth real money.
About £12,300 a year
from one saved minute per visit
Rota and travel costs: your questions answered
Where do the default figures come from?
The travel defaults – 8.1 minutes and 2.7 miles per visit – are the sector averages from the Homecare Association’s Minimum Price for Homecare methodology. Pay defaults to the National Living Wage of £12.71 (April 2026, gov.uk), and holiday accrues on travel pay at the statutory 12.07%.
Does travel time between visits have to be paid?
Yes. Time spent travelling between clients counts as working time, and carers must earn at least the minimum wage across their working time. Unpaid travel time is one of the most common minimum wage compliance failures in home care.
Why do shorter visits cost so much more?
Because travel stays the same while contact time shrinks. At 30-minute visits, one hour of care needs two journeys. At 15-minute visits it needs four. The travel cost per care hour roughly doubles each time the visit length halves.
What does the efficiency percentage mean?
It’s the share of paid rota time spent actually delivering care: contact hours divided by contact plus travel hours. There’s no official target, but every point you gain goes straight to capacity – the same team can deliver more care without working more hours.
How do I actually reduce travel time?
Cluster visits geographically, build rounds instead of one-off allocations, match carers to nearby clients, and review the rota against real travel data rather than estimates. Scheduling software does this continuously – that’s the point of it.
Is this calculator really free?
Yes. There is no sign-up and no email capture. Your answers stay on this page – nothing is saved or sent anywhere. We make PASS, the care management platform, and free tools like this are our way of being useful to the sector.
Every minute back is care you can sell.
PASS builds rotas around real travel times and shows you the empty miles as they happen. Take a free tour and see what your rota could look like.
👉 Get started with PASSTrusted by 1,250+ home care providers nationwide.
