A gas delivery business without office staff

Taking orders

When orders arrive by phone, text and a note on the yard door, the office is whoever answered. If that is you and you are driving, orders get missed or written on whatever is to hand.

Give customers one way to order that does not need you to pick up, and put every order in one place the moment it arrives, whoever takes it. Put regular customers on a repeating delivery so their orders exist before they ask.

Planning the rounds

With one or two vans, planning usually lives in your head: who goes where, which customer is always on a Tuesday. It works until you are off, or a driver is.

Write it down instead: the area each driver covers, the van they usually take and how long their day is. Planning then becomes checking a proposal rather than building one each morning.

Load limits, the carriage of gas cylinders and drivers' hours apply however small the business is. Take them from the right source rather than from memory: your gas supplier, a dangerous goods safety adviser and GOV.UK.

Telling your drivers what to do

A printed drop sheet is out of date the moment a customer rings, and every change means a call to the cab.

Send each round to the driver's phone instead, and let them record the drop, the proof, the payment and the empties collected as they go. Nothing needs keying in when they get back, and you can see how far each van has got without ringing.

The "where's my gas" calls

When you are the office, every call asking when a delivery is coming lands on you, often while you are driving yourself.

Tell customers first: confirm the order when it is taken, say which day it is coming and give them a way to see where it is. If a drop fails, tell the customer that day with a new date.

Invoicing and chasing payment

Invoices typed up from drop sheets on a Sunday night are late and often wrong, and chasing is the job that always slips.

Raise invoices from what was actually delivered, as soon as it was delivered or on a fixed schedule, and let overdue reminders go out by themselves on terms you set once.

Cash from your drivers

Even with one or two drivers, cash in the van is where money quietly goes astray, usually by mistake, and by Friday nobody can say which payment was which.

Record every payment against its order at the door, card or cash, and count cash in against what each driver recorded. A short handover each day that both of you agree is easier than a weekly argument.

Keeping stock straight

Full and empty cylinders spread across the yard, the vans and your customers. Counted by hand, the numbers drift until a stocktake surprises you.

Let every load, delivery and return move the count as it happens, and set a low-stock level for each product so you are told before you run short, not when a driver does.

The vans: MOTs and servicing

Two vans means two MOT dates and two service dates, easy to hold in your head until one slips past. An expired MOT takes a van off the road, and half your capacity with it.

Keep the dates against each vehicle and have them brought to you as they come up. Your garage and GOV.UK are the sources for what each vehicle needs and when.

The holiday diary

With two or three people, one absence is a big share of the week. A diary on the office wall only helps whoever is standing in front of it, and a holiday agreed in passing is easily forgotten.

Let drivers ask for time off in one place, approve it there, and plan rounds only with the people who are actually available. Book your own holidays as early as theirs, and decide how you would cover a sick day before you need to. Holiday entitlement for employed drivers is set in law, and GOV.UK sets out how it works.

When you do need office help

Some small businesses genuinely need someone in the office. The signs are usually these:

• The same exceptions need you every day: failed drops, disputes, customers who will only ring.
• You are doing office work most evenings, not just at month end.
• Customers are waiting for answers because you are out on a round.

When that happens, the first hire can often be part time, spent on customers rather than on paperwork.