From paper Conveyance Notes to digital WTNs — what changes on the yard
Moving a lorry yard off paper tickets sounds scary. In practice most teams are fully switched within two weeks. Here's the playbook we've seen work.
The 3-phase rollout we recommend
Phase 1 — Office-side prep (1–2 days)
Before drivers touch the system:
- Register your company and issue an Admin login to the transport
planner.
- Import your customer list — name, address, SIC code, office phone,
mobile and site contact for each.
- Import your vehicles — reg, load type, default driver.
- Set your company branding so it prints on every PDF: carrier
number, yard address, office email.
Phase 2 — One vehicle, one week
Pick your most tech-comfortable driver and do one full week on digital before anyone else switches:
- They still carry a paper pad as backup for the first 48 hours.
- The transport planner reviews every digital note at end of day —
confirms weights, GPS and signatures look right.
- By day 3 the paper backup is gone. By day 5 you have a keeper.
Phase 3 — Full yard rollout (5 working days)
- Morning toolbox talk: 15 minutes, screen-share the driver app on a TV.
- Each driver gets a practice run in the yard before their first real
job.
- Keep the paper pads available for the first month as exception-only
(phone dead, signal black spot). Over 90% of jobs won't need them.
What actually changes for drivers
| On paper | On WTN Digital |
|---|---|
| Find the right pad colour | Open the app |
| Hand-write 4 copies | Tap "Create" once |
| Decipher weigh-bridge ticket | Weights auto-sum gross/tare/nett |
| Chase signatures after the fact | Sign on glass at the tip |
| Drop yellow copy at office | PDF lands in office inbox in 30s |
The office-side win
- Lost notes → zero. Every PDF is in the cloud within seconds of
sign-off.
- GPS-stamped — you know exactly which tip a load went to.
- Search by anything — customer, EWC code, plate, note number, date
range.
- Ready for DEFRA — October 2026 becomes a 30-second settings change,
not a migration project.
What tends to go wrong (and how we fix it)
- *"The weighbridge is offline at site X"* — drivers enter manual
weights; the app flags it as "manual" for the auditor.
- *"Customer wants a paper copy"* — two taps emails them a PDF that
prints identical to the old blue paper.
- *"My driver's phone died"* — any office admin can complete the note
from a desktop using the driver's dictated weights; the signature can be captured later with the customer.
Drivers stop resisting once they realise the app is half the paperwork they used to do at the end of shift.