Weekly routes
A weekly route is a delivery route that repeats every week: the same area on the same days, with a driver who usually drives it. "North, Tuesdays and Fridays, Ana." Orders land on their route as soon as they come in, and the route is planned for each of its days once that day's orders close.
Weekly routes are part of Local Delivery. Without any, nothing changes: each day is planned from scratch across your drivers, the way the dispatch board always has. Creating your first weekly route is how you start using them. There is no separate switch.
When to use them
- Wholesale on fixed days. A distributor's "Tuesday North" is always Ana's. The same customers, in roughly the same order, every week. The driver knows each dock, and the customer knows when the truck comes.
- Reaching a new part of town. Delivering everywhere every day costs too much for a small business. A weekly route lets you say "we come to your neighbourhood on Thursdays", which is what makes a distant area worth the drive.
Creating a weekly route
Open Dispatch → Weekly routes and select New weekly route. Owners and admins can create and change routes; everyone on the team can see them.
- Name. For you and your drivers, like "North". Customers never see it: they're told a day and a time.
- Days it runs. One route can run on several days, like Tuesday and Friday.
- Zones. The delivery zones this route serves.
- Default driver. Who usually drives it. You can change the driver for any single day (see below).
- Loads at. The warehouse the van leaves from. Leave it on your default warehouse if you only have one.
- Starts and Ends. The hours the driver works that day.
- Orders a day. How many orders the route can take. Leave it blank to use the driver's vehicle capacity.
- Stop order. Plan the best order each time suits retail, where customers change every week. Keep last week's order suits wholesale: regular customers keep the order they had on the last completed run, and new ones are fitted in where they add the least driving. If you reorder the stops on the board, the next week learns your order.
Iraca refuses a save that would leave an order with two possible routes, and says why right in the form:
- One zone can be on only one route each day.
- One driver can be the default on only one route each day.
- You can't take a day off a route while a delivery window or a customer's standing day on that route still falls on it. Move them first.
How an order gets its route
When an order comes in, or when you change its day or window, Iraca picks its route in this order:
- The window it was booked into. A delivery window can name the route that runs it: open Settings → Local delivery → Delivery windows, edit the window and choose a Weekly route. The route has to run on the window's day. A retail customer who books "Thursday 2–6pm" is on that window's route.
- The customer's standing day. On a wholesale customer's contact, each standing delivery day can name its route. Only routes that run on that day are offered.
- The zone. Otherwise, the active route that serves the address's zone on that day.
- None. The order is off route. It is planned across the day's vans as usual, and the board marks it Off route.
An order keeps its route once it has one. Editing or deactivating the route later doesn't move orders already placed. Changing an order's day or window picks its route again.
The order screen shows the route under Local delivery ("Weekly route: North").
Drivers: a default, changeable for any day
Saving a route puts its default driver on the Driver shifts schedule for its days over the next three weeks, and the nightly run keeps adding days. A shift made by a route shows the route's name.
- Someone else drives one day (a sick day, a holiday): open Dispatch → Driver shifts, click that day's shift, choose another Driver and save. Only that day changes. Once a route has been planned for the shift, change the driver on the route on the board instead.
- A shift you change by hand is never overwritten by the route. Editing the route updates only its future shifts that nobody has changed and that have no route yet.
- A route day with no driver (no default, the driver deactivated, or the shift deleted) is still planned, with no driver, and What needs you tells you about it during the week before.
Planning a route's day
When a day's orders close, the scheduled planning builds one route per weekly route that runs that day, named on the board with its weekly route. It never dispatches: you review and dispatch as usual.
- An order on a weekly route only goes on that route's van. If it doesn't fit (too many orders, not enough hours), it's left unrouted with the reason, never moved to another route.
- Orders off route can go on any van that day.
- Running the planning twice builds nothing new.
You can still move a stop to another route on the board. The order keeps its weekly route, and you decided.
When a route is over capacity
Retail windows fill up and close on their own, so they never go over. Orders that don't book a window (wholesale standing days, date-only orders, orders you enter) can. Going over is flagged, never moved: the customer was told that day. What needs you shows the day and the route, and when the plan is built, the extra orders are left for you to place.
What the driver sees
The driver app shows the weekly route's name on Today and on the route screen ("Weekly route: North"), so a driver who covers for someone knows which run it is.
Telling customers which day their area gets
A delivery day a customer can't see is one they never book. When an address is in one of your zones, Iraca says which days you deliver there and the next one:
We deliver to 33139 every Thursday. Next delivery: Thursday, October 15.
- In the customer portal's cart, above the delivery windows. It's shown even when every window in the next three weeks is full, so the customer knows you do come.
- On the order screen, in the Local delivery card.
- At a WooCommerce checkout, the Iraca Connector receives the same days with the windows.
A wholesale customer with standing days is told their own days. An address in no zone gets the usual "we don't deliver there" message.
You can also publish a page where anyone can check their postal code, for your website and social posts. See Your public delivery-area page.
Announcing a new route
When you start delivering to a new area, tell the customers who live there. In Marketing, make a segment with the condition Postal code is one of the area's codes, then send them a campaign with your public delivery-area link. Only customers who agreed to your emails receive it.
Deactivating or deleting a route
- Deactivate a route (switch off Active) to stop it from planning and from taking new orders. Orders already on it keep their day and are planned with the day's other deliveries.
- Delete is refused while orders still to be delivered are on the route: they'd lose their route without anyone noticing. Deactivate it instead. Deleting removes its future shifts that nobody changed.