Rounds

A round is a day of one driver’s drops, in the order they are best done. It is the multi-drop sheet, with the map doing the part somebody used to do with a biro and local knowledge.

The page

Rounds in the rail. The map is the page; everything else floats over it.

Top left: the day, with Today and Tomorrow one press away, and how many orders are waiting for it. Press that number and the waiting list opens on the right, each order a right-click from a round.

Below the day, the drivers: one row per driver, with their patch and the van they will take. A driver with a round planned shows the round, its colour, how many stops and whether it has left. A driver still to plan shows a Plan button instead. Somebody on holiday or off sick gets Off today, which greys the row out until Back on. Same list, so the question it answers is the one you have at seven in the morning: who is out, and who is not.

Nothing is set up on this page. Vehicles, drivers and bases have their own pages, and Vehicles and bases at the bottom of the list is the way there.

Pins are orders. Grey ones are waiting. Blue ones, numbered, are on the round you are looking at. Green is delivered. Black pins are bases: the yard, a driver’s home.

A practice round

The first time you open Rounds, a card at the bottom right offers Try a practice round. Or press the ? beside Rounds at the top left, any time.

Practice opens a pretend business: a yard in Kingston, two drivers called Dave and Priya, and 12 orders for today. Bottle walks you through a whole day, one step at a time, and waits for you to do each thing:

1. Open the orders waiting, to see what needs delivering.
2. Press Plan everyone and watch the orders become two rounds.
3. Open a round, to see its stops on the right.
4. Move a drop to the other driver: right-click a pin on the map, or drag a stop onto the other driver’s name.
5. Send the round to its driver.
6. Switch to the driver’s phone. Load the van, ticking each drop as it goes on, then set off and deliver the first drop, taking cash if the customer pays at the door.
7. Back in the office, the drop shows as delivered.

A step that asks you to press something waits until you do: the steps after it need what it makes. Skip tour stops the whole thing.

The bar at the top says which screen is showing. Finish the walk round and you can carry on playing: the bar then switches between the office and the driver’s phone.

Nothing in practice is real. No order is saved or marked delivered, nobody is emailed or texted, and your own orders, drivers and rounds are never touched. Press End practice, or go to another page, and it is all thrown away.

Planning with others

More than one person can plan rounds at once. You see who else is planning the day, their changes as they make them, their pointer with their name on it, and the round they have open, and you can Follow them. If two people change the same round at the same moment, Bottle refuses the second rather than let it undo the first. Assistants and other systems wait while a person is planning. See Working together for all of it.

Before the first round

Vehicles in the rail. Add a base first: the yard, with its postcode. That is where rounds start and end unless a vehicle says otherwise. A postcode is enough to put it on the map. Bases are kept on the same page as the fleet, Vehicles and bases, below it, because they are set up together and then left alone. The page has four tabs: Vehicles, Drivers, Patches and Bases. Change a base to fix its name or postcode; Remove takes it off the list without touching rounds already planned from it, and Show removed vehicles and bases brings it back.

Then add a vehicle: what the yard calls it, its registration, the base it starts and finishes at, and anything worth writing down about it. Where it goes comes from its driver, below.

MOT and servicing

The vehicle record also keeps when its MOT runs out, when it was last serviced and when the next service is due. The fleet list marks anything due within a month in blue and anything overdue in red, and the owners and admins get an email a month before, a week before, and once the day has passed. Put the new date on the vehicle after it has been in and the reminders start again from there.

Nothing stops a round being planned for a vehicle whose MOT has lapsed. That is deliberate: the date may simply be out of date in Bottle, and a round that refuses to plan at six in the morning helps nobody. The warning is loud instead. The round belongs to the vehicle, not to whoever is driving it, because three vehicles might have six drivers between them and a temp on a Saturday.

Give each driver the vehicle they usually take, on the Drivers tab, the People page or beside the map. Plan a round for that vehicle and they are in the cab without being asked for; the office can put somebody else in it for the day.

Delivery patches

A patch is an area a driver covers: South, KT3, KT4, Epsom, Surrey. Draw them once on the Patches tab and give each to one driver or more. A vehicle takes on the patches of the driver who usually drives it, so moving a driver to another van, or handing their patch to a colleague while they are off, is one change on the Drivers tab. Nothing needs retyping on the van.

