Delivery Schedules are used to determine the days available for delivery/collections and the order cut off times.
Once Delivery Schedules are created, they are then used in conjunction with Delivery Areas by creating entries within the Delivery Area Schedules Page.
Delivery Schedules can be defined in the following ways:
- If deliveries are made on regular days of the weeks, then the Days FastTab can be populated.
- If delivery days are more irregular, then specific dates can by specified on the Dates FastTab.
- If certain days are not available for delivery (Bank Holidays for example) then they can be entered here and the Exlcude Field ticked.
It is also possible to use a hybrid of the two options and specify standard days of the week and then add either additional specified dates for extra deliveries or exceptions to standard week days if a delivery can not be made on a specific date. In the example above, Monday to Friday have been specified as days of the week for delivery. In addition we have specifically excluded some dates which are Bank Holidays.
The following Fields can be set against entries created on both the Days and the Dates FastTab:
| Departure Time |
In this Field, you can specify the time that the delivery will leave the warehouse. |
| Order Cut-off Date Calc. |
By choosing to set a value in this Field, you are telling users the latest an order can be placed before having to be moved to the next delivery date. For example, if the Order Cut-Off Date Calc was set to 1D (this is a set to be a Date Formula), an order would need to be placed the previous day in order to make that day’s delivery. |
| Order Cut-Off Time |
In addition to the above, you can also define a cut-off time which determines that orders placed after this time will miss the cut off and be on the following shipment, to allow accurate order promising to customers and avoid overloading the warehouse with last minute additions. For example, order before 2pm for next day delivery. |
To make it easier to populate the delivery dates on the Dates FastTab, the dates can be viewed either in a list view or as a calendar view, by selecting the View option from the Ribbon within the FastTab.
Selecting Calendar View will show dates in a calendar format as shown in the example below:
Clicking on a date that is already scheduled will prompt if you wish to remove the date from the schedule, otherwise clicking on a blank date will display the following dialog allowing the information relating to the date to be populated.
It is also possible to add regular (or recurring) dates to the schedule. To do this select Add Regular Dates from the Manage option on the ribbon immediately above the dates section.
On the dialog add the Starting Date (the first date in the range of recurring dates), the Ending Date (the date you wish to create recurring dates up to) and the Recurring Frequency (This is a Date Formula that specifies the interval between dates). for example if you want to create a delivery date fortnightly for the year 2022, with the first date of 4th January, you would enter a Starting Date of 04/01/22, an Ending Date of 31/12/22 and a Recurring Frequency of 2W.
You can. optionally, set the Exclude, Departure Time, Order Cut-Off Date Calc and Order Cut-Off Time fields to populate these value on the created sate entries.