Auto-dispatch & smart dispatch

What it is

Smart Assignment is Routella's helper for deciding which driver should take which order. Instead of you staring at a list and guessing, Routella looks at every order that still needs a driver and every driver who's working right now, then suggests the best fit for each order. It even ranks the top three drivers per order and gives each one a simple "match" rating (High, Medium, or Low) so you can see at a glance who makes sense. "Auto-dispatch" (also called auto-assign) is the one-tap version: it instantly hands out all the orders that have a clearly strong match, so you only have to look closely at the tricky ones.

Why it matters

When you're busy, assigning orders by hand is slow and easy to get wrong, and a bad assignment means a driver doubling back across town or someone getting overloaded while another driver sits idle. Smart Assignment does the thinking for you: it keeps drivers balanced (it lowers a driver's match the more deliveries they already have) and it groups stops that are near each other (it boosts a driver who already has a delivery in the same city or on the same street). That means fewer wasted trips, faster deliveries for your customers, and far less time spent on the dispatch puzzle, so you can get back to running your business.

Step by step

1. 1
   Make sure you have at least one active driver

   Smart Assignment can only suggest drivers who are set up and switched on. If you haven't added drivers yet, add them from your dashboard first. If the screen says there are no active drivers, that's your cue to go add one (or turn an existing one back on) before continuing.
2. 2
   Open the Smart Assignment screen

   Go to the Smart Assignment page (the one with the little robot icon at the top). It loads on its own and shows you everything that needs a driver right now. You don't have to set anything up in advance.
3. 3
   Read the four summary cards at the top

   These give you the big picture in one glance: Pending Assignment (orders still waiting for a driver), Ready for automatic (orders with a clearly strong match that Routella is confident about), Require review (orders where the match isn't strong enough to auto-assign, so a human should decide), and Available Drivers (how many drivers are switched on).
4. 4
   Look at the suggestions for each order

   Each waiting order is shown as a card with the customer name and delivery address. Underneath, Routella lists up to three suggested drivers, ranked best-first (a crown marks the top pick). Each driver has a colored match rating (green High, orange Medium, red Low), a short plain-English reason like "In the same city" or "Available" or "3 active deliveries", and a number called Score (higher is a better fit).
5. 5
   Assign one order at a time when you want control

   For any order, tap the assign action next to the driver you want, and that order is handed to that driver right away. Use this for the trickier orders, or any time you'd rather pick the driver yourself instead of taking Routella's top suggestion.
6. 6
   Use Auto-assign to clear all the easy ones at once

   The green Auto-assign button at the top shows a number in brackets, which is how many orders have a strong (High) match. Tap it, confirm when it asks, and Routella instantly assigns every one of those high-confidence orders to its best driver. Afterward it tells you how many it assigned out of the total. Anything it skipped is left for you to handle by hand.
7. 7
   Refresh to see the updated picture

   After assigning, the screen updates so assigned orders drop off the list. If new orders have come in or a driver finished deliveries, use the refresh action to pull the latest numbers and suggestions. When everything is assigned, the screen simply tells you there are no orders pending.

Tips

• The match rating is mostly about two things: how busy a driver already is, and whether they already have a stop near the new order. A driver who's free and heading to the same city will rate High; a driver buried under many deliveries will rate Low even if they're nearby.
• Auto-assign only touches orders with a strong (High) match, so it's safe to use when you're slammed. It will never force a questionable assignment on you, which is exactly why the 'Require review' orders are left for you to decide.
• If an order won't auto-assign and the suggested drivers all look weak, it usually means every driver is loaded up or no one is heading that direction yet. That's a sign you may need another driver on the road, not a glitch.
• If two people are dispatching at once, you might occasionally see a message that an order was already assigned to another driver. That's a safety check doing its job, just refresh and carry on.

Common questions

Related guides