The areas are typed as one line, however the patch actually works.

Two kinds of term, and you can mix them. Something that looks like the start of a postcode (KT, KT3, SW1A) matches every address whose postcode starts that way, so KT is all of Kingston and KT3 is one bit of it. Anything else is a place name and matches the borough, county or region the postcode belongs to. Nobody types those onto an address: the postcode brings them.

A vehicle whose driver has no patch gets everything waiting. Fine for one vehicle. Vans set up before patches keep the areas typed onto them, shown in grey on the fleet list, until their driver is given a patch.

Planning a round

Plan beside a driver takes every order waiting on that day inside their patches and puts the stops in the best order the router can find. The round goes in the van they usually take, starting from that van’s base and finishing where it finishes. One press.

If their van is already out with somebody else, or they have none, the round is planned anyway, from the yard, and says No van yet. Pick one in Which van on the round. A round cannot be sent to its driver until it has a van, and a van takes one round a day, so a van already out with somebody is shown but cannot be picked. Your plan is priced by vans, and this is what keeps the rounds going out to the vans you pay for: have as many drivers as you like.

Plan rounds for everyone out today does that for every driver not marked off, in name order, and then says what it could not do: how many orders were left waiting, who got no van, and who could not be planned for want of a base. Where two patches overlap, the first name gets the shared orders; where two drivers share a van, the first name gets the van.

Every round on the day is drawn on the map in its own colour, the same colour as its dot in the list and its numbers in the card. Open one and the others step back so it can be read against them; close it and they all come forward again.

Open the round and the stops are listed in order, each with what it is and roughly what time the vehicle gets there. Move one up or down if you know something the router does not, such as who opens late. Best order again hands it back to the router.

Who is driving, and sending it to them

Open a round and the top of the card walks it through four steps, ticking each off: Driver, Sent, Left, Done. Only the next step is a coloured button, and the line under it says what it does or what has to happen first. Pick who is driving from the list there; once the round has been sent, take it back to change the driver.

A round is the office’s until you press Send to driver. Until then the driver sees nothing at all, which is deliberate: stops move, vehicles change, and a sheet that rearranges itself under somebody at six in the morning is worse than no sheet. Sending it emails them to say they have a round for that day, how many drops and which vehicle, with a link to open it.

Take back undoes it. The round disappears from their phone and they get an email saying it was taken back, rather than it vanishing and leaving them to wonder. Anything they already recorded stays recorded.

A round with nobody in the cab cannot be sent; there is nobody to send it to. And a round cannot be marked as left until it has been sent: the driver needs the list before the van goes.

Doors with hours

Where an address can only take a delivery at certain times, the planner works the round out around that rather than finding out afterwards. A yard that shuts at four, a bay suspended at half ten for the market, a school that will not have a lorry on site at going-home time: the round is ordered so those are made, and a plan that misses one is treated as worse than a plan that drives further.

Sometimes that means driving to the far side of the patch first. Sometimes it means nothing changes, because the window was going to be met anyway. Either way, the times on the round are what the planner actually believes.

If a day truly cannot be driven — two doors an hour apart, open for the same half hour — the round is still planned, and the door that cannot be reached is marked on it. Nothing is silently dropped. See What did not fit.

The times are estimates, and say so

Every arrival time on a round is a guess with an allowance built in. The map answers in free-flow speeds, so Bottle pads each leg by what your roads actually do: an ordinary figure across the day, and a bigger one during the morning and evening rush. The round panel says which numbers were used.

Set them under Settings › Business, and tune them after a fortnight of watching rounds come home. If vans are consistently back early, the allowance is too generous; if the last drop is always late, it is not generous enough.

Whether it fits

A round is only a plan if the van can carry it and the driver can do it in a day, so every round says how it sits against both.

Load. Each product carries what one weighs full, cylinder and gas, and the room it takes on the van, under Products. Each vehicle carries its payload and load space. Add up the drops and the On the van drawer shows kilos against payload and litres against space, as bars. Its button on the round card shows an amber warning once the load passes nine tenths of either limit, and a red error once it is over, so nobody has to open it to know. Empties come back in the same racks, so the load only ever gets lighter: leaving the yard is the moment that counts. A product with no weight recorded counts as nothing, and the card says how many items it could not weigh, so nobody trusts a total that is missing half the load.

