Planning deliveries and routes: a guide for small businesses

Good delivery planning comes down to five habits: group stops by area and time window, order them so the vehicle avoids doubling back, respect what the vehicle and driver can handle, capture proof at each stop, and review the failed stops every day.

Small businesses that deliver their own goods, from wholesalers to installers and caterers, often plan routes in someone's head. That works for five stops. At twenty, a missed time window or a forgotten pallet costs a second trip, and a second trip costs a morning.

What goes into a delivery plan

A route is as good as the data behind each stop, and no better. Before planning, make sure every delivery carries these details.

Input	Why it matters	Where it usually comes from
Delivery address	A wrong or vague address is a common cause of failed stops	The customer record
Time window	A business that receives goods from eight to noon will not sign at three	The order or the customer's standing instructions
Load: items, weight, volume	Decides whether everything fits in one vehicle	The order lines and the item catalog
Vehicle capacity	Sets how many stops one run can cover	Your fleet list
Driver hours	Limits the length of the day and the breaks needed	The roster and local rules
Site contact and access	Loading dock, gate code, who to ask for	Notes on the delivery address

Clean addresses and contacts start in the customer record. The guide to structuring customers, contacts and addresses for B2B shows how to keep a separate delivery address per site, and the guide to building a product catalog with units and categories covers the weights and volumes that loading depends on.

Planning a day's route, step by step

1. Close the order list. Pick a cut-off time for next-day deliveries, so the plan is not rebuilt every hour.
2. Group stops by area. Cluster deliveries that sit close together, then assign each cluster to a vehicle.
3. Check the load. Add up weight and volume per vehicle. If a cluster does not fit, split it before you sequence it.
4. Sequence the stops. Order them so the route forms a loop, with fixed time windows placed where they fall naturally on the way.
5. Load in reverse. What is delivered last goes in the vehicle at the back, so the driver reaches each stop's goods without unloading the rest.
6. Hand over a stop list. Each driver gets the addresses in order, the contact per site, the items per stop and any special instructions.
7. Close the day. Record what was delivered, what failed and why, and feed the failures into tomorrow's plan.

Route optimization: what it does and where it stops

Finding the shortest path through many stops is a famously hard math problem, known as the traveling salesman or vehicle routing problem. Route planning software usually uses shortcuts that find a good route quickly rather than a provably perfect one, and for a small business a good route is plenty.

Software helps most when you have more than a handful of stops, several vehicles, or tight time windows. It helps less when the real constraints live in people's heads: the customer who is never in on Fridays, the street a truck cannot enter. Write those down as notes on the address, or the best algorithm will still plan the wrong day.

Proof of delivery

Proof of delivery records that the goods arrived, who received them, and when. It settles disputes and lets you invoice with confidence. A useful record captures:

• The name of the person who received the goods, and a signature.
• A photo of the goods at the drop point, especially for unattended deliveries.
• The time, and often the location, of the drop.
• Any damage, shortage or refusal, noted on the spot.

Paper delivery notes work, but they travel back to the office slowly and get lost. A phone with a signature screen and a camera closes the loop on the same day.

When a delivery fails

• Record the reason. Nobody present, wrong address, refused, damaged. Reasons show patterns a single failed stop does not.
• Tell the customer the same day. Offer a new slot rather than waiting for them to call.
• Fix the data. If the address or the time window was wrong, correct the customer record so the next plan is right.
• Keep the stock straight. Goods that come back on the vehicle need to be booked back in. The guide to inventory management for small businesses explains why stock records drift when returns go unrecorded.

Numbers worth watching

Measure	What it tells you
On-time rate	Share of stops delivered inside the agreed window
Failed delivery rate	Share of stops that needed a second attempt
Stops per route	How well each vehicle and driver day is used
Time or distance per stop	Whether your clusters are tight or spread out

Delivery data is customer data. When orders, addresses and delivery history sit with the customer record, the people who take the next order can see what happened last time; the guide to CRM essentials for small service businesses explains why that matters.

Frequently asked questions

What is proof of delivery?

It is the record that goods reached the customer: who received them, when, and in what state. Today it is usually a signature and a photo captured on a phone, with a timestamp and often a location.

Does a small business need route optimization software?

Not always. With a few stops a day, a map and a clear stop list are enough. Software starts to pay off with many stops, several vehicles or strict time windows, where working out the order by hand takes real time.

How many deliveries can one driver make in a day?

It depends on distance between stops, unloading time, traffic and the rules on driving hours where you operate. Track your own stops per route for a few weeks and plan from that number rather than from a rule of thumb.

How do I track deliveries for customers?

Give each delivery a status, such as planned, out for delivery, delivered or failed, and update it from the driver's phone. Customers then get a clear answer when they ask where their order is.