Dispatch
The dispatch board, the manifest record, and the command centre — planning runs, building units, and loading them.
Dispatch is the step after a booking. A job becomes freight that has to go on a truck; dispatch is where you decide which truck, with what on it, in what order.
The three pages
Section titled “The three pages”They are siblings, reached from the tab strip at the top of any of them.
| Page | What it’s for |
|---|---|
| Dispatch Board | The working screen. Freight waiting, the runs it can go on, and who is free to drive them. |
| Manifests | The record. Every manifest ever, including completed and cancelled, sortable and exportable. |
| Command Centre | The same board arranged for a wall screen — dark, dense, readable across a room. |
The one rule worth knowing before anything else
Section titled “The one rule worth knowing before anything else”Dispatch never states a figure it does not have.
If nobody recorded a truck’s pallet capacity, the card says “capacity not recorded” — it does not say 0, and it does not guess from the vehicle type. If a package has no dimensions, the load plan lists it as unplaced and names the missing figure; it does not assume it is a standard pallet, even though most of them are.
This is deliberate, and it is the thing that makes the screen worth trusting. A blank field is visible. A guessed number that looks like a measurement is not — and a load plan is something a forklift driver acts on physically.
The same rule runs through everything below: capacity bars, the load plan, the balance indicator and the rebuild history all either show a value with where it came from, or say plainly that they do not have one.
Availability is not “on a run”
Section titled “Availability is not “on a run””The units column counts three separate things, because they answer three separate questions:
- Available — the unit’s availability is active or idle. It can be given work.
- On a run — it is holding a manifest that is dispatched, accepted or in transit right now.
- Off the road — off duty, unavailable or retired. It cannot take work today.
A unit can be available and on a run at the same time. A unit that is free but whose driver is on leave is not available, and the board will not invite you to drag freight onto it.
Every dispatch screen writes a date as 22 Sep 2026 — day, named month, year — so it cannot be misread as month-first. Date filters show the same format.
A connote’s status follows its run
Section titled “A connote’s status follows its run”You no longer set a connote’s status by hand once it is on a run. When its manifest is dispatched or accepted, the connote reads allocated; when the manifest goes in transit, the connote reads in transit. Planning or approving a manifest moves nothing — a half-built plan is not a promise.
Take the connote off the run, or cancel the manifest, and the connote goes back to the status it had before. Delivered is still set by the driver’s proof of delivery. Pending, confirmed and cancelled stay with operators.
This matters beyond dispatch: invoicing picks up delivered connotes, and the customer portal shows the same status.
Who can change things
Section titled “Who can change things”Looking at a run — its crew, its cargo, its route, where it went — is a read, and everyone with access to the portal can do it. Creating manifests, building units, allocating freight and recording rebuilds are writes, and only Operations and Admin roles get those controls. A read-only user sees the same pages with the write buttons absent.
Where to start
Section titled “Where to start”Read Dispatch Board first — it is the page you will spend the day on. Then Units and rebuilds, which is where the trucks come from.