Hours. A round is loading, driving, a stop at every door and the break, added up. Driving comes from the router. The rest comes from Settings: how long loading takes, minutes at each door, minutes for every item carried to it, and the working day for anyone without a shift pattern. A driver’s hours and break come from their shift pattern on the Rota, for the day of the round, so a driver who starts earlier on Mondays is planned that way. The round leaves at the start of that shift unless you set Leaves at yourself. The card’s Start row says when it leaves and its End row when the van should be back, in red if that is after the day ends.

Every stop gets a time of day off that: what time the van should be at the door if it leaves when planned. Rough with straight lines, better with roads, and the hook for telling the customer.

Over any of those and the fleet row says so in red before the round is even opened, and the card says by how much: 120 kg, 300 litres, forty minutes. Enough to know whether to take off one drop or five.

When a van is over its plate

The planner will not do this to you. It fills a round from the vehicle’s patch and then takes drops off until what is left fits, handing back what came off and why. Over-filling happens when somebody builds a round by hand: the customer rang, and one more drop went onto a van that was already full.

A van over its plated weight is one nobody may legally drive, so the round card does not leave you with a red number. It says how far over, and offers the two things a dispatcher actually does:

Swap with another van. Give the heavy drop to a van with room and take a light one back. Offered first, because both vans stay out and nobody waits an extra day. Only swaps that genuinely fix this round without pushing the other one over are shown, so nothing here needs checking afterwards.

Take one off. The drops are listed heaviest first, with the ones that clear it on their own marked. Each offers the other rounds that day with room for it, and the next day that door will take a delivery. Where nothing else is planned, it says so rather than offering a button that does nothing.

Part deliveries

A driver can hand over less than an order asks for, and says why. Not on the vehicle, or a damaged cylinder they would not leave, and the rest stays owed: it appears in the waiting list to be planned again, as many times as it takes. Refused by the customer, and the rest comes off the order with a refund recorded. Anything else waits for you.

Open the order and it says what went, what came back, and what is still to go. Where something is still to go you have two choices. Leave it, and the planner picks it up. Or Return and refund, for cylinders already back in the yard that nobody is sending out again: they come off the order and the customer is refunded for exactly those, priced at what they agreed. The confirmation says the amount before you press it.

A refund is recorded against the order, not paid by Bottle. When the accounting system is connected it raises the credit note; until then, Mark as refunded once the money or the credit has gone, so the order stops saying it is owed.

The order closes only when every line is either delivered or returned.

Open the round and each drop says what came back from the door: how much went, anything the driver flagged as wrong, and the reason for one that could not be made at all. That is what the office plans the next day against.

Taking a round back while the driver is out asks first, and says how many drops they have already done. It disappears from their phone either way, and everything they recorded is kept.

That is also why a drop that could not be made can be tried again. Until now an order could be on one round for ever: the database allowed a single stop per order, so anything that came back was stuck. A stop is now the record of one visit, and only an unfinished one claims the order.

Orders waiting on payment

An order paid by payment link is not planned onto a round until the money is in. It waits with the reason Not paid yet, and the next time you plan that day it goes on a van. If you know the money is coming, put it on a round by hand.

Cash on delivery does not hold anything up: the driver collects at the door, so those orders are planned and routed like any other.

What did not fit

Plan rounds for all vehicles now trims. A round that comes out over a limit loses one drop at a time until it fits: over hours, the drop costing the most driving; over weight, the heaviest; over space, the bulkiest. Measured again after each, so nothing comes off for a limit that has already been met.

What came off goes to the waiting list, which opens on the right when there is anything in it, and each order says why it waits: no time in the day, too heavy for the van, no room, nobody’s patch, or not on the map. Hover the reason for the longer version.

From there, three things. Right-click it and move it to another vehicle’s round, or start one. Send it to another day, either from the right-click menu or by changing Wanted on on the row. Or fix what stopped it: widen a patch, give the vehicle its real payload, correct the address.

Addresses with delivery times

Where an address has delivery times set, the plan works around them. A drop the van would reach early shows how long it waits, and that waiting is counted in the time the van gets back. A drop the van could not reach before closing is shown in red and comes off the round, and the round says it does not fit until it has gone.

