Orders

An order is somebody wanting gas: who it is for, what they want, and how it is being paid for.

Where to find them

Orders in the rail. It opens on everything taken, newest first, with buttons for Today and Tomorrow and a date box for any other day. That is the list the office asks for every morning: what is going out.

Two more boxes narrow it: Status, for where an order is up to, and Payment, for whether it has been paid. Payment: Not paid is the chasing list, and the line on Your day about delivered orders that have not been paid for opens exactly that.

Each row says who it is for, what they want, how it is being paid for, where it is up to and what it comes to before VAT. Open shows the order in full.

Taking one

Take an order at the top of that page. Usually against a customer you already have. It can instead carry just a name and an address, which is the order that comes in after the round has been written out and would otherwise go in the margin of the sheet.

Search for the customer and the rest follows them: their addresses, so you can say which door when they have more than one, and their agreed rates. Somebody with no record yet is a one-off delivery: a name and an address, typed in.

Each line is a product and how many. The price comes from the rate you have agreed with that customer, or the list price where you have not agreed one, and you can overrule it on the line if this one is different. The line says which of the two it is using, so nobody has to remember. The total at the foot is before VAT, like every other price in Bottle.

Cylinders to collect

Once a customer is chosen, the order shows what they have of your cylinders now, grouped by gas type, and what they will have after this order: “2 now, 2 back, 3 out, 3 after”.

Cylinders to collect starts as a swap: one empty back for each full going out, never more than they have of that gas type. A customer holding nothing starts with nothing to collect, so their first delivery leaves them holding what went out. Change the rows whenever it is not a swap: a pub clearing its cellar, or someone taking extra. Collect everything they have fills the rows with all of it.

An order can be a collection on its own. Switch What they want from Deliver to Collection only: nothing goes out, and the cylinders to collect start with everything they have. It costs nothing, raises no invoice, and goes on a round like any other stop. The customer’s page has Book a collection for the same thing in one step.

An order already taken can become a collection: Make it a collection only on the order takes off what was going out and keeps what was to be collected, or everything they have if nothing was. Any invoice or payment link for it is cancelled.

The driver confirms what actually came back at the door; that is what goes on the stock ledger.

Where an order came from

An order written in the office says nothing about itself, because that is the ordinary case. Anything else is labelled: Regular for one a standing order produced, Van for one a driver sold on the road (see Out on the round), and the platform name for one that arrived from a website, with the shop’s own order number beside it so the two can be matched by eye.

Delivered, or collected

How they get it on the order: Delivery goes out on a round. Collection is for the customer who calls in and takes it away themselves. A collection is never put on a van, does not ask for an address or a service level, and shows under Orders with For collection beside it, with its own filter. Your day counts how many are being collected today, so somebody has them ready.

When they have been, open the order and Mark collected. It asks whether they handed any empties back, and nothing is guessed for you, because nobody in the office saw the handover. The cylinders come off the yard and onto the customer’s account, the same as a delivery, so their hire and their deposit follow.

How it is being paid

Three ways, and a new order starts on whatever the customer’s payment terms say (see Customers). Until an order is paid or delivered, How they pay on the order changes it; moving an order off a card link cancels the link’s invoice, so nobody is billed twice.

• Pay later (on account). Nothing to collect at the door. It is invoiced once delivered, unless the customer is on a hire billing cycle, whose next invoice picks it up.
• Online by card, where they pay before it goes out. Taking the order raises an invoice in Bottle, numbered in your own sequence, and emails the customer a link that pays it. See Getting paid.
• Cash where the driver takes it.

An order paid online is not planned onto a round until the money is in. The others go on a round straight away.

How soon

Under Settings › Business › Delivery options the business writes its own service levels: Same day, Next day, 2 to 3 days, whatever it offers, each with the earliest and latest day it means, counted from the day the order is taken, and a charge if there is one. Calendar days, except that a day the business is closed is skipped: Next day taken on Christmas Eve is the next day you deliver. Closed days are bank holidays you keep and days of your own, under Settings › Business › Closed days; see Rota. A yard that is simply shut every Sunday says so in the name.

Taking an order, pick one and the order gets the span of days to expect, the charge on its total, and the first of those days as the day it is wanted, so the planner sees it from the earliest it could go. Or pick a day by hand, which is a promise of that day and no charge; the form warns you if you pick a day you are closed. The customer is told either way, and the tracking page says it until a round names a real day.

Changing an option later does not touch orders already taken: they keep the days and the charge they were sold under. Removing one hides it from the form and leaves it on the orders that named it.

The day it is wanted

Give an order the day it is wanted and the orders for a day can be listed together. That is the list a day of deliveries gets built from, and it is how Bottle will build rounds once routing arrives.

Changing one after it is taken

Change the delivery on the order: which of that customer’s doors it goes to, the day it is wanted, how it is being paid for, and the notes. A one-off edits the address it carries, since there is no account to hold it.

This is the call that comes ten minutes later saying it is the yard, not the pub. Re-taking the order would lose the prices agreed on its lines, so the order changes instead.

An order can also grow at the door. Where a driver hands over more than was ordered, or something that was not on the order, the lines change to match at the customer’s price, and any invoice or payment link for the old figure is cancelled. This never happens to an order that has been paid.

Delivered

Open the order and Mark delivered, and the time is recorded. After that its lines cannot be changed: what was delivered is a record of what happened rather than a draft. If something was wrong, take a new order or cancel this one. Cancel the order keeps it on the books, marked cancelled, rather than removing it: an order that vanishes is an argument nobody can settle.

The tracking reference

The moment an order is taken, a customer with an email address gets one: what they ordered, the days to expect, how it is being paid, and their reference, with a button to the tracking page. A customer with no address on their record gets nothing, quietly. An order paid by link is the exception: the reference comes with the “paid, thank you” email once the money is in, and nothing before. See Emails to customers for the whole sequence.

Every order has a reference, ten letters and digits with a hyphen in the middle, shown at the top of the order. It is what a customer quotes when they ring, and with their postcode it opens their tracking page: the day, a two-hour window once the van is out, how far down the round they are, and a way to say where to leave it if they are out. Copy tracking link puts the link on your clipboard to send them. See Tracking for what they see.

Orders from somewhere else

Orders can be taken by anything holding permission to, not only by a person in the app. That is how a WooCommerce or Shopify shop will put its orders straight into Bottle, and how an assistant can be asked what is wanted tomorrow. See API keys and Permissions for how that access is granted and scoped.