Scheduling Future Deliveries and Time Slots
How to set up delivery time slots in AskBiz POS — letting customers choose when they want delivery, managing slot capacity, and scheduling a day's routes in advance.
Key Takeaways
- Delivery time slots give customers certainty and dramatically reduce failed delivery attempts — customers who chose a slot are home for it.
- Slot capacity limits prevent over-booking — AskBiz stops taking bookings for a slot once it's full.
- Scheduling tomorrow's deliveries tonight lets drivers start the day with a planned route rather than an improvised one.
Why time slots matter
The single biggest cause of failed deliveries is the customer not being home. Time slots solve this by giving the customer a say in when they receive their delivery. A customer who chose '2pm–4pm Tuesday' will make sure they're home at that time. Studies consistently show first-attempt success rates of 95%+ for slotted deliveries vs 75–80% for unscheduled 'anytime' deliveries. Beyond reducing failures, slots also let you plan routes more efficiently — you know exactly how many deliveries are happening in each time window, so you can allocate drivers accordingly.
Setting up time slots
Go to POS > Logistics > Settings > Delivery Slots. Click Add Slot. Define: Start Time, End Time (e.g. 09:00–11:00), Days Available (Mon–Fri, weekdays only, all days, etc.), Maximum Bookings (the number of deliveries this slot can accommodate), and Lead Time (the minimum hours in advance a slot can be booked — prevents last-minute orders for slots that can't realistically be served). Create enough slots to cover your operating hours at an appropriate granularity: 2-hour slots for most retailers; 30-minute slots for premium services.
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Start for free →Offering slots when creating an order
When creating a delivery order, the Delivery Time section shows available slots for the next 7 days. Slots at capacity are greyed out and unselectable. Choose the customer's preferred slot. The order is scheduled for that window — it won't appear in the driver's queue until the morning of the delivery date. This prevents confusion between today's orders and future-scheduled ones. For orders taken by phone or in person, the operator selects the slot on behalf of the customer. For online orders, the customer selects their own slot at checkout.
Planning the next day's routes
The evening before a delivery day, go to Logistics > Schedule. Select tomorrow's date. AskBiz shows all booked deliveries grouped by time slot and zone. Click Optimise Routes to generate suggested driver assignments for the day — each driver gets a run that fits within the slot windows and their geographic zone. Review and adjust as needed (account for a driver being off sick, a vehicle in maintenance, etc.). Confirm the plan. Drivers receive their schedule for tomorrow in the app that evening — they can review their route before starting their shift.
Slot capacity management
Slots fill up on busy days — monitor capacity from Logistics > Schedule. If a slot is nearly full and you anticipate more orders, you can temporarily increase capacity (if you have driver availability). If all slots are full for a day, new delivery orders for that date show as unavailable and the next available slot is offered automatically. For peak periods (Christmas, sale events), add extra slots or increase capacity in advance — do this in Logistics > Settings > Delivery Slots rather than scrambling on the day.