In this article we are going to cover the Linked Locations feature as well as how it affects various parts of your business.

Linked Locations let you share Restaurant Inventory as well as Driver Pool between 2 or MORE locations so the customers who are close enough to restaurants in both locations can have a wider variety of restaurants to choose from.

Why would you want to have your Locations Linked?

1. This is a great way to cover smaller areas between your bigger markets and it can lead to rapid expansion of your markets and business so you can grow and generate bigger sales numbers as well as recruit more drivers and provide better service for your customers.

2. You can add time buffers to one specific area/location and then link them all together

3. Separating finances between areas can also be useful for a clearer performance review of certain parts of your market as well as making it possible to give out bonuses to your managers and/or location operators as an incentive to grow the market.

You will be able to LINK these locations from your admin backend by going to LOCATIONS tab and selecting a location and looking at the bottom of the INFORMATION tab.

Linking locations is quite simple but you need to be careful with a few things:

1. Linking for example Location 1 to Location 2 and 3 will NOT automatically link Location 2 and 3 together!

2. Before you link locations we highly suggest you do the Driver setup first as well (read further down on how and why)

3. Pay on Pickup / Place in Person (PoP/PiP) orders are much easier to track if you use the same Stripe account across locations that are linked (System will still process those orders if there are different Stripe accounts, but you might have to spend some time matching numbers and verifying everything manually)

DRIVER SETUP (How to enable drivers for multiple locations)

In order for your drivers to be able to flow from Location 1 to Location 2 and/or Location 3/4/5 you HAVE to have them ENABLED for those locations inside of their USER PROFILES (Not to be confused with DRIVERS tab)

You can search for a Driver’s USER profile by looking up their Last+First name or by the e-mail that’s attached to their profile in the search bar under the USERS tab.

This will let AutoDispatch function properly and route orders in the most efficient way possible*

*NOTE If AutoDispatch sends a driver with a primary location of “Location 1” to “Location 2” for an order it will eventually try to send the driver back to their Primary/Default location.

FINANCIALS

Reporting and financials will ALWAYS be handled in the location where the Restaurant Profile lives.
So for example:

• Driver from “Location 1” gets an order for “Location 2”

• Driver will be paid “from” the Restaurant in “Location 2”

• Financials will all be nested in “Location 2” because the Restaurant profile is inside of “Location 2”

IMPORTANT: On a different note if a driver from “Location 1” is picking up a Pay on Pickup order from a “Location 2” the Driver Pay on Pickup Card will still pull funds from “Location 1” even though the final financials will be calculated in “Location 2” due to the restaurant profile “living” in that location.

For a visual overview of this feature and initial setup please watch the video below.