Delivery & tracking

One settings screen controls the end of a delivery. There you decide what proof your driver must collect at the door, which e-mails customers get about a delivery and what they say, and which contact details customers see. This page also describes the public tracking page, where a customer follows a shipment and confirms the delivery date.

In a new workspace, Complaia sends no delivery messages and asks for no extra proof until you change the settings.

Where to find it: Logistics → Deliveries and notifications. The customer's tracking page has no menu item. It opens from a link.

When you'll use it

• You want a signature, a photo or a code before a delivery counts as done.
• You want customers to get an e-mail before and after a delivery, in your own words.
• You want customers to see a phone number and an e-mail address for questions about a delivery.
• You ask customers to confirm a delivery date, and you check who answered.
• A customer asks where their goods are, and you send them a link.
• A customer got no message, or was not asked again, and you want to know why.

Key concepts

Proof of delivery (POD) — the evidence that the goods reached the customer: a signature, a photo or a delivery PIN. You choose which of these are required, and whether a contactless handover is allowed. Complaia does not accept a delivery as complete without the required proof.

Delivery window — the date and time range promised to the customer. It comes from the route. When you save a route, each shipment on it gets its planned window. Customers see the window, in messages and on the tracking page, only after the route is approved. Complaia does not convert the times to the customer's time zone.

Customer tracking link — the address of a public page that every shipment has. It needs no account and no password. Anyone who has the link can follow the shipment. For your own transport, they can also answer the date request.

Notification type — the moment a message belongs to. There are three types: Confirmation request (asks the customer to confirm the date), On the way and Delivered. Each type has its own text in each language.

Direction — Delivery is for goods you bring to a customer. Return is for goods your driver collects from a customer, for example a return or a claim. Each direction has its own three messages. A return message talks about collecting the goods, and its address is the place where the driver collects them.

Message language — the customer gets the message, and sees the tracking page, in the language of the delivery country. The available languages are Polish, English, German, French and Ukrainian. For example, a delivery to Austria gets German. A country with several official languages, such as Switzerland or Belgium, gets English. Every other country also gets English. There is no default language to set.

E-mail only — Complaia sends delivery messages by e-mail. Text messages (SMS) are not available.

The delivery PIN

The delivery PIN is a short code made of digits. It proves that the goods reached the person who expected them.

• It exists only when you require it. Complaia creates it when the customer gets a Confirmation request or an On the way message, or when the shipment is loaded onto the vehicle, whichever comes first.
• Its length is a setting: 3 to 8 digits, 4 unless you change it.
• It reaches the customer only by e-mail, in the Confirmation request and On the way messages, with a note asking them to give it to the driver. The Delivered message and the return messages never carry a PIN.
• Your team does not see it on the shipment. If the customer has no e-mail address, they have no way to get the PIN.
• The driver types it in the driver app while the customer reads it out. A wrong code is refused.

Two different PINs

The delivery PIN described here is sent to the customer in a delivery message. The driver types it at the door.

The order-portal PIN is a separate code. The customer types it to open their order in the customer tracking portal.

Changing the delivery PIN length does not change the order portal. A customer cannot use their portal PIN at the door.

The screen

The screen has three sections and one button:

• Proof of delivery (POD) — four switches and the PIN length. See Proof-of-delivery settings.
• Contact for customers — the phone number and e-mail address shown on the tracking page. See Contact for customers.
• Notification templates — where you turn e-mails on and edit the messages. See The template editor.
• Save settings, at the top right. Nothing on this screen is saved until you click it. The button is active only after you change something.

If you try to leave the screen with unsaved changes, Complaia asks you first (Unsaved changes).

📷 Screenshot to add: the Deliveries and notifications screen with the proof-of-delivery switches, the Contact for customers section and the template editor showing an e-mail preview.

Proof-of-delivery settings

The four switches apply to every delivery that your drivers complete in the driver app.

Switch	What it does	In a new workspace
Require recipient signature	The driver must take the recipient's signature on the phone.	Off
Require a delivery photo	The driver must attach at least one photo.	Off
Require delivery PIN	The driver must type the code the customer received. See The delivery PIN. When you turn this on, the PIN length field appears.	Off
Allow contactless delivery	The driver may finish a delivery without a signature and without a photo, for example when nobody is at the door.	On

With the first three switches off, the driver needs no extra proof.

Contactless skips the signature and the photo, never the PIN

A contactless delivery is accepted without a signature and without a photo. The PIN is still checked whenever PINs are required. With nobody at the door, nobody can read out the code. So a required PIN and contactless delivery do not work together. Choose one of them.

Contactless delivery does not skip cash on delivery either. See the driver app.

Returns follow different rules. When your driver collects goods from a customer, the driver app never asks for a PIN. It asks for a signature if signatures are required. It asks for a photo of the goods even when photos are not required, unless the driver marks the handover as contactless. When the goods arrive at your warehouse, no proof is checked.

