One controller, three phones and a whiteboard
Bookings come in by phone, email, a web form and a couple of big customers' spreadsheets. The controller writes them on a whiteboard or in a spreadsheet, looks at where the drivers are, and rings each driver with their next job. A same-day urgent job lands at eleven, so the controller reshuffles two routes in their head and makes four more calls.
It works, most days, because the controller is very good. On the day they are off sick, it falls apart. Nobody else quite knows which driver has which job, or why the plan looks the way it does.
Why dispatch stays manual
Off-the-shelf dispatch software exists, so why is the whiteboard still there? Usually because the business has rules the software does not understand, and because the jobs arrive in too many shapes to feed into anything automatically.
- Bookings arrive through several channels, each in a different format.
- Allocation depends on knowledge the controller holds: which driver has a tail lift, who knows a site, which customer needs a particular van.
- Drivers are told jobs by phone, so there is no record of what was sent.
- Job status comes back by phone too, so the board is always slightly behind reality.
- Previous attempts at software were abandoned because they forced a way of working that did not fit.
The cost of dispatching by memory
The obvious risk is the key person. Beyond that, calls to drivers eat the controller's day, jobs get missed when a booking email is overlooked, drivers run half-empty routes because consolidating jobs is hard to do in your head, and customers wait for updates because nobody can see status without ringing someone.
| Task | Manual | With a dispatch board |
|---|---|---|
| Take the booking | Phone, email, form, customer spreadsheets | All land as jobs in one queue |
| Allocate | Controller's memory and the whiteboard | Suggested driver, controller confirms |
| Tell the driver | Phone call | Job appears in driver app |
| Track progress | Ring the driver | Status updates from the app |
| Prove delivery | Paper note | Signature and photo on the job |
How we move dispatch off the whiteboard
- Job intake from every channel: a booking form for customers, an email parser that turns booking emails into jobs, and imports from key customers' spreadsheets or systems through their API or a shared folder.
- A dispatch board showing unallocated jobs, drivers, vehicles and their current positions, built as a web app or on a platform you already use.
- Driver and vehicle attributes stored as data (tail lift, van size, licences, site inductions, postcode areas) so allocation rules are written down rather than remembered.
- Suggested allocations and route orders based on location, time windows and those rules, which the controller accepts, changes or overrides with a click.
- A driver app or mobile web flow that receives jobs, shows addresses and notes, and sends status updates and proof of delivery back to the board.
- Customer notifications and tracking links triggered from job status.
- Completed jobs flow to invoicing in Xero, QuickBooks or Sage with the right customer rates applied.
The controller stays in charge. Suggestions speed things up, but the person who knows the drivers and customers makes the final call. We also check whether an existing dispatch product would fit once your job intake is sorted, and if it would, we will say so and connect to it instead of building one.
What the controller's day becomes
Jobs arrive on the board without being typed in. The controller looks at suggestions, adjusts a few, and sends them to drivers in one go. When the urgent job lands, they drag it to a driver and it appears on that driver's phone. Status comes back automatically. When the controller is off, someone else can open the same board and see the whole day.
Over time, you get data you never had: jobs per driver, time on site, failed drops by customer, which helps with pricing and planning.
Is this your operation?
- One controller holds the day's plan in their head.
- Drivers are sent jobs by phone call.
- Bookings arrive by phone, email, web form and customer spreadsheets.
- You find out a job is done when the driver rings in or the paperwork comes back.
- Previous dispatch software was abandoned because it did not fit your rules.