A buyer's checklist for courier software in Canada

Most delivery software is built for the United States first and "supports Canada" in a settings menu. That usually means a currency symbol and a dropdown with provinces. Then you find out the tax lines are wrong for Québec, the zone tool wants five-digit ZIP codes, the holiday calendar closes on US Thanksgiving, and the driver pay statements are in US dollars.

The takeaway: demo the software on your own Canadian orders, not the vendor's sample data, and ask the questions below in writing. A vendor that answers "not yet" honestly is more useful than one that answers "yes" to everything.

Print this list, or copy it into an email to each vendor. It applies to any courier software, including ours; where NemiRoute has a known gap, we say so at the end.

Dispatch and operations

1. Do orders from the office, a customer portal, spreadsheets and an API all land in one list with the same statuses?
2. Can a dispatcher assign and reassign a driver in one action, including handing the rest of a route to someone else mid-day?
3. Does the live map show each vehicle's next stop, its ETA and how late it is running, or only dots?
4. Is there an exceptions queue for failed, late and stuck orders, with your own failure reasons and next steps?
5. Does the route planner optimise routes, or order stops simply? Which do you actually need?
6. Are distances road distances or straight-line estimates?
7. Does an order support multiple drops, or exactly one pickup and one delivery?
8. Can you set time windows, or only a pickup time and a deliver-by time?

Our post on what a dispatch board should do explains why these matter.

Drivers and proof of delivery

1. Is the driver app native on both iPhone and Android, and does it work offline?
2. Can you require proof per customer, service or address: signature, photo, name, ID and age check?
3. Does the server enforce the proof rules, or can a stop be marked delivered without them?
4. Is there a location check, and can you set it to warn instead of block?
5. What languages is the driver app in? Is French available?
6. Can drivers use their own phones, and can you sign out a lost device remotely?

See Proof of delivery that settles disputes for how to set those rules.

Pricing

1. Can zones be built from Canadian forward sortation areas (M5V, H2X, V6B) and full postal codes, with the longest match winning?
2. Are there zone-to-zone price tables, not just a per-kilometre rate?
3. Can a fuel surcharge follow a published fuel price index with bands?
4. Are rush, after-hours, weekend, holiday and waiting-time charges built in?
5. Can you test a new rate card against real past orders before switching?
6. Is the price locked when an order is placed, and does every order keep its breakdown?

The mechanics are in Zone pricing explained.

Customers

1. Is there a customer portal with live prices, saved addresses, repeating orders and spreadsheet upload?
2. Do recipients get a tracking link without needing an account?
3. Can you edit every email and text message the system sends?
4. Is text messaging set up with consent records and STOP/ARRET handling?
5. Are the portal, tracking pages and messages available in French?
6. Is there an API and webhooks for customers with their own systems?

Billing and money

1. Can you bill customers in Canadian dollars?
2. Are GST/HST, QST and PST calculated correctly, and can you choose which address decides the tax?
3. Can you record tax-exempt customers, including exemptions from only some taxes?
4. Are invoices created automatically from delivered orders on each customer's schedule?
5. Can customers pay invoices by card, and where does the money go: your own payment account, or the vendor's?
6. What are the card fees and platform fees, exactly?
7. Is cash on delivery tracked per driver until it is handed in?
8. How does the accounting export work for QuickBooks or Xero, and does it split GST/HST and QST?
9. Are driver pay statements in Canadian dollars?

The tax side is covered in GST, HST, QST and PST for courier companies.

Canadian details

1. Does the business calendar know Canadian federal and provincial statutory holidays?
2. Can you choose kilometres or miles, kilograms or pounds, per company?
3. Are dates, times and money formatted the Canadian way, and in French where needed?
4. Where is your data hosted, and how does the vendor handle privacy requests under PIPEDA and, for Québec, Law 25?
5. If you serve Québec customers, can the software meet your French-language obligations for customer-facing documents?

How to run the demo

• Bring your own data. Ten real orders from last week, with real postal codes, weights and customers.
• Price them. Do the quotes match what you charged? If not, can you see why?
• Invoice them. Are the tax lines right for each province?
• Break something. Fail a delivery, short a COD payment, change an address after pickup. Watch what happens.
• Ask for the "not yet" list. Every product has one. If the vendor will not share it, that tells you something.

Where NemiRoute stands

We built NemiRoute for courier companies in Canada and the US, so most of the list above is covered: one order list from every channel, a live map with ETAs and delays, an exceptions queue, multi-stop jobs and delivery windows, a native driver app with offline proof checked by the server, FSA and postal-code zones with zone tables and a fuel-index surcharge, a customer portal with tracking links, CAD billing with GST/HST, QST and provincial PST rules, QuickBooks and Xero exports with a tax code on every line, Canadian statutory holidays, metric or imperial units per company, card payments into your own Stripe account, and COD tracking. Customer emails and texts go out in English or French, and the driver app has French (Canada) on its main screens. See the pricing engine and billing pages for detail.

Our honest "not yet" list for Canada today:

• The route planner's Optimize is a quick nearest-first ordering that keeps delivery windows; it is not a full fleet route optimiser.
• Distances are straight-line estimates until a road-distance provider is connected.
• The customer portal screens are in English; only the messages it sends are in French.
• The accounting export is a file you import, not a live sync with QuickBooks or Xero.
• The independent driver network is a pilot that only runs where the platform has opened a market (today the New York area); don't plan on it in Canada.
• Card payments through Stripe run in test mode for now; ask us when live card payments will be on for your account before you plan around them.

If any of those block you today, tell us. It helps us decide what to build next.

Next step

Send this checklist to every vendor on your shortlist, including us. Then start free with your own orders, or book a demo and bring ten real orders to price live.