You pressed Dispatch now and, instead of a new dispatch, you were asked about an existing one, or your addresses ended up on a dispatch you did not create. This is deliberate. The system keeps one snow night as one dispatch, because two dispatches over the same addresses used to mean two invoices and a half-denied mess that nobody could read.
Collect: your own second dispatch
When you create a dispatch and you already have one that
- belongs to your business,
- has the same work type,
- is planned within eight hours before or after the new planned time,
- is not finished (not completed, not cancelled), and
- is the same kind: address with address, route/zone with route/zone,
you are shown it and asked to choose. When several qualify, Active dispatches close to this time lists them newest first, each with its planned time, how many addresses it has and how many are done, who created it and the routes or zones on it; the newest is selected, and you click another card to collect into that one instead.
- Collect into existing (or Collect into selected): the new addresses are added to the dispatch you chose. Addresses already on it are untouched, and completed work is not dispatched again.
- Create new dispatch: runs separately with its own progress and invoicing. Choose this for a second run on addresses that were already dispatched (a second pass the same morning, say).
Nothing merges across the address ↔ route/zone line, and a manual registration (work already done) never absorbs anything. Test dispatches only ever merge with test dispatches.
A dispatch that collected routes keeps the title of the route that was on it first, with +2 (or however many more) beside it for the routes that joined later, so the run does not look renamed after one of them. A dispatch with no route at all is titled by its code, for example Dispatch AB1050.
A complaint dispatch is always its own
A dispatch you create from a complaint is never collected into another dispatch and never joins one: the prompts above are not shown, and the server creates a new dispatch even when an active one of the same work type is close by. On a complaint dispatch you decide who carries out the work and whether it is invoiced (not invoiced, or the supplier only); collecting it into an ordinary run would give the stop that run's invoicing and its existing assignment, and your choice would be lost without a word. When you create it from the complaints overview, the new dispatch opens straight away and the complaint's row lists it. See Handle a complaint.
Join: a subcontractor dispatching what the owner already sent
If you dispatch addresses that another business owns and has already put on an active dispatch of its own (you were invited, maybe you declined), you are asked instead:
- Join the existing dispatch: your selection here is added to the existing dispatch, and the addresses you brought are accepted on your behalf, whether they were still pending or you had declined them. Everything runs and invoices as one dispatch. Only the addresses you are dispatching change hands: an address of your invited slice that you left out of this selection keeps its answer, so a route you declined earlier stays declined when you later send out one small route of your own.
- Create new dispatch: your own dispatch runs in parallel, and your addresses on the existing dispatch stay pending or denied.
The card shows Dispatched by whom and Your addresses on it, with a count of how many were declined, so you can see what joining would take over.
Re-taking the whole declined slice is the invitation banner's job, not the create prompt's: Accept on the dispatch, once every route is answered, takes every declined address back, see Accept or decline a dispatch invitation.
One address, one stop
Inside one dispatch an address is never there twice. If two of your routes overlap on an address and both are dispatched, the address is one stop with one visit per route, and it becomes one invoice line. Each route's crew still registers its own pass, so the stop is done only when both have been: when two routes cover the same address. Adding addresses to a running dispatch skips the ones already on it, and an address dispatched again while its stop is still running is attached to the running one rather than becoming a second.
What still can happen
The merge looks eight hours around the planned time. Two dispatches of the same addresses and work type on the same day that are further apart than that both go out and both bill; the invoice then marks the second line Possible duplicate, while the invoice is still a draft, so a person can judge whether it was a real second run or a mistake before it goes out. Two dispatchers pressing the button at the same second cannot produce twins; the second one waits and is collected into the first.
If you chose wrong
Neither choice can be undone from the prompt. Open the dispatch and Remove from dispatch the stops you did not mean to add, or cancel the separate dispatch you did not mean to create.
Why was my dispatch refused
Two refusals come from this same one-dispatch-per-storm machinery, and neither means anything is wrong with what you selected:
- "The dispatch you were adding this to has been completed or cancelled." You chose Collect into existing, and that dispatch ended between the prompt appearing and your answer. Nothing was added and nothing was created. Open the list again and pick a dispatch that is still running, or create a new one.
- "Another dispatch for the same work type is being created right now." Two dispatchers pressed the button at the same moment. The second one waits for the first so it can be collected into it, and if the wait runs out it refuses rather than risk producing twins. Nothing was created; press Dispatch now again in a few seconds.
Everything else a create can refuse, and what to do about each, is listed under Why was my dispatch refused.