The rounds system and handheld app that run your vans

Two halves. A program in the office that builds the rounds, and an app in the cab that works them.

A typical business running one of these has 10 to 40 staff and 6 to 20 vans, each van making 30 to 60 drops a day on fixed weekly rounds, a few thousand delivery lines a day between them, with cash or a card taken at the door from some customers. Food and drink, catering supplies, bakery and dairy, cleaning and industrial consumables: the trades where the van is the shop. Whether it is a desktop program from 2008 or a browser system from 2019, the job is the same.

In the office it holds each customer's standing order for each weekday, builds the round in the driver's sequence, prints the loading sheet and allocates the van stock. On the handheld the driver sees the drops in order, records what was delivered against what was ordered, sells extras from the van, takes the returns and the empties, captures a signature, prints a delivery note on the belt printer and records the cash. Back at the depot the van stock is counted, the cash sheet is filled in, the handheld syncs, and the invoices and credit notes raise. The week ends with the statements and the accounts export.

The rules that live in it and nowhere else:

• The loading sheet is the standing orders plus the phoned orders minus the customers on holiday.
• Van stock sells at the account price to account customers and at van price to cash customers, with a discount limit per driver.
• Returns credit at the delivered price if the driver marks them on the day, and at a lower rate afterwards.
• On chilled, dairy and bakery rounds a drop will not close until the temperature at handover is recorded, and a reading over the limit for that product goes to the office before the invoice raises.
• A drop is not invoiced until the signature is in, and a drop without one is a phone call the next morning.

The office program was written around 2008 in .NET Framework by a contractor, with the data in SQL Server. The handheld app began on Windows Mobile devices and was replaced around 2014 by a PhoneGap or Cordova app on rugged Android handhelds, written by a small agency, or in a few fleets by a native Android app from the same contractor. A Windows service on the office server takes the sync, from the vans where there is signal and over the depot Wi-Fi at the end of the day. The program runs on that server and the planner's PC, and the loading sheets come out of the printer by the loading bay.

The contractor has moved on, and the agency took the app's build tooling with it. The office program keeps working as long as it is left alone, the handhelds as long as nobody updates them, and the sync service is the part no one in the depot can explain.

The same rounds system built between 2016 and 2022 by an agency or a freelancer: the office side as a web system in React, Angular or Node, and the drivers' app in React Native or Ionic on ordinary phones, or all of it in Power Apps. The planner builds the rounds in a browser, drops sync whenever there is signal, and signatures arrive as pictures. Since 2023 a few depots have tried a drivers' app from an AI app builder, which showed the drop list on a phone and stalled on the first round through a black spot.

The app stores are what strand it. Since 28 April 2026 an iPhone build has to be made with Xcode 26, and since 31 August 2026 an Android update has to target Android 16. The agency's project meets neither, so no fix can go out, the store account is in the agency's name anyway, and the phone a new driver brings will not install the old version. A change to the returns credit once stopped the offline queue sending for a day, and no version has gone out since. The office side runs on the versions it launched with. It was meant to end the drawer of old handhelds, and it is stranded by the same thing: an app nobody can rebuild.

Run twenty rounds a day from one office, and invoice every drop the day it was made.

The loading sheet is the quiet part. Because the standing orders are in the system, the van goes out with what the round needs rather than what the driver remembers, and the extras it sells off the back are priced right without a call to the office. A new driver can run a round in the first week, because the handheld knows the sequence and what each customer takes.

The signature is the loud part. Every delivery carries one, so a dispute is settled with a picture rather than an argument. And because the sync feeds the invoice run, every drop is billed the day the van gets back, the returns are credited at the right rate, and the cash reconciles to what was sold.

Systems like this are held back by the piece in the cab, and by the piece in the server cupboard that talks to it.

The app will not install on a new phone. The Cordova app was built for the Android of 2014 and the tooling to rebuild it went with the agency, while the newer phone app has fallen out of the store for want of an update. Either way the depot keeps a drawer of old devices and a charger for each. When the last one dies, the round goes back to paper.

Nothing is invoiced until the vans are back. The app syncs on the depot Wi-Fi, so the office sees the drops at six and the invoices run at seven. A customer who phones at two to ask whether the van has been gets "I'll ask the driver".

