Managing your Delivery Calendar in Hitrak
Operating Days allows the management of a freight operations calendar within Hitrak, to support effective planning and accurate delivery metrics.
This article is a guide for Admin users, on understanding and working with the Operating Days function.
In this article:
Overview
The Operating Days calendar is where the Working days and Non-working days for your business are defined. This provides visibility to Admin Portal users on the delivery calendar for all Dispatch Regions, and also ensures the accuracy of certain Hitrak system functions.
Working Days and Non-working Days
There are 2 ways that dates can be defined as a Working or Non-working day in the Operating Days calendar:
- In the Calendar Setup: Each day of the week must be set as a Working or Non-working day, by region. These are the expected work days during normal weekly operations.
- With a Calendar Event: Any exceptions to normal weekly operations are created using the Calendar Events function. A Calendar event can be:
-> A National event or a Regional event, applicable to a selected region(s) only.
-> A Working day or a Non-working day.
-> Optionally, marked as a Public Holiday.
Note 🔎 A regional event in the calendar always overrides a national event. This means that, in the unlikely event a national Calendar event sets the date as a Working day, while a regional event sets it as a Non-working day, the date will be regarded as a Non-working day.
Operating Days and System Calculations
Up to date configuration of the Operating Days Calendar is essential for the accuracy of the following key system functions:
Average Delivery time
This metric is based on the time between the Pickup request (Staging) and the Delivery of a consignment. Non-working days in the Sender and Receiver regions are excluded when calculating this value.
Example:
-> A consignment is staged on Wednesday (Working day).
-> A public holiday Calendar event exists on Thursday (Non-working day).
-> The consignment is delivered on Friday (Working day).
- Thursday is skipped, so the Delivery time is calculated as 1 day.
DIFOT
A DIFOT hit or miss is based on a consignment’s actual delivery date relative to its target delivery date (aka Service date).
Service date calculation relies on the Region Delivery Times matrix, and the Non-working days defined in the Operating Days calendar. The system checks for Non-working days in both the Sender and Receiver regions, and excludes these when applying the relevant number of days from the matrix.
Example:
-> A consignment is staged on Friday (Working day).
-> The Region Delivery Time defined in the matrix is 2 days.
-> In both regions, Sunday is a standard Non-working day.
-> A public holiday event exists in the Receiver region Calendar for Monday (Non-working day).
- Sunday and Monday are both non-working days, so they are skipped.
- As a result, day 1 is Saturday, and day 2 is Tuesday.
- The target delivery date is Tuesday.
Run Template schedules
For operators making use of Run template Schedules, any schedule that falls on a Non-working day in the Run template’s region is disabled for processes that involve schedule lookup.
Example:
-> A consignment is staged with a Requested Delivery date of Weds, January 1st.
-> The consignment matches a Run template with a Mon-Fri schedule.
-> Due to public holidays, Non-working day Calendar events have been created for Weds and Thurs.
- When auto allocation is performed with schedules applied, the Weds and Thurs schedules are skipped.
- The consignment is allocated to Friday’s delivery run.
Understanding the Calendar
The Operating Days page is accessed from the Administration menu. The page includes two tabs for viewing and editing calendar settings.
Calendar Setup
This tab displays the standard operating days of the week for each region, with Working days ticked:
Operating Days Calendar
This tab provides a calendar view of the month. For operators with multiple Dispatch regions, a region must be selected to view the calendar.
In the left section, Non-working days can be identified by their lighter colour. When a date is selected, the right section displays the details for that day, including any scheduled Calendar Events.
Editing the Calendar
Users must have the Advanced Admin role to edit the calendar.
In this section:
Calendar Setup (Standard Working Days)
Standard operating days for a Dispatch region or branch should be set up by the branch manager or other person with oversight of the branch’s administrative setup.
Each day of the week must be set as a Working day or Non-working day, to reflect a standard work week.
In the Calendar Setup tab:
- Click Edit.
- Use the checkboxes to select the days of the week for each region’s usual operating days.
- Click Save Changes to confirm.
Creating Calendar Events
Variances to standard operating days are created as Calendar events in the Operating Days Calendar tab.
Known events should be entered at the same time Calendar setup is completed, but Calendar events can also be added later at any time.
To create a Calendar event:
- Select the date on the calendar.
- Click Create Event.
- Enter a Name for the event.
- Use the checkbox to set the date as a Non-working day or a Working day.
- Optionally, use the checkbox to mark the event as a Public Holiday.
- If the event applies to all regions, check the National Event box:
This creates a single event for all Dispatch regions. The event will appear in each Region’s calendar.
- If the event does not apply to all regions, uncheck the National Event box, and use the Regions dropdown to select the applicable region(s):
This creates a separate event for each selected Dispatch region. The event will appear in each Region’s calendar:
Deleting Calendar Events
Calendar Events can be deleted if they are no longer required, or were entered in error.
The Delete function can also be used if changes to an existing event are required. In these cases, the event should be deleted, and recreated with the correct details.
-> Regional Calendar Events must be deleted from the calendar of the applicable Dispatch region.
In the case of a multi-regional (but not national) event, deleting the event from one region’s calendar deletes it from only that calendar.
-> National Calendar Events can be deleted from any region’s calendar. This only needs to be done once, as national events are created as a single event applicable to all Dispatch regions.
To delete an Event:
- Navigate to the relevant date on the calendar.
- Click the Delete 🗑️icon next to the Event.
- If it is a national event, a warning informs that the change will apply to all regions. Click Delete to confirm the action.
- If it is a regional event, a warning confirms which calendar the event will be deleted from. Click Delete to confirm the action.
- If the event was created in multiple Dispatch regions, repeat the steps for all applicable regional calendars.