The driver's day

Load the van, do the drops, take the money and prove it happened. On a phone, in a yard, in the rain, with or without a signal.

Where the day is up to

The app opens on today's round once the office has sent it. At the top: the vehicle, when the driver leaves or how many drops are done, and when the round was last updated. Under that, a strip of three steps showing where the day is, Load, Out and Back, with the step behind ticked and the one in hand marked.

Below it, one big button for whatever comes next. Load the van until the load is saved, then I have set off, then Back at the yard once every drop is done. Beside it, the things that apply right now as tiles: load up or more stock, a new sale, hand in cash. A tile only appears when it is usable, so the screen never offers something that will not work.

Every drop, in order

Each drop says who it is for and the address, what is going, roughly when the van gets there, what to take at the door (an amount, Pay later for a customer on account, or Paid if it is already settled), and what to do if nobody is in, as that customer asked. Navigate opens the driver's own maps app: to the pin the office dropped where there is one, and to the full address where there is not, because a pin in the middle of a postcode is worse than a street name.

Delivering

A delivery is one screen, saved in one go, and it starts filled in the way nearly every door goes, so most of the time the driver signs and saves.

• What is going, with a reason when it is less than the order asks for: not on the vehicle, a damaged cylinder, the customer refused it, or something else. The rest is then delivered another day, cancelled and refunded, or left for the office to decide.
• Empties to take back, starting at what the order expects, changed to whatever was actually handed over, with a way to take one the order did not expect.
• Money at the door, for a customer paying cash: all of it, some of it with the rest left owing, or nothing.
• Proof. A signature on the screen with a finger, plus who signed, typed or spoken into the phone. Or, where the customer asked for it to be left, a photograph of where it was put and a note.
• Anything wrong, optional: a wrong product on the van, difficult access, a complaint, with a line for the office.

The button says what is about to be saved, such as Delivered, £54.00 cash taken. While it is greyed out the lines just above it say what is still missing, in the order the screen asks for it, rather than leaving somebody hunting for the field they have not filled in.

Taking payment at the door

Cash or card. Cash is a single question, all, some or nothing, and works with no signal like everything else. Card shows a code the customer scans and pays on their own phone, for exactly what the drop owes, so card details never pass through the driver's phone. The link can be sent another way instead. Card needs a signal; cash does not.

Selling off the van

A trader at the market asks for a spare. The driver adds the sale on the phone, against an existing customer or as a name and an address, and it becomes an order like any other, priced at that customer's rate, invoiced the same way. A customer who wants more than was ordered is handled on the drop itself.

No signal, which is most yards at some point

Today's round lives on the phone, so losing signal changes nothing on screen: the round is still there and the app says how old its copy is. Loading up, setting off, delivering with a signature or a photograph, cash taken, not delivered, undo and adding more stock all work with nothing at all. The screen updates straight away and a bar at the bottom says how many changes are waiting to send.

They send themselves, in the order they were made, as soon as there is signal, carrying the time each thing actually happened rather than the time it was sent. Nothing is sent twice however patchy the signal. If the office changed something underneath, the bar says which change could not be saved so the driver can ring in rather than finding out at the yard.

Cash back at the yard

What the driver took is counted in by the office, and both sides can see the same figure. Where the two disagree, the disagreement is recorded rather than argued about twice.

What happens next

The apps themselves, and what they need, are on the driver apps page. What comes back from the door feeds stock and invoicing.