Dispatch & Routes

Overview

Dispatch is where you sign off on the day's deliveries. It pulls together everything that needs your decision into one screen, so you are not chasing messages or guessing who is covering what. There are two halves: the Dispatch page, where you handle requests and confirm who delivers each batch of orders; and the Driver Routes page, where you see those deliveries laid out on a map.

The Dispatch page is organised as three review lists, top to bottom: cancellation requests, swap requests, and proposed assignments per delivery slot. Work through them in order and your schedule for the day is locked in. Anything that does not need a decision simply does not appear, so an empty list means there is nothing to do.

Approving Cancellations & Swaps

The first two lists are about changes to who is working. Both need your final say.

Cancellation requests

A driver who can no longer make a shift asks to be let off it. When you approve, the driver comes off the shift and that time is freed up — it becomes available for another driver to claim or for you to fill. When you deny, the request is turned down and the driver stays on the shift as scheduled. Approve when you can cover the gap; deny when you still need that driver on the road.

Swap requests

Two drivers have already agreed between themselves to trade shifts — you are giving the final sign-off, not setting the swap up. The request shows you who is handing off and who is picking up. Approve it and the two shifts switch hands. Because the drivers have already arranged it, your job is just a quick check that the swap works for your coverage before you confirm.

Handling these first matters, because approving a cancellation or swap changes who is available — and that feeds directly into the assignment suggestions in the next list.

Confirming Assignments

The third list is the heart of dispatch. For each delivery slot, you are shown a proposed assignment: a suggested driver and a suggested stop order — the sequence the deliveries should be made in to keep the route efficient. This is a starting point built for you, not a final decision.

For each slot you have two choices:

Confirm the slot

If the suggested driver and stop order look right, confirm the slot. This is the action that sends the stops to your drivers — until you confirm, nothing has been handed off and the driver does not yet have their list of deliveries. Confirming is what turns the plan into the actual route they follow.

Reassign first

If the suggested driver is not the right fit — they are stretched thin, or another driver is better placed for that area — reassign the slot to a different driver before confirming. Make the change, check the stops still make sense, then confirm to send them out.

Confirm each slot once you are happy with it. A slot you have not confirmed stays in the list as a reminder that those deliveries have not been dispatched yet.

The Routes Map

The Driver Routes page turns your confirmed assignments into a picture. Pick a date and a delivery slot at the top, and the map fills in with every stop for that window, drawn out from your store.

It gives you two views of the same deliveries, side by side:

• The map — every delivery stop is plotted and colour-coded by driver, so you can instantly see which driver is covering which part of the area. Routes radiate out from your store, so a tight cluster of one colour is an efficient run and a scattered one may need rebalancing.
• The per-driver stops table — a list of every driver's stops in order, alongside the map. This is the detail behind the dots: the addresses, the sequence, and which driver owns each one.

Click a row in the table to highlight that route on the map. This is the quickest way to follow a single driver's path end to end — useful when a customer calls asking where their order is, or when you want to sanity-check that a driver's run is not zig-zagging across town. Switching the date or slot at the top reloads the map for that window.

Tips

• Work the Dispatch lists top to bottom. Settle cancellations and swaps first, because they change who is available before you confirm assignments.
• Remember that confirming a slot is what actually sends the stops to your drivers. A plan you have reviewed but not confirmed has not gone anywhere yet.
• Reassign before you confirm, never after. It is far simpler to fix the driver while the slot is still in the list than to undo a dispatched route.
• Use the routes map to catch inefficient runs early — a scattered spread of one colour usually means the stops would be quicker split differently between drivers.
• Click a stop row to highlight that driver's whole route when a customer asks for an update. It is the fastest way to see exactly where their delivery sits in the run.
• Check the map for the right date and slot. Each window has its own deliveries, so make sure the selector at the top matches the run you are reviewing.