Contact for customers

Enter a Phone number and an Email address for customers who have questions about a delivery. They appear on the tracking page, in the Need help? card, as buttons to call and to write. Anyone with a tracking link can see them, so use a shared company contact, not a personal one.

If both fields are empty, the card only asks the customer to contact the sender.

Complaia checks both values when you save. It removes an e-mail address that does not look like one (name, the @ sign, domain), and a phone field that holds only the country code. It shows no message when it does this, so check the fields after saving.

The template editor

Four rows choose which message you edit:

Row	Choices
Language	Polski, English, Deutsch, Français, Українська. This is the version you edit. The delivery country decides which version a customer gets. The editor opens in the language of your own screens.
Direction	Delivery or Return
Type	Confirmation request, On the way, Delivered
Channel	E-mail, with an on / off switch on the tab itself. SMS has a lock and the word soon. It cannot be opened.

Next to the channel there are two more controls:

• Accent color — the colour of the line under your company name and of the button in the e-mail.
• Reset to default — puts back Complaia's text for the message you are looking at. It is active only when you have changed that message.

Below, on the left, you edit Email subject and Email body. On the right, Email preview shows the finished e-mail with sample data. Every field starts with Complaia's own text, so you change only what you want.

• Leave an empty line between paragraphs.
• A subject can have up to 300 characters and a body up to 4000. Longer text is cut off when you save.
• If you empty a field, Complaia uses its own text for it again.

Under the body, Variables: lists placeholders. Click one to insert it where the cursor is. Point at it to see what it stands for.

Variable	Becomes	Empty when
{{number}}	The shipment number	Never
{{window}}	The delivery window, date and time	The route is not approved yet, or the shipment is on no route
{{address}}	The delivery address. For a return, the address where the driver collects the goods	The shipment has no address
{{pin}}	The delivery PIN	PINs are not required. Always empty in the Delivered message and in return messages
{{trackLink}}	The link to the tracking page	Always empty in the On the way and Delivered messages. Only the Confirmation request carries the link
{{recipientName}}	The contact person on the shipment	The shipment has no contact person
{{companyName}}	Your company name	The name in Company details is empty

A variable without a value disappears from the message without a warning. So does a misspelt variable. The preview fills every variable with sample data, except the PIN when PINs are not required, so it does not show this problem. Use the table above to check.

You do not need variables for the basic facts. Under your text, every e-mail has a small table with:

• the shipment number;
• the delivery window, once the route is approved (not in the Delivered message);
• the delivery address;
• the PIN, when it is required, with a note asking the customer to give it to the driver.

The Confirmation request also has a button that opens the tracking page, where the customer answers. The top of every e-mail shows your company name and a short status label. The footer says that your company sent the message automatically.

What the messages say before you change them:

Type	Delivery	Return
Confirmation request	The delivery is scheduled. The customer should open the page below to see the details and confirm or decline the proposed time.	The same, for the time when the driver collects the shipment.
On the way	The parcel is with the driver and arrives today.	The driver comes today to collect the shipment. The customer should have it ready.
Delivered	The parcel was delivered, with thanks.	The shipment was collected, with thanks.

Keep Complaia's text where it works for you

Complaia stores only the fields you changed. Every field you leave as it is follows Complaia's text, also when Complaia improves that text later.

The customer's tracking page

Every shipment has a public page. It needs no account and no password. You find its address on the shipment, in the Customer tracking row. See Give a customer a tracking link. The button in the Confirmation request opens the same page, through a different address.

The page header shows Shipment tracking, a switch for light or dark mode, and a language switch. The page opens in the language of the delivery country. The customer can choose another language in the header.

The customer sees:

• The status and a headline. After the route is approved, the headline is the delivery window. Before that, it is a short status, for example Delivery scheduled or On its way to you. Below are a Progress bar and the shipment number. When the shipment also has a different tracking number, for example from a courier, it is shown next to it. The customer can copy both.
• Delivery progress — the steps Accepted, Scheduled, In transit and Delivered, with the time each step was reached. Receipt confirmed appears when the driver has completed the delivery in the driver app.
• Shipment contents — item names, quantities and product photos from your catalogue. No prices and no product codes. The number of parcels and the total weight are shown when they are known. The list shows at most 50 items.
• Confirm the delivery date — the date request. It appears only for shipments that you deliver with your own transport. See Ask the customer to confirm the date.
• To pay on delivery — for a shipment with cash on delivery, the amount the customer should have ready for the driver. It disappears after delivery.
• Delivery details — Destination (city, region and country only) and Last update. When the headline shows a status instead of the window, for example after delivery, the window is listed here as Estimated delivery.
• Need help? — your details from Contact for customers, with buttons to call and to write.

