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With delivery becoming more popular, especially during the coronavirus pandemic, many restaurants are adding new drivers. This issue gives some tips for adding a delivery driver to your point of sale.
Tips for Adding a Driver
Once you add a new driver to your delivery POS, they can be added to the schedule, assigned deliveries, get paid an hourly wage and driver fees, and have their credentials like insurance and license monitored. Most settings are the same for drivers as other employees, but in SpeedLine there a few unique settings to take note of, outlined below.
Create or Edit the Employee's Profile:
- In Store Manager, click the Settings tab.
- In the sidebar menu, click the People group, and then click Employees.
- Click the Add button to add the new employee (or double-click to edit an existing employee's profile).
- Click the tabs in the profile to enter or change information. Press F1 for help if you aren't sure about a setting. Settings to take note of are described below.
Personal Tab:
- A unique display name is required. Normally this will be the driver's first name, but since it has to be unique, you may need to use first name plus last name initial to avoid duplication.
- Assigning a user ID is recommended, even if using another clock-in method. The user ID can act as an emergency backup to finger scanners or swipe cards, if you experience hardware failure.
- A strong password is not normally required, unless the driver is also a manager who needs access to all areas of the Store Manager back office software.
- Enter a birth date. Entering a birth date will allow you to apply Employee Work Restrictions, either now or at some future point. Employee restrictions can automatically manage work hours for minor employees, ensuring that they don't inadvertently work in violation of local labor laws. They can also be applied to employees of any age, for example to set a maximum number of hours per week they can work. See "Set Employee Work Restrictions" in the help for restriction setup steps.
- If Require Social Security Number is selected in Employee Options, you will need to enter one before you can save the profile.
Jobs Tab:
- Ensure the correct Department (usually "Drivers" or similar) is selected, as the assigned department normally controls things like security settings, driver fees, and tip and odometer prompts.
- If you pay drivers a different rate (for example, a tipped minimum wage) when out of the store on a delivery, select the Has Alternate Pay Rate check box, and enter the alternate rate.
Scheduling Tab:
- Using SpeedLine Scheduling allows you to put together a schedule based on forecast sales.
- If you select the Driver skill on this tab, when building a schedule, you can set a requirement for a certain number of drivers to be working during a specified time period. See the "Scheduling SpeedStart Tutorial" (click Help in the top menu, and then Tutorials) and the "Set Schedule Requirements" topic in the Store Manager help.
Driver and Vehicle Tab:
- Recording insurance and licensing information on this tab is optional, but only takes a few minutes, and can save you from liability if a driver working for you causes an accident and is found to be driving without valid credentials. You can require a manager override for drivers with expired credentials to clock in. You can also see whose credentials are expiring soon, by running an Employee Events report (found on the Reports tab, in the Employee group) and ensuring the Show Driver Related Expirations check box is selected in the report wizard.
- Under Driving Directions Provider, if you use LiveMaps visual dispatching, enter the driver's mapping provider (if you're not sure, just leave it set to None) and the email address they use on their smartphone. When an order is assigned from the Terminal Dispatch screen, the driver receives the address of each customer on the run. See the "Send Driving Directions to Phone" help topic for setup information.
- The Traffic Violations area provides a way to record known violations.
Employee Options, Time Clock Tab:
Click Employee Options in the sidebar menu, and then click Time Clock. Settings on this tab work together with some of the settings on the employee profile tabs.
- If paying drivers an alternate rate when out of store, ensure that the Enable On-Site/Off-Site Tracking and Alternate Pay When Out of Store check boxes are selected. This will tell SpeedLine to track when the driver is out of the store on a delivery, and automatically apply the alternate pay rate at those times.
- Under Drivers, if you are monitoring driver and vehicle expiration dates, ensure the check boxes that allow clock-in with blank expiration dates are not selected. On or after the expiration dates, the employee will need a manager override to clock in.