A broker sells the container and picks you to carry it. The household or the site at the delivery address is the producer, and the broker is who pays you. What a broker sends over is an address, a contact, a size and a day, which is not what the job form used to ask for.
Create job now starts by asking how the job came to you. One of the four answers is "A broker gave it to us", and that route asks only for what a broker actually sends. Brokers also have a page of their own, holding the rates you have agreed with them, what their work is worth, and a booking link they can use instead of emailing you.
Put a broker on file
In the menu down the left, under People and Places, click Brokers.
Click Add broker and start typing their name. Your own records and the Environment Agency register are searched together, the same as picking a carrier when you log a receipt. Choosing one off the register saves their registration number, address and expiry date with them.
Open the broker. The Overview tab holds their registration, what they are registered as, when it runs out, and a contact name, phone and email.
Set what you charge them
On the Overview tab, under What you charge them, add a line for each container size. A rate is three things, not one:
Rate is the price for that container.
Days included is how long that price covers. Leave it blank and the rate covers the hire however long the container is out.
Each day after is what a day beyond that costs. Leave it blank and the extra days are not charged, so a rate never invents a charge you did not agree.
So a 6 yard skip at 205 pounds for 14 days, then 8 pounds a day, bills 205 pounds if it comes back inside the fortnight and 245 pounds if it stands for five weeks. Before this, a skip left on a drive for three weeks billed the same as one collected the next day.
These rates are what their jobs price themselves at, so they are worth setting before the first job comes in.
Raise a job a broker has given you
Under Operations, click Jobs, then Create job.
Choose "A broker gave it to us".
Pick the broker, and put their own job number in the box beside it. That way a phone call about their reference finds the same job here.
Under Where the container goes, fill in the delivery address. That address is the producer on the transfer note, not the broker.
Under The container and the days, choose the size and the day it goes out. Leave the collection on call if they have not given you a day, which is how most brokered hires work.
Say whether the container stands on the customer's own ground or on the road. On the road, put the permit number and the day it runs out. A collection booked on or after that day is flagged, because a container standing on the road without a live permit is your problem, not the council's.
Click Create job. The job is already on the rate you agreed with that broker, so there is no price to work out.
What the job shows
Open a brokered job and the first thing on it is where the work came from: the broker's name, their registration, their job number, whether it arrived through their own form or was typed in the office, and the fact that the invoice goes to them rather than to the customer at the address. Their address is shown as it will print on the transfer note.
The driver sees the same thing on their phone, so nobody turns up at a house asking the householder to settle up.
Give a broker their own booking link
Open the broker and go to the Their form tab.
Click Turn on. The link reads as their name under yours, for example app.loadsnap.co.uk/book/your-company/their-company.
Click Copy link, or Email it to them if their email address is on the record. Send it once and they use it for every job. The record then shows the day you sent it and who it went to.
Under What you ask them for, set each question to Off, Optional or Required. Brokers do not all send the same things, so each broker gets their own set.
The questions are the delivery address and postcode, a contact name and number, delivery notes and access, the container size, the delivery day, the collection day, their own job number, their purchase order number, and what is going in the container. The delivery address is always on, because a booking without it is not a booking. The collection day is asked but never demanded. The purchase order number is off to start with, and worth turning on for a broker on account who needs one on the invoice. What is going in the container is off too, because most brokers do not know and your driver classifies it on collection anyway.
The page they land on
The form carries your name and your logo, and tells them they are booking as themselves, on their account, at the rate you agreed. Only the line "Booking form provided by LoadSnap" sits at the foot of it.
Three things it asks that an ordinary booking form does not:
How long they need it. On call, for a number of days, or until a set day. A hire is sold as a length, not two dates, so a broker who has not settled on a collection day leaves it on call.
Where it stands. On the customer's own ground, or on the road. Say on the road and it asks whether the permit is already in place, or whether you are to arrange it. Your own settings decide what is asked, so a broker cannot tick "please arrange the permit" at a firm that does not do permits.
Their purchase order number, when you have that question turned on. It prints on their invoice.
What happens when they book
A booking arrives on your Enquiries list with the broker already named on it, rather than straight in as a job. A broker gives you an address, and a job needs a producer, a receiving site and a classified load, so somebody in the office still looks at it. Converting it opens the job form on the broker route with everything they sent already filled in, at their rate, with the permit answers carried across.
What a broker is worth
The Figures tab on a broker's record works out what their work has earned on the rates you agreed with them. It shows their jobs month by month, the average job, what they order most, where the work is, and how many of their jobs they booked themselves through their link rather than ringing you.
Nothing here is a forecast. A job whose container has no agreed rate counts as a job and adds nothing to the money, and the tab says how many of those there are rather than guessing.
Worth knowing
A brokered job does not need a collection date. It sits as On call until they ring and tell you it is ready.
You cannot type in a broker who is not on file. A typed name has no rates and no booking link behind it, so the job would have nothing real to point at.
The broker's name, registration and address are copied onto the job the moment it is created, and that copy is what prints on the transfer note. Correcting a spelling on the broker record next year will never change the wording of a note somebody has already signed.
If a broker's registration has run out, or there is no number on file, LoadSnap says so before the wagon goes. It does not stop the job. The duty of care sits with whoever holds the waste, but the note would go out carrying a dead number.
The broker is never the producer. Filing a broker as the producer is the mistake this route exists to stop.
Each broker's record lists the jobs they have given you, so you can see at a glance what is out and what is still on call.
Related: How to create a job. How to take an enquiry and turn it into work. Waste transfer notes, consignment notes and season tickets.