Anyone with the link can use it

Anyone who has the link can see the shipment and answer the date request. If the customer forwards the e-mail, the person who receives it can do the same. Every answer is recorded in the Event log, with its time.

📷 Screenshot to add: the public tracking page of an own-transport shipment, with the Confirm the delivery date card and the Need help? card.

Common tasks

Require proof of delivery

Before you start

Saving this screen needs the System definition: Edit permission. See Permissions.

1. Go to Logistics → Deliveries and notifications.
2. In Proof of delivery (POD), turn on what you need: signature, photo, PIN.
3. If you turned the PIN on, set the PIN length. Also turn e-mails on and make sure your shipments have the recipient's e-mail address. A required PIN that never reaches the customer stops the delivery at the door.
4. Decide whether contactless delivery stays allowed.
5. Click Save settings.

The new rules apply to every delivery completed after you save.

Turn customer notifications on

1. Go to Logistics → Deliveries and notifications.
2. In Notification templates, in the Channel row, click off on the E-mail tab, so that it reads on.
3. Read the messages for the languages you deliver in. Check at least the three types under Delivery. If your drivers also collect goods from customers, check the three types under Return.
4. Click Save settings.

After that, the messages go out like this:

Message	When it goes out
Confirmation request	When you click Notify of delivery on an approved route. See Route planning. You can also send it from a shipment.
On the way	Only when you send it from a shipment. Complaia never sends it by itself.
Delivered	Automatically, when the driver completes the delivery in the driver app. For a return, when the driver collects the goods from the customer. You can also send it from a shipment.

The Delivered message does not go out by itself when:

• the customer took only part of the shipment and the rest goes back to your warehouse;
• someone sets the shipment status to Delivered by hand;
• a courier delivers the parcel;
• a return arrives at your warehouse. The customer already got the message when the driver collected the goods.

To send a message for one shipment, open the shipment and click Send notification in its Notifications section. See Shipments. The dialog uses its own names for the three messages:

In the dialog	Message the customer gets
Delivery date	Confirmation request
Shipment on its way	On the way
Delivery confirmation	Delivered

Delivery date is not offered for courier shipments. The Notifications section lists every message Complaia tried to send, marked Sent or Failed.

A customer with no e-mail address on the shipment gets no message.

Show customers how to contact you

1. Go to Logistics → Deliveries and notifications.
2. In Contact for customers, enter a Phone number, an Email address, or both.
3. Click Save settings.
4. Check that both values are still there. Complaia removes a value it cannot use, without a message.
5. Open the tracking link of any shipment and look at the Need help? card.

The contact appears on every tracking page at once, including pages of shipments created earlier.

Ask the customer to confirm the date

This works only for shipments that you deliver with your own transport.

1. Put the shipments on a route and approve the route. Before approval, customers see no date.
2. Open the route in the planner and click Notify of delivery. Confirm when Complaia asks. See Route planning.
3. Each customer whose shipment is still Planned gets the Confirmation request. A shipment that is already loaded is skipped.
4. Watch the answers on the route's stops: Awaiting, Confirmed, Declined or Needs confirmation. Every answer is also recorded in the Event log.

On the tracking page, the customer can click:

• Confirm delivery date — the date suits them. The page then offers Add to calendar, which downloads a calendar file with the delivery window.
• I can't receive it — the customer can type a Reason (optional), then clicks Send rejection. The reason appears on the route's stop and in the Event log.

These rules apply:

• The deadline is the start of the delivery window. The page shows the deadline above the buttons. After that moment the buttons are gone and the page says The deadline has passed.
• No date, no buttons. If the route is not approved yet, or the shipment has no window, the page says Delivery date not set yet instead.
• An answer is final. The customer cannot change it on the page. To ask again, change the delivery window, as described below.
• Each customer is asked once. Clicking Notify of delivery again does not send a second request.
  • A customer who answered is asked again only if their window changes. This happens when you change the window by hand, when the planned time moves by 20 minutes or more, or when the shipment moves to another route or is taken off the route. The earlier answer is then cleared and the stop shows Needs confirmation. Click Notify of delivery again to send the new request.
  • A customer who was asked and has not answered gets no second message. Their link always shows the current window.

Reword a message

1. Go to Logistics → Deliveries and notifications, section Notification templates.
2. Choose the Language, the Direction and the Type. They are independent. Editing the English delivery request does not change the German one or the return one.
3. Edit the Email subject and the Email body. Click a variable under the body to insert it.
4. Check the Email preview.
5. Click Save settings.

To go back to Complaia's text for that one message, click Reset to default, then Save settings.

Change the PIN length

1. Go to Logistics → Deliveries and notifications.
2. With Require delivery PIN on, type a number from 3 to 8 in PIN length.
3. Click Save settings.

