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Back-office procedures

Pickup desk

Working the pickup queue: the auto-sweep, auto-assignment, assigning by hand, and the exceptions that need a person.

Ops managers and the pickup desk3 min readPrintable handbook

The pickup desk owns everything between a merchant forwarding a parcel and a rider walking out of their shop with it. The screen is /admin/pickups.

How requests arrive

Request origins
OriginCreated by
MerchantA merchant forwarding parcels from their Booked tab.
Auto sweepThe scheduled sweep, which forwards everything still in Booked when a merchant’s auto-pickup time arrives.
AdminYou, raising a request on a merchant’s behalf after a phone call.

The sweep runs on a short interval all day and records a sweep run every time, including when it has nothing to do. Its history is at /admin/pickups/sweep-runs, which is where you look first when a merchant says nobody came.

Auto-assignment

When a request is created, auto-assignment looks for a pickup rider who is on duty today, has pickup duty, is under the daily capacity on their profile, and is nearest to the merchant. If no rider fits, the request stays queued rather than being forced onto somebody.

  1. 01Check the queue twice an hourAnything still pending with its window closing needs a decision from you, not from the scheduler.
  2. 02Assign by handOpen the request, read the candidate list with each rider’s current load and distance, and assign. The rider is notified immediately.
  3. 03Unassign deliberatelyUnassigning returns the request to the queue and tells the rider. Use it when a rider calls in sick mid-window, never to reshuffle silently.
  4. 04Cancel only with a reasonCancelling returns every parcel to the merchant’s Booked tab. The merchant sees the reason, so write one that reads well tomorrow.

Exceptions that need you

Window closing with no rider
Assign the nearest rider with capacity, or call the merchant and agree a later window. Do not let a window expire in silence.
Partial pickup
Read the bounce reasons. One merchant with repeated not-ready bounces is a conversation for their account manager.
Express after the cut-off
Express cannot be promised after 13:00. Either collect it as standard or agree tomorrow morning with the merchant.
Below the pickup minimum
An account under 5 parcels a day is flagged no-pickup. If they are growing, ask the account manager to clear the flag rather than assigning a rider as a favour.
Rider at the wrong address
Check the merchant’s pickup addresses. If the default is wrong, fix it on the merchant record so the next request is right.

End of day

  • Every request for today is closed, cancelled with a reason, or explicitly carried to tomorrow.
  • Every rider on pickup duty has brought in what they collected and the warehouse inbound count matches.
  • Any merchant whose window was missed has been called, not just notified by the system.

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