Christmas week, again
Every December your round planner sits down to work out the Christmas and New Year collections. Christmas Day and Boxing Day are off. Some customers are closed for the week anyway. Pubs and restaurants are busier than ever and need extra lifts. The Monday and Tuesday rounds have to move, and everything after them shifts.
The planner works it out on a spreadsheet, prints revised round sheets and asks the office to email customers. The office sends one general email: collections may be a day later over the holidays. Half the customers do not read it. On the day, bins are not out, drivers mark them not presented, and customers ring in January to dispute the invoices.
Then it happens again at Easter, and on each of the other bank holidays through the year.
Why holidays cause missed lifts
Moving a round is easy. Knowing exactly which customers are affected, telling each of them their own new date, and making sure nobody drops out of the schedule is the hard part.
- Rounds are reworked by hand, and the shift ripples across the week.
- Customers get a general message, not their own new collection date.
- Customers who are closed over the holiday are not identified in advance.
- Extra lifts for busy hospitality customers are arranged ad hoc.
- After the holiday, lifts that were never rescheduled go unnoticed until customers complain.
What holiday confusion costs
Missed collections at the busiest time of year for hospitality customers damage relationships, and generate return visits when vehicles and drivers are already stretched. Not-presented lifts lead to disputes and credit notes in January.
The round planner and office spend days on work that follows the same pattern every year, and the knowledge of how it was done last time sits in an old spreadsheet.
How we build holiday schedules
What we build turns bank holiday planning into rules applied to your rounds, with each customer told their own dates.
- You set holiday rules once: which days have no collections, how affected rounds move (for example, everything a day later that week), and which days run extra.
- The system applies the rules to every round and shows the planner the resulting schedule, with any capacity problems such as a day overloaded by the shift.
- The planner adjusts where needed, and each customer's changed collection dates are calculated individually.
- Before the holiday, customers are asked whether they are closed, so their lifts can be suspended rather than attempted. Hospitality customers are offered extra lifts.
- Each affected customer gets a text and email with their own changed dates, a reminder the day before, and a way to reply.
- After the holiday, a check lists any scheduled lifts that were not moved or attempted, so nothing silently drops out.
| Customer situation | What they receive |
|---|---|
| Collection day moves | Their new date and a reminder the day before |
| Closed over the holiday | Confirmation of suspended lifts and restart date |
| Busy hospitality account | Offer of extra lifts with price |
| Not affected | Nothing, to avoid noise |
Christmas week with rules in place
In November the planner applies the Christmas rules. The system shows the shifted schedule and flags the Wednesday after Boxing Day as overloaded. She moves some restaurant lifts to an extra Saturday. Customers are asked whether they are closed; many reply that they are, and their lifts are suspended.
Each remaining customer gets a text with their own dates. On the day, bins are out. In January, the check shows no lifts left unscheduled, and the dispute queue is quiet.
Do holidays throw your rounds into confusion?
- Holiday rounds are reworked by hand every time.
- Customers receive a general message rather than their own dates.
- Not-presented lifts spike after every bank holiday.
- You do not know in advance which customers are closed.
- January brings a wave of invoice disputes.