S-161-V1-EN
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In the Scheduling product, you can create custom trips, custom duty event and custom vehicle events. These items may appear similar, but there are key differences between them and regular trips from the timeplan. Using the wrong type may lead to calculation errors or failed exports.
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In this article, we go over those items and explain the difference between them to help you decide which one to use depending on the situation.
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Custom trips are similar to trips that you would create in your timeplan, but the key difference is that they only exist in your schedule and will not reflect in your timeplan. You can identify custom trips in your schedule because they have a black dot inside and represented as a coloured block, like below:
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The black dot in the LDG trip shows that it’s a custom trip.

Custom trips differ from custom events because they have a start and an end location, and act in a similar way to the trips you create in your timeplan.
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The black dot means “different from the timeplan”, and can also appear on normal trips from the timeplan where you’ve edited the start or end time(s). Custom trips are scheduled in the same way as your normal trips are scheduled and will appear on both vehicles and duties.
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If a custom trip represents an actual service trip, then it should appear in the timeplan instead of creating it as a custom trip in the timeplan. Custom trips aren’t supported in all Optibus exports so we recommend using trips from the timeplan in most cases to avoid any issues - you can now use Backwards Sync to manage Timeplanned trips in the schedule to make this process easier.
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To learn how to create custom trips, see the article: Add custom trips.
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There is a Custom duty preference template that lets you link a preference group to a route group that involves custom trips. You can learn more about it in this article.
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Custom events are different from custom trips because they are usually only in a single location. Custom vehicle events and custom duty events are not considered deviations from the timeplan and thus are not marked with a black dot.
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Custom duty events are created within the crew schedule and are typically coloured white, while custom trips and custom vehicle events are typically other colours.
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Custom duty events appear here in white. Two of them have custom trips on either end (with a black dot).

Custom duty event should be used for events which are duty-only and don’t have a vehicle involved, such as office work.
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Custom vehicle events are created within the vehicle schedule and are implemented in the same way as custom duty events however these are fixed events such as Pre/Post trip, attendance, layovers etc.
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To learn how to create custom events, you can check this article.