Operating Days facilitates the maintenance of a freight operations calendar and delivery timeframes within Hitrak, to support effective planning and accurate system calculations.
This article is a guide for Admin users to understanding and working with the Operating Days functions.
In this article:
Operating Days and System Calculations
Understanding the Operating Days page
Overview
The Operating Days page enables standard operational schedules, and exceptions to those standard operations, to be configured for each region, along with inter-region delivery timeframes.
This provides visibility to Admin Portal users on the delivery calendar for all Dispatch Regions, and ensures the accuracy of certain Hitrak system functions.
In this section:
Working and Non-working days
There are 2 ways a date may be defined as a Working or Non-working day:
- In the Operating Days 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.
ℹ️ 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.
Cutoff Times
The Operating Days Setup tab also supports the maintenance of two types of Cutoff time for each region.
Pickup Cutoff represents the time of day when branches typically stop accepting Collection jobs from customers. Pickup Cutoffs are significant for system calculations; as if a consignment is not staged before the Sender Region Pickup Cutoff time, the next Working day is regarded as the “Staged date” in these calculations.
Receiver App Cutoff applies only to operators who request that receivers choose their own delivery date, via the Receiver App Confirm Delivery Date page.
This ensures users cannot select an unachievable delivery date for the consignment. After the Receiver App Cutoff time in the region handling the delivery, the next day will be unavailable for the user to select from the Receiver App calendar.
Service Days
Service Days are defined in Hitrak as the expected days from a consignment’s pickup request to delivery, between each Dispatch region.
Along with Working days and Pickup Cutoffs, Service Days are used as an input to the calculation of consignment delivery targets.
Operating Days and System Functions
Up to date configuration of the Operating Days Calendar and Service Days is essential for the accuracy of the following key system functions:
Service Date calculation
A DIFOT hit or miss is based on a consignment’s actual delivery date relative to its Delivery target. The Delivery target is either the calculated Service date or the Confirmed Delivery date (whichever is later).
Service date calculation relies on the Sender Region Pickup Cutoff, Service Days matrix and the Operating Days Calendar.
ℹ️ For more detail on Average Delivery time and DIFOT calculations, including example scenarios, see Understanding Key metrics.
Consignment Date validation
The Operating Days calendar is checked when users attempt to update consignment date fields throughout the system. This provides a warning to Admin users, and prevents customers from selecting an unrealistic date for their delivery:
Admin portal
- If a selected Requested delivery date is a Non-working day, or a date earlier than the Service date, the user receives a warning:
Freightmaster
Non-working days, and dates earlier than the Service date are considered invalid.
- When creating a consignment, the user receives a warning message, and cannot save:
- When editing an existing consignment's date, invalid dates are unavailable to select:
Receiver App
Non-working days, and dates earlier than the Service date are considered invalid.
- Invalid dates are unavailable to select from the Confirm Delivery Date calendar:
Average Delivery time calculation
This metric is the number of days between the Pickup request (Staging) and the Delivery of consignments, represented as an average in Dashboard charts.
The Sender Region Pickup Cutoff and Operating Days Calendar impact the calculation of a consignment’s delivery time.
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.
Understanding the Operating Days page
The Operating Days page is accessed from the Administration menu. The page includes two tabs for viewing calendar settings, and one for viewing Service Days.
ℹ️All Admin Portal users have access to view the Operating Days page.
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. Public holiday events are denoted by a red dot. When a date is selected, the right section displays the details for that day, including any scheduled Calendar Events.
A View Event button is available on Calendar Events. This opens a dialog with more detail on the event.
Operating Days Setup
This tab displays the standard operating days of the week for each region, with Working days checked. The Pickup Cutoff time for each region is also displayed here.
Service Days
The Service Days tab displays a matrix of the number of days required to move freight from one region to another.
Service days may differ depending on which region is the Sender and which is the Receiver, in line with your Run schedules. E.g. a consignment sent from Waikato to Northland may have a shorter delivery timeframe than a consignment sent from Northland to Waikato.
In the matrix, the From column reflects the Sending region, and the To row reflects the Receiving region.
Making Changes
Operating Days setup and Service days should be controlled by the relevant branch manager(s), or a person with oversight of administrative setup for Operations.
ℹ️ Users must have the Advanced Admin role to edit these settings.
In this section:
Managing Service Days
Delivery days between regions can be updated at any time, to reflect any updates to capacity or business targets. As detailed above, accurate Service Days configuration is important for Service date calculation and other system functions.
In the Service Days tab:
- Click Edit to open Edit mode.
- For each combination of Sending and Receiving region, enter the number of days for delivery.
Defining Working Days and Cutoff times
Each day of the week must be set as a Working day or Non-working day, to reflect a standard work week.
In the Operating Days Setup tab:
- Click Edit.
- Use the checkboxes to select the days of the week for each region’s usual Working days.
- Enter a Pickup Cutoff time for each region.
- Enter a Receiver App Cutoff time for each region (if applicable).
- Click Save Changes to confirm.
Managing 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 events can be added at any time.
Creating an 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 or regions:
This creates a separate event for each selected Dispatch region. The event will appear in each Region’s calendar.
- Click Save to confirm the event details and save to the Calendar.
Deleting an Event
Calendar Events can be deleted if they are no longer required, or they 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. For multi-regional events, deletion must be performed for each region separately.
National Calendar Events can be deleted from any region's calendar. This only needs to be done once, as it is a single event for 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.