If a business you work for dispatches addresses it has handed you (by zone, by route or one by one), your business is invited. The dispatch appears in your Dispatch list with a banner: You have been invited to this dispatch. Until you answer, your stops are view-only and your drivers see nothing.
Every business invited to the dispatch gets a bell notification, and its administrators a push, when the dispatch is created. There is no email or text message.
Answer route by route
Under the banner is a list of your routes on this dispatch, one checkbox per route, with the number of stops still waiting for an answer beside each. Every route starts ticked, and All routes at the top ticks or unticks the whole list.
- Open the dispatch from Dispatch list.
- Untick any route you are not answering for right now. The banner says so itself: Untick any route you are not answering for. Until you answer, the stops are view-only.
- Press Accept or Decline. Both act on the ticked routes only.
Routes you left unticked stay in the list, still waiting. You can come back and answer them later, the same way.
If the invitation covers single addresses rather than routes, there is no list: Accept and Decline answer for everything at once, as the banner says: Accepting covers all of your routes and addresses on this dispatch.
Accept
The accepted routes become active and you manage the stops exactly as on your own dispatch. The drivers on each of your routes were attached to its stops when the dispatch was created; accepting is what tells them there is work. To add or change who drives, press the driver badge on the route's header, which opens Invite drivers (see adding drivers to an existing dispatch). On a route you have not answered yet the badge does nothing: answer the invitation first.
Decline
Pressing Decline opens Decline this work. A reason is required: Tell the dispatcher why, so they can re-plan. Type it and press Decline.
The ticked routes are refused. Their stops are marked Declined for the owner, nothing is expected of your drivers, and no invoice line in either direction will ever be drafted toward your business for them. The routes you did not tick are untouched.
The owner is told: their business gets a bell notification with your reason as its text, and their administrators a push. They also see it on the dispatch: the route header reads Declined instead of a progress bar, your reason shows when they hover over it, and each stop carries Declined. On a zone dispatch there is also a Denied pill beside your name.
What accepting hands you
The stops of the routes you accepted become yours to run and to record. Your drivers see them on their phones and close them there; your office can set times, complete a stop, mark one unable, add the note and the photos, from your own dispatch list. You are not waiting on the owner to write any of that down for you, and the owner sees each of those the moment it happens.
What stays theirs is the plan: which addresses are on the dispatch, what work type each bills under, and the dispatch's own message and time. An address you cannot do is Mark unable, with a reason, rather than one you take off. See who may change what.
Change your mind
A decline is not final. Once every route in your part has been answered and at least one was declined, the banner changes to You have declined this dispatch. with the note Accepting again re-takes all of your declined addresses on this dispatch. and your reason under it. Press Accept there and everything you declined is yours again. While some routes are still unanswered, the list shows only those; answer them first, and the declined ones come back for re-taking.
Once the owner cancels the dispatch, the invitation is gone with it.
Dispatching the same addresses yourself
If you start your own dispatch on addresses that are already on the owner's active dispatch, you are asked whether to Join the existing dispatch or Create new dispatch. Joining adds your selection to the owner's dispatch and accepts those addresses for you, so the night runs, and is invoiced, as one job; addresses of your slice that are not in the selection keep the answer they had, declined included. A separate dispatch runs in parallel while your addresses on the owner's one stay pending or declined. See Why your dispatch was merged into another.
The owner's view
On a zone dispatch, the owner sees one pill per contractor (Awaiting response, Accepted, Denied), which disappears as soon as that contractor's work is under way. A route on which every stop was declined is shown as Declined, not as an error, carries no driver badge, and does not stop the owner from completing and invoicing the rest.
When the owner answers for you
If you have not answered and the owner cannot wait, the owner can press your Awaiting response pill and choose Accept on their behalf or Decline on their behalf. The popup says what will happen before the owner confirms, and a decline needs a reason there too.
- Accepted for you: your pending addresses become yours to run, exactly as if you had pressed Accept yourself. Your drivers on those routes are told there is work, and your administrators get a bell notification and a push saying the owner accepted for you.
- Declined for you: your pending addresses are marked Declined with the owner's reason and go back to the owner to reassign. Your administrators get a bell notification with the reason as its text, and a push.
The owner can only answer what is still waiting. Routes you already accepted or declined are left as they are, and the dispatch's changelog names the owner as the one who answered. If you answer at the same moment, whoever was first counts; the other is told the invitation has already been answered.