The new length applies to codes created after the change. A shipment that already has a code keeps it, because the customer may already have received it.

Give a customer a tracking link

1. Open the shipment: Logistics → Shipments → Shipment list, then click the row.
2. On the Overview tab, in the Transport section, find the Customer tracking row.
3. Click the copy button next to the address. To see the page yourself, click the open button next to it.
4. Paste the link into your message to the customer.

This works for every delivery method and needs no notification setting.

When it doesn't work

What you see	Why	What to do
Save settings stays greyed out	Nothing has been changed since the last save	Change a setting first. The button becomes active at once
On the route: Not sent: delivery notifications are disabled in the company's delivery settings.	The e-mail channel is off	Turn it on
On the route, after you click Notify of delivery: a message that customers have no e-mail or phone on file	The shipments have no recipient e-mail address. The same message also appears when every customer on the route was already asked	Add the recipient's e-mail address on the shipment. If the customers were already asked, there is nothing to fix
On the route: No recipients to notify.	No shipment on the route is still Planned. Loaded, delivered and cancelled shipments are skipped	Nothing to fix. To reach one customer, send a message from the shipment
In the shipment's dialog, Send notification is greyed out and the channels show Disabled in settings or No contact details	The e-mail channel is off, or the shipment has no recipient e-mail address	Fix the one the dialog names
On a shipment: Nothing was sent. Check the channels and the recipient's contact details.	The e-mail could not be delivered. You also see this when you send Delivery date to a customer who was already asked or has already answered	Check the recipient's address. A customer is asked again only after their window changes
The message went out without a delivery time	The route was not approved yet, or the shipment is on no route	Approve the route first, then send the message
A customer of a personal pickup or another carrier got a date request, but the page has no buttons	From a shipment, Delivery date is offered for these methods too, but only your own transport has date confirmation	Send Delivery date only for shipments delivered with your own transport
The customer wants to change their answer	An answer is final	Change the delivery window on the route. This clears the answer and lets you ask again
The customer sees The deadline has passed	The delivery window has already started	Agree on the date by phone, and change the route if needed
The customer sees Delivery date not set yet	The route is not approved, or the shipment has no window yet	Approve the route. Then click Notify of delivery
The customer's page has no date card	The shipment travels with a courier, another carrier or as a personal pickup	Nothing to fix. Date confirmation exists only for your own transport
The customer has no PIN to read out	The PIN requirement was turned on after their message was sent, or no message was sent	Send Shipment on its way from the shipment. It carries the PIN
The driver cannot finish the delivery because the PIN is refused	The customer read out a wrong code, or never received one because the shipment has no e-mail address or the e-mail channel is off	Check the code with the customer. If they never got it, add their e-mail address and send Shipment on its way from the shipment
A contactless delivery asks for a PIN	Contactless skips the signature and the photo, never the PIN	Decide which of the two you want
Part of the message is blank	A variable had no value, or it is misspelt. See the table in the template editor	Remove the variable from that message type, or fix its spelling
Your new text does not reach customers	You edited a different language, direction or type from the one the customer gets	Edit the language of the customer's delivery country, in the right direction
The SMS tab cannot be opened	Text messages are not available	Use e-mail
The Need help? card has no phone or e-mail	Nothing was entered in Contact for customers, or Complaia removed a value it could not use	Enter the contact again and check it after saving
The customer opens the link and sees Shipment not found	The link is mistyped or cut off, or the shipment was deleted	Copy the link again from the shipment
The customer sees Too many attempts	Many wrong links were opened from the same internet connection, so the page is blocked for a while	Wait the number of minutes shown, then open the correct link

Permissions

To do this	You need
See Deliveries and notifications in the menu and save its settings	System definition: Edit. In a new workspace only the Owner has it. The built-in Administrator role does not. The same permission protects other company settings, so think before you give it to another role
Send the date request for a route	Planning and route operations: Edit
Send a message from a shipment	Shipments: Edit or Planning and route operations: Edit
Capture proof of delivery in the driver app	Driver: delivery and proof of delivery on own routes. See the driver app
See customers' answers in the Event log	Event log: View
Open the tracking page and answer the date request	Nothing. The link is the access

Without System definition: Edit, the item is not in the menu, and opening the screen's address leads back to the dashboard.

Permissions are given per role. See Roles & permissions.

Related

• Shipments — where you find the tracking link and send a message by hand
• Route planning — where delivery windows are created and the date request is sent
• The driver app — capturing proof at the door
• Customer tracking portal — the other link customers get, for a whole order, with its own PIN
• Company details — the company name shown in every delivery e-mail
• Event log — customers' answers and the messages sent from routes and shipments
• Glossary — proof of delivery, delivery PIN, order-portal PIN, customer tracking link