The sync server has a date on it. The Windows service runs on Windows Server 2016, which ends in January 2027. Moving it means rebuilding the handhelds' connection to it, and nobody left in the building knows how the handhelds find the server.

The cash sheet and the van count are on paper. The count back and the cash are written on a sheet at the depot and typed into the office program afterwards. The difference between what was loaded, sold and returned is found on Friday, by which time the driver has forgotten Tuesday.

The same round on a phone that can be replaced, with the office watching it happen.

Each of these comes from something the system already does.

The app on any phone. An app that installs on any current phone and can be kept up to date, laid out from the old one so the drop list is where the drivers expect it. The drawer of old handhelds retires.

Drops in the office as they happen. Each drop posts over the mobile network where there is signal and queues where there is not. The office answers "has the van been?" from the screen and invoices during the day rather than at seven.

Van stock and cash that reconcile themselves. Loaded, sold, returned and counted back on the handheld. The Friday difference becomes a same-day one, with the driver still in the building.

The sync on a supported server. The link between the handhelds and the office on a server that is still supported, one that can be backed up and watched, and that the handhelds can find wherever it sits. The January 2027 date stops mattering.

The customer told the van is close. A text when the driver marks the previous drop done, so the goods-in door is open when the van pulls up.

None of this switches the old app off, whichever generation it is. The new app writes to the same database, and the vans move across one at a time.

Yes: in what goes on the van, and in the paper that comes back off it.

The round itself stays the driver's. AI works on the data the rounds system already collects, drop by drop, in two places:

A loading suggestion for each round. The loading sheet covers the standing orders, but the extras sold off the back are the driver's guess and the planner's memory. AI reads what each customer has taken on that weekday over recent months, extras included, and drafts the extra van stock for the loader to check against the sheet. The van goes out with what it will sell rather than what it will bring back. At a couple of minutes of adjusting per round across 6 to 20 vans, the planner typically gets fifteen to forty minutes of each afternoon back.

Doorstep notes into standing orders. A customer hands the driver a scribbled note, or the driver photographs an order form on the counter: two more cases from next week, nothing over the holidays. Today the note travels in the cab and someone in the office types it in, if it survives the trip. AI reads the photo into a change to that customer's standing order for the office to confirm, so the next loading sheet is right. With a few notes a week coming back on each van, and several minutes each to type and confirm by phone, that is typically one to four hours of the office's week.

Not worth doing: re-sequencing the rounds by AI. The customers expect the van at the same time each week, the goods-in door is open for it, and the driver knows the sequence better than any model.

Both write into the standing orders, so AI waits until the new app is on the vans and the rounds data can be changed without putting tomorrow's loading at risk. The assessment shows where it would repay first on the rounds as they run now.

The app goes first, because it is the piece that can fail without warning.

1. Stabilise. Source for the office program and the app found, including the agency's code and the app's store account, or the app's behaviour documented screen by screen; the database on a version that is still supported; a backup restored on purpose; a test copy; and the sync service understood well enough to move. This goes first because the handhelds are a countdown and the server they talk to has a date.
2. The drivers' app, on two vans. A new app on the same data, laid out from the old one, and run on two rounds with the old handhelds on the rest. The drivers on the other vans ask for it or they do not, and either answer is useful.
3. Live sync and same-day invoicing, once every van is on the new app and the old sync service has nothing left to do.
4. Van stock and cash on the handheld, so the paper sheet goes and the count is done with the driver present.
5. Customer texts and the loading suggestions. Each a stage, each priced on its own.
6. Retire the old handhelds and the sync service, or the old app and the agency's site, when nothing depends on them. The office rounds screen is usually the last to go, because the planner knows it.

The assessment is from £395 + VAT, sized on a free one-hour consultation, with an exact price before you commit. For a rounds system that means a few days with the planner, a driver or two and the code, finding how the handhelds talk to the office and which rules the invoice run depends on, and a report with costed options and a fixed price for each. Each stage after that is priced before you commit to it. How we work, what drives the price and the payment terms each have a page, and so does each technology the system is built on: PhoneGap and Cordova, .NET Framework, SQL Server and native iOS and Android apps, and for the newer generation React, Angular and Node, React Native and Ionic.