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An abandoned booking is a booking nobody turned up for, which blocks the dock just like a real delivery. To stop it hanging in the schedule until the end of the day, TraxSystem closes it automatically after a set threshold, counted in whole hours from the end of the slot. The site sets the length of the threshold, and that decision determines whether carriers accept the rule as a whole.
A real delivery ends at some point, while an abandoned booking sits in the schedule until the end of the day and nobody deletes it, because it is nobody’s job. After a few weeks the schedule is full and the docks stand empty, which is why no-shows are handled by a rule rather than by the dispatcher’s vigilance.
Where abandoned bookings come from
Most often the carrier books a slot just in case, in case the load is ready. Often the delivery slips by a day and the old booking stays. Less often the customer cancels the order. Least often there is a booking mistake, meaning two slots for the same delivery, but that kind of mistake is the hardest to spot.
Booking just in case isn’t a sign of bad faith. The carrier is behaving rationally when there are fewer slots than takers, and will only stop when cancelling a booking is easier than holding on to it.
Automatic release of bookings and the time threshold
TraxSystem closes a booking that nobody turned up for after a set threshold, counted in whole hours from the end of the slot. The booking gets the status “abandoned”, a record of the closure stays in its history, and the dock is no longer taken by it.
The threshold is set together with the lateness tolerance, which says for how many minutes after the slot a vehicle keeps its booking. Without a tolerance the schedule is unrealistic; with too much of it, the slot stops meaning anything. You also need to decide what happens to a vehicle after the tolerance runs out: whether it goes into the first free slot, to the end of the day, or is turned away, which is justified mainly at chilled docks. The automation closes the booking without a text message to the driver or a message to the carrier, so the rule has to be announced to carriers in advance.
A threshold that is too short does more harm than none at all. If the booking closes too quickly, a driver stuck in traffic loses the booking before they arrive, and the whole rule loses the carriers’ support in the first week.
No-show statistics by carrier
A breakdown of no-show bookings by carrier changes the commercial conversation, even though it isn’t meant for penalising anyone. It shows where the problem lies: with one carrier, with all of them at once, or at a particular time of day.
What the release automation will not do
The release automation in TraxSystem can’t tell a just-in-case booking from a delivery that is running late, because all it sees is that the vehicle didn’t arrive in the slot. Nor will it enforce punctuality, because a booking is a commercial commitment.
The automation won’t cancel a booking on the carrier’s behalf, because it only closes the slot after the threshold. Cancelling in advance has to be done by a person, and carriers need to be asked to do it in so many words. Finally, it won’t fix a schedule with too few slots, and in that case just-in-case bookings are a symptom of the slot shortage.
Questions and answers
What threshold is sensible to start with?
Close to the length of a typical slot, in whole hours, because those are the units it is set in. After a month you adjust it by looking at the no-show statistics.
Does the carrier get told that the booking has been closed?
No. The automation closes the booking without a text message or a message to the carrier, and the closure shows in the booking history. So the rule has to be announced to carriers before it is switched on, otherwise they will take the first closure for a system fault.
How quickly does the automation close a booking once the threshold is passed?
Within about a minute, because the automation checks for overdue bookings every minute.
Can the automation be switched off for selected docks?
No. The threshold is a single setting for the whole booking module, and a value of 0 switches the automation off entirely.
Is automatic release charged separately?
No. In TraxSystem the release automation belongs to the Bookings and warehouse module and has no price of its own; the module price is on the pricing page.
See also: How to organise time slots at your loading docks · What is a dock time slot · Delivery bookings in a spreadsheet: what breaks at twenty deliveries a day