Delivery times are set on the address, under the customer. See Customers.

Handing a drop to another vehicle

Drag a stop’s row onto another van in the list on the left, and it moves to that van’s round; onto a van with no round yet, and that van’s round starts with it. Drag a waiting order onto a van to put it on that round. Drag a row up or down its own round to change the order. While you hold it, the place under it says what letting go will do: “Move to position 3”, “Move to Van 2”, “Start Van 2’s round with this”, or why it cannot go there, such as a van that has already left.

Or right-click a stop, either its row in the round card or its pin on the map, and the menu offers every other round planned that day, and taking it off the rounds altogether. The ⋯ button on the row does the same for anybody who does not think to try the right button.

If the vehicle you want has no round yet, the same menu offers Start Van 2’s round with this. The round begins carrying that drop alone rather than its whole patch, which is the point of doing it by hand. No need to plan a round first just to move one order into it.

Right-click a cluster and the same menu acts on everything under it: Move all to Sam’s round hands over the whole market in one go, and Zoom in on these or Spread them out opens it up, depending on whether zooming would part them.

Every drop menu also ends with Move to another day: Today and Tomorrow in one press, less whichever of them is already on screen, or Pick a day for anything else. Today is the one you want for a drop that was pushed to Thursday and then wanted after all.

A drop on a round comes off it first, because a sheet for today should not carry Thursday’s drop. It then appears on that day’s map, ready to be planned with the rest. Nothing moves into the past: a round that has been driven is a record, not a plan.

Right-click the map itself and it offers Fit the whole day, Fit this round when one is open, and Put a base here, which finds the postcode nearest where you pointed and opens the form right there with it filled in.

The round it joins is re-planned around it, so a drop handed over lands where that vehicle already passes rather than tacked on the end. The round it leaves keeps the order of what remains, since somebody may have arranged it by hand, and is measured again. A vehicle already out will not take a new stop: the driver has the list in their hand.

A stop that could not be placed on the map goes on the end and says so. The driver can still do it; the planner just could not help. Fix the postcode on the address and it will be placed next time.

An order sits on one round at a time. Planning a second round for the same day takes only what the first one did not.

Straight lines and roads

Out of the box, the router works as the crow flies. The order of the stops is roughly right; the miles and minutes are a guess, and the round says so: the line on the map is dashed and the card reads Straight lines, not roads.

Point Bottle at a road router and the same page gives real distances, real times and a line that follows the streets. It is open source and free to run; see Routing under the developer pages for how.

Out, and back

Vehicle has left fixes the stops: the driver has the list in their hand, and the office moving things about under them helps nobody. It also loads the round’s stock onto the van and tells each customer it is on its way, the same as when the driver starts the round from their phone. Mark round done closes the round. Both can be taken back, Not left yet and Reopen round, for the thumb that slipped. A round planned by mistake can be scrapped while it is still being planned, and its orders go back to waiting.

What is on the van

Each round’s panel has On the van: for every bottle, what the round’s doors still want, what the driver said went on (top-ups on the road included), what has gone through doors so far, what is on the van now, and how many of those are spare, which is to say on the van and promised to nobody. That last column is the one for the phone call: a pub that has just rung for a 47 can be told yes or no without ringing the driver.

Until the driver confirms the load, only the plan is known and the rest is shown as not yet said. The same figures, by van rather than by round, are on Stock.

How many vehicles your plan carries

Starter carries one. Round carries three, and every van after that is £79 a month up to ten in total. Depot is priced for whatever you run, and is where to go above ten. A trial carries ten, so a month of it shows what a full fleet looks like.

Vehicles, not people. Three vehicles might have six drivers between them and a temp on a Saturday, so nobody is charged by the head. Taking a vehicle off the road gives its seat back, and takes it off the next bill.

What a driver sees

Not this page. A driver gets the round on their phone: the drops as a list, a map as a tab off it, and three buttons on each drop. Their rounds only, and nothing about anybody else’s vehicle. That is also what an assistant connected by a driver can read.

What they do comes straight back here. A drop marked delivered turns green on the map and closes the order. A drop they could not make wears its reason on the round card, and the order goes back to waiting for another day, which is where the waiting list picks it up.