Excel is the natural starting point for almost every distributor: cheap, flexible and everyone knows how to use it. The problem is not Excel itself — it is continuing to plan delivery routes on a spreadsheet when the operation has already outgrown what one person can calculate well each morning.
If you recognize your operation in any of the five signs below, it does not mean you have failed. It means volume and complexity have outgrown the tool. You can quantify the cost in the guide on manual planning time or the cost calculator.
Sign 1: You spend more than 90 minutes a day planning
If the dispatcher starts the day copying orders, assigning trucks and opening Google Maps route by route, and that takes more than an hour and a half before the first truck leaves, the cost is structural. With 22 operating days and €18/h internal cost, that is over €580/month in time alone — not counting interruptions.
Sign 2: Errors have a visible cost
Duplicate stop, order on the wrong truck, customer not on today's route, van capacity ignored. In Excel there is no automatic validation: the error is discovered when the driver calls or the customer complains.
- Deliveries in an order that "seemed logical" but adds km
- Orders left out because the sheet was not updated
- Addresses copied incorrectly from email to Excel
- Time windows that were not checked
Sign 3: You have more than 5 active vehicles
With 2–3 trucks you can "see everything" on one screen. With 6 or more, assignment stops being intuitive: you must decide which orders go on which vehicle and in what order, respecting capacity and zones. That is a combinatorial optimization problem, not a spreadsheet task. More context in how to optimize with multiple vehicles.
Sign 4: Last-minute changes are daily bread
Urgent order at 9:15, customer closing earlier than expected, driver absence. Each change forces reopening Excel, mentally recalculating and calling by phone. If this happens daily, planning "finished" at 8:00 is never really finished.
Sign 5: Only one person knows how to plan
Knowledge lives in the dispatcher's head and in macros, colours and conventions in a file nobody else understands. Holidays, sick leave or staff turnover = immediate operational risk. A route system repeats the process even when the person changes.
What to do when Excel is no longer enough
- Quantify planning hours and cost (calculator or a one-week log).
- List recurring errors from the last fortnight (extra km, revisits, delays).
- Evaluate software that centralizes orders and optimizes the entire fleet, not route by route.
- Keep human review before publishing routes — automating is not removing judgement.
LogIA replaces the operational route Excel while keeping the dispatcher in control: it proposes optimized routes and you validate. See route planning or route optimization for the full flow.
Signs based on patterns observed in distributors with 3–30 vehicles during demos and onboarding. There is no universal threshold: if your Excel works and does not cause errors or delays, there is no obligation to change.