Regular deliveries
Most yards keep the regulars on a whiteboard: the pub that takes four every other Tuesday, the site that takes two a month. The whiteboard is why the drop gets missed the week somebody is off.
Written down here, Bottle writes the orders itself, a few days before they are wanted, and they turn up in the planner like any other order.
Setting one up
Section titled “Setting one up”Regular deliveries in the rail, then Set one up.
- Customer, and which of their doors if they have more than one.
- How often: every week, every other week, every four weeks, or once a month. Everything counts from the first delivery, so an order that starts on a Tuesday stays on Tuesdays, and a fortnightly one stays in the right week.
- First delivery, and a last delivery if the arrangement has an end. Leave the last one empty and it runs until you stop it.
- What they take, as products and quantities.
- How it is paid, the same three ways an order is paid.
Notes go to the driver, the way they do on any order.
What happens then
Section titled “What happens then”Once a day Bottle writes any delivery falling inside the next week and a half. One that falls on a day the business is closed, a bank holiday it keeps or a closure of its own, is written for the next day it is open instead. Each one is an ordinary order from that point on. You can change it, add to it, move it to another day, or cancel it, and none of that affects the arrangement behind it.
Nothing is ever written for a day that has already gone. If Bottle were down for a week, it picks up from today rather than back-filling deliveries the vans never made.
The price is whatever you have agreed with that customer on the day the order is written, not the price on the day you set the arrangement up. A rate rise applies from the next delivery without anybody editing anything.
Pausing and ending
Section titled “Pausing and ending”Pause stops it writing anything, and keeps the arrangement. That is what the seasonal trade wants over winter. Start again picks it back up.
End it stops it for good. Orders it has already written stay exactly as they are: they are real orders, and somebody may have loaded a van for them. Cancel those one at a time if they are not wanted.
A customer ringing to say “not this week”
Section titled “A customer ringing to say “not this week””Cancel that one order. The arrangement carries on, and the next delivery is written as normal.