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Parlevel - Route Planning
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  5. Plan Service Route
Parlevel - Route Planning
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Table of Contents

Purpose

Planning a Route in the Parlevel VMS is a foundational part of running your vending or market operation. This article provides an overview of the information found on the Route Planning screen, as well as steps for selecting machines/markets to route and cancelling the route if needed. 

 

This article is for traditional route planning only. If you are using or plan to use Smart Routing, please see our Smart Routing Setup and Usage Guide.

 

Route Planning

  1. Log into VMS.

  2. To plan a route, select Routes from the VMS top menu, then hover over the name of the desired route, then click Plan Service Route.

    Image 1.png

  3. The Route Planning page is where you can select a date, machines, and services types for a particular route. This page also displays general information for the selected route, machines, and locations. 

    Image 2.png

  4. In the top left corner is the route name, driver name, truck name, and warehouse. The driver and truck are set automatically according to the route settings' defaults, but you may change them by clicking on the names.

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  5. The top right corner contains the route settings icon, map toggle, and date of service. The service can be planned up to 4 days ahead of the current date.

    Image 4.png

  6. Under the route name you will find the number of locations on the route, number of OCS stations, total amount expected from OCS invoices, the number of machines planned, the expected amount to collect from the route as well as the total sold from the machines, total number of tech tickets, and the prekit forecast.

    Image 5.png

  7. You can also filter by location type and toggle extra filters pertaining to machines or OCS stations. 

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  8. The machines and OCS stations will be grouped by location. The location name, total machine sales, and OCS order totals will be shown here:

    Image 7.png

  9. Machine information will be listed for each location and is as follows:

    Image 8.png

    • RTP (Ready to Prekit) - Indicates by color how much time has passed since the machines has received communication or inventory updates. 
      • Green - The telemeter has communicated with the VMS in the last 3 hours.
      • Yellow - The telemeter has communicated with the VMS in the last 3 to 8 hours.
      • Red - The telemeter has not communicated with the VMS in over 8 hours, and there may an issue with the machine or telemeter.
      • Black - The machine is offline.
    • Name - The machine or station name.
    • CSO - Current Sold Outs
    • PSO - Projected Sold Outs, or the number of Sold Outs at the projected date of service
    • DNSO - Days until Next Sold Out
    • PL - Par level Percentage (how full the machine is as a percentage of its par level)
  10. Collect - Expected collection amount from the machine
  11. DSLS - Days Since Last Service
  12. DSLA - Days Since Last Audit
  13. Action - Service Type for the machine
  14. DFC - Days Forecasted

 

Selecting Machines

Checking off the Planned checkbox will add a machine to the route. If a machine is scheduled to be serviced that day, it will already be pre-selected. For questions on why certain machines may be pre-selected, please see the article Why are certain machines and locations pre-selected when I plan a route?

 

You may plan an audit for machines here, as well. Keep in mind that the machine will not be able to be marked as Serviced until the audit is marked as Completed. For more information on machine audits, please see the article Machine/Market Audits & Audit Variance Report.

 

Image 9.png

 

Under  the “action” column, you can choose if you want to service only, service and collect, repair, or collect only for each machine.

 

Calculating the Route

 Once you have selected all the machines you would like to service on the day's route, click Calculate Route in the bottom right corner. The VMS will determine the most efficient order in which to service the machines based on their locations. 

 

Click Calculate Prekitting to proceed to the Prekitting Summary.

This will bring you to the Prekitting page, listing all the items you will be servicing the machines with. 

To go back click Go Back to Route to view the Route Progress screen. You may view our Route Progress article for more information.

 

Servicing in the Field

The optimal way to service a machine is to send a "Fill DEX" from the card reader once the service has been completed. This will mark the machine as serviced in the VMS. If you cannot get a Fill DEX to send from the device, you can “Manual Parlevel” the machine inside of the stock application. 

If there are additional questions regarding servicing the machine using the Stock App please reference, Parlevel - Servicing Parlevel and External Micro Markets Using the Stock App.