Upload Schedules – Import Addresses With Schedules To Address Book List

Different customers can have different visitation schedules. Furthermore, when it comes to subscription-based services – such as Amazon’s Subscribe and Save – many customers have recurring orders and recurring delivery schedules, where they need to be visited on the same day(s) every week, month, or year. Keeping track of all your customers’ schedules can be difficult, especially if you have hundreds of thousands of customers with recurring orders, and each one has a different delivery schedule. With Route4Me route optimization software, you can create custom schedules for repetitive visitations for all of your customers and then use Route4Me’s Hybrid Route Editor to conveniently plan your multi stop routes based on these schedules.

That being said, when you need to create delivery schedules for hundreds of thousands of customers, doing it manually can take hundreds of hours. For more convenience and efficiency, the Route4Me dynamic routing software allows you to import customers with recurring schedules in bulk. All you need to do is upload a spreadsheet with your customers’ data into the routing system. The Route4Me route planning software will automatically create a new entry in your Synced Address Book and its respective recurring schedule for each imported address.

To upload a spreadsheet with multiple customer addresses that have recurring schedules, first, go to the “Address Book List” from the navigation menu. Next, go to “File” in the top left corner of the screen and then select “Upload Schedules” from the menu.

NOTE: For your spreadsheet with recurring customer schedules to be successfully processed, each address in the upload spreadsheet is required to have latitude and longitude coordinates in the respective columns. If the addresses in your spreadsheet don’t have latitude and longitude coordinates, please follow these steps:

1. Upload a spreadsheet with customer addresses into your Route4Me Synced Address Book for each address to be automatically geocoded;
2. Export geocoded customer addresses from your Address Book;
3. Delete the uploaded addresses from your Address Book to avoid duplicates when you re-upload them with recurring schedules;
4. Prepare the spreadsheet with recurring schedules using the addresses with latitude and longitude coordinates exported from your Address Book;
5. Re-upload the spreadsheet with the corresponding customer addresses (with the latitude and longitude coordinates) and their respective recurring schedules into your Synced Address Book.

To upload a spreadsheet with addresses for geocoding from your device into your Synced Address Book, first, go to the “Address Book List” from the navigation menu. Next, go to “File” and then select “Upload Addresses” from the menu.

For the spreadsheet to be successfully processed, it must contain a Header Row and Data Rows. The Header Row defines the type of information you are importing, while the respective Data Rows contain the actual data that is being imported into the system. NOTE: In addition to the obligatory “Address” column, you can also include other data columns with Route4Me’s reserved attributes (i.e., Revenue, Weight, Pieces, etc.) and Custom Data. Learn more about Route4Me’s spreadsheet requirements.

Next, make sure that all imported addresses are geocoded with High Confidence. When addresses are geocoded with High Confidence, it indicates that Route4Me has assigned the most accurate latitude and longitude coordinates to each given address, and auto-completed incorrect or partial addresses. In the “Verify Addresses on Map” window, a green dot next to a given address indicates that this address has been geocoded with High Confidence.

Next, export geocoded customer addresses from your Route4Me Address Book to your device and use them for preparing the spreadsheet with recurring schedules. To export addresses from your Address Book, first, select the addresses that you want to download by checking the respective boxes. After that, go to “File” and then select “Export Selected” from the menu.

After exporting your geocoded addresses, make sure to delete these addresses from your Route4Me Address Book in order to avoid creating duplicates when you re-upload the same addresses with recurring schedules. To do so, first, select the addresses that you want to delete by checking the corresponding boxes. Next, go to “Edit” and then select “Remove Selected” from the menu.

When you export addresses from Route4Me, all addresses are automatically exported with their respective latitude (“Lat” column) and longitude (“Lng” column) coordinates, as well as other additional details.

After exporting geocoded addresses from your Route4Me Address Book, you can use them for preparing the spreadsheet where each address can have a custom recurring schedule. For your spreadsheet with customer addresses and recurring schedules to be successfully processed, you need to add the following columns:

• Reserved Attributes Columns, such as Address, Alias, Revenue, Cube, Weight, etc. Learn more about how to use Custom Data when uploading spreadsheets.
• Recurring Schedule Columns that contain the scheduling information of the customers/locations that are being imported into your Address Book. To add a schedule for each customer/location, include seven days of the week into your spreadsheet as columns and then mark the days on which you want each particular customer to be visited with “1” (leaving the other cells empty).

NOTE: When uploading spreadsheets with recurring schedules, you can upload only one weekly schedule per spreadsheet.

Next, upload your spreadsheet with customer addresses and their recurring schedules into your Route4Me Address Book. To do so, first, go to the “Address Book List” from the navigation menu. After that, go to “File” and then select “Upload Schedules” from the menu.

Once the spreadsheet is uploaded, you can view and edit the imported customer profiles and their recurring orders’ schedules. To view and manage the recurring schedule of a particular entry in your Synced Address Book, right-click on this entry and then select “Edit” from the menu.

Next, go to the “Schedule” tab where you can view the recurring schedule that was uploaded together with the associated address. To modify the given schedule, click on the “Edit” button next to it.

After that, you can view and edit the opened schedule to your preference. When uploading schedules for recurring orders in bulk, you can upload weekly recurring schedules only. Thus, the recurring schedule of the opened Address Book entry will have the same weekly recurring schedule as it had in the uploaded spreadsheet. Learn more about how to create and edit recurring schedules.