August 2025: getting the address right, with postcodes and map pins
Everything on a round depends on the address. August 2025 added type-ahead address search, UK postcode lookup and a pin on a map for every customer.
Part 26 of 39 of Building TradeYoke, the story of how the platform was built, from January 2024 to today. Previous: July 2025: one signature pad, used wherever a customer or an engineer signs. Next: September 2025: directions to the door, from the job or the customer. See every part on the build timeline.
Quick answer
Quick answer: TradeYoke helps you enter an address: a type-ahead search suggests addresses as you type, a UK postcode lookup fills in the county, and the address is turned into a map location so the customer appears as a pin. A pin is what lets the app show who is nearby and give directions.
Key takeaways
- Type-ahead suggestions mean fewer typos and fewer wrong addresses.
- A UK postcode lookup fills in the town and county.
- Each address becomes a map location, which is what makes routes and directions possible.
- Good addresses are the foundation for everything that comes after.
A round is a set of places
Everything geographic in a field-service app starts with an address. A route is a list of places in an order. A map is a set of pins. Directions need somewhere to go. Until an address becomes a real point on a map, none of that works. So in August 2025 we made addresses properly.
What we built
- Type-ahead search. As you type an address, suggestions appear. Choosing one fills in the whole address, which is faster than typing and avoids typos.
- UK postcode lookup. Enter a postcode and the town and county are filled in.
- A map location for every address. The address is converted into a point on the map, so the customer appears as a pin. Without that step the map is empty.
- Shared map pieces. The same map components are used wherever a map appears, in a customer record, a job, and later the live map, so they behave the same everywhere.
Why this was a separate piece of work
Addresses go wrong in familiar ways. "Rose Cottage, near the church" is not an address. "14A High Street" can be two places in two towns. A customer typed in from memory in 2019 may be wrong in ways nobody noticed because nobody needed it to be right. The moment a map appears, every wrong address is visible. We expected that, and that is why the map work came after the address work.
A kindness to the data
When you import customers from a spreadsheet, you can fix addresses afterwards, as you meet each customer. You do not need a perfect list to start; you need a list that gets better as you use it.
Next
September: the first thing a good address makes possible, which is getting to the door.
Questions people ask
Does TradeYoke look up UK postcodes?
Yes. Entering a UK postcode fills in the town and county, and type-ahead suggests addresses as you type.
Why does a customer need a map location?
The location is what lets TradeYoke show the customer on a map, order a day's stops by distance and give directions to the door.
Related: Customers and CRM · Plan my day · Run your round from your phone · Pricing · The build timeline
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