Plan and dispatch your first route

This walkthrough takes you through a complete delivery day, start to finish. Set aside about ten minutes.

1. Add a depot

A depot is the place your routes start and end — usually your warehouse, shop or yard. Add at least one depot before you plan, so Routelink knows where drivers are setting off from.

2. Add your vehicles

Create a vehicle for each van, bike or car you run. Vehicles are what routes get assigned to, and their capacity limits are used when Routelink works out how to split up your stops.

3. Bring in your stops

You have a few options here:

• Upload a CSV or Excel file — see Importing stops from a spreadsheet.
• Connect your online store or business system — see our integrations.
• Add a stop by hand, which is handy for one-offs and unusual addresses.

Routelink geocodes each address as it comes in. Anything it can’t place on the map is flagged so you can fix it before planning.

4. Plan and optimise

Select the stops you want to send out, choose your depot and vehicles, and optimise. Routelink sequences the stops to complete the day as quickly as possible while respecting your constraints.

Review the result before you dispatch. You can drag stops between routes or reorder them if you know something the optimiser doesn’t.

5. Dispatch to your drivers

Each driver device gets a unique, PIN-protected link. Send that link once and the driver uses it every day — there’s no app to install. See How driver devices work.

Prefer paper? You can export a printable trip sheet instead, or as a backup.

That’s a full day

From here, the two features most teams turn on next are customer notifications and proof of delivery.