Deliveries and transport
Before you start, open these. They are both under Stock in the menu: Deliveries and Shipments.
Can’t find one? It may be turned off for your business, or your account may not be allowed to open it. Ask the person who set up your FeePrime. They can fix both.
A delivery is one journey. It holds one or more shipments, and it records who moved them, in what, and what happened along the way.
What a delivery holds
- A delivery number and the date it is planned for.
- The shipments it is carrying.
- The place it leaves from.
- Who is driving. Either a driver from your contacts, or just a driver name typed in.
- The vehicle registration.
- If someone else carries it, the carrier.
- The transport cost, and which currency that cost is in.
- The pickup date and time, and any notes.
The journey is recorded as it happens
A delivery moves through these stages: picked up, in transit, arrived, completed.
Or it ends as failed, with a reason. Or cancelled, with a reason.
Keep these honest. Somebody in your office is telling a customer where their goods are, and they can only tell the truth if these are true.
A failed delivery is worth recording
Failed, with a reason, is the most useful stage here. It is also the one people skip, because it is easier to quietly book the delivery again.
A delivery that failed because nobody was home, or the address was wrong, or the van broke down, is worth writing down.
Collect enough of those reasons and they start telling you something. One customer is never in. One area needs morning slots. One van keeps breaking down.
Book it again without recording the failure and you end up with a delivery that worked, and no memory of the three tries it took.
Put the transport cost on the delivery
Write down what the journey cost, and which currency it cost it in. Carriers do not always bill you in your own money.
Do that and you know what it really costs to serve a customer, or an area.
Let delivery costs disappear into general expenses instead, and you find out years later that your furthest customers never made you any money.
Deliveries and shipments are different things
A shipment is the goods leaving for one customer. The shipment is what moves your stock.
A delivery is the trip that carries shipments.
One delivery can carry several shipments. One van, six customers.
So: the shipment is about goods leaving you. The delivery is about the van and the journey.
Try it
On staging.feeprime.com, create a delivery carrying two shipments. Walk it through picked up and in transit, then fail it and give a reason. Now read the record as if you were someone looking at it next week.