As ever, Metafour’s development team in the UK and Bangladesh have been working hard behind the scenes to ensure that we carry out regular upgrades to introduce the functionality you need to grow your business. Every six weeks we release a new update to the system that helps guarantee that your system remains at the cutting edge of technology. This particular release features MetApp updates to help you during the coronavirus lockdown, new out of hours surcharges, plus additional cyber security.
Contactless proof of delivery
One of the most exciting updates for v8.14 is our new contactless proof of delivery. With governments everywhere establishing strict social distancing requirements, signing for parcels can be an issue. Getting close enough to the delivery driver to acknowledge receipt for every parcel undoubtedly increases the risk of spreading the virus. So in order to minimise this risk, the team have developed our new contactless feature. When the driver is ready to collect proof of collection or delivery, a QR code can be generated in MetApp. This can then be scanned, for example, through a window by the customer’s phone, which will allow them to provide a signature from their own device.
Out of hours pricing
If you charge your customers different prices depending on the time of day that they make their booking, it is now simple to set that up in the system. Once created, for instance for over the weekend, surcharges will automatically be added to these times. This will help you save time and resources as you will no longer need to manually price these jobs.
Advanced Sameday run order
The system now offers your controllers the ability to create advanced runs for your Sameday deliveries. In order to help you better organise your drivers, pre-booked jobs can be put into runs prior to the day, and then any additional deliveries can be added in during the day. These will all be sent to the driver’s handheld, so they are always kept up-to-date.
Increased branding
We now offer you the option of adding your own ‘favicon’ browser tab icon to your client portal and back office. By changing this detail, you can ensure consistent branding throughout the entire system, which helps to create a full white label product.
Improved reporting
Now more than ever it is important for you to know exactly how your business is performing. The custom job report now allows you to add your own user-defined fields, so you can create reports that are customised to your company requirements.
Updated ParcelForce app
We have refined our ParcelForce integration, and are now happy to announce that international deliveries can now be booked via this method. This means you can now use this carrier to send your parcels to 99.6% of the world.
Additional security
We understand that the security of your data is of utmost importance to you. In order to ensure that your system stays as secure as possible, our supplier invoice import and client reference import features will now only accept CSV and TXT files.
Enhanced returns
In order to ensure that your entire delivery process is as smooth as possible, you can now offer returns services that are not offered during the booking process. This means that you can set up a delivery chain tailored to your specific business needs.
We are currently busy working away on v8.15, but if you have any features that you would like to see added to our software, please get in touch! You can call us on +44 (0) 20 7912 2000or email sales@metafour.com.
