Your first load, one box at a time.

Most of the screen is already filled in for your site before you ever open it. This is what is left, and what each box actually wants.

Open app.byrnedigitalsolutions.co.uk on a phone, a tablet or a computer. There is nothing to install. New? Tap I'm new here, type your email and choose a password - no card. Already have an account? Sign in with your email and password.

If you are using a phone at the gate, open the browser menu and choose Add to Home Screen. After that it opens like any other app.

Which screen you get

There are two ways of recording loads, and your site is set to one of them already.

New load — for a site where somebody is there when the lorry arrives. One load at a time, as it comes in.
Day sheet — for a site where loads are written down and typed up later. A grid, one row per load, several at once.

If you have the wrong one, email and it gets switched over. It is one setting, it takes a minute, and nothing you have already recorded is affected.

Recording a load on New load

Your unique reference

Whatever you already call this load. Your ticket number, your weighbridge number, a delivery note number. It is yours, not Defra's, and it is how you find the load again later. If you have no numbering of your own, the date and a count works fine: 02-10-01 for the first load on the 2nd.

Date and time received

Already set to now. Only change it if you are typing up a load that came in earlier.

Where did this load go?

Your site name, address, postcode and permit number are already in. You should not have to touch this section at all. If anything in it is wrong, tell me, because it is wrong on every load until it is fixed.

Who brought it

This is the one Defra are strictest about. The haulier needs a waste carrier registration number, which starts CBDU or CBDL. Type it in, and the haulier's company name next to it. Not on your paperwork? Look it up free on the public register.

Once you have typed a haulier in once, start typing their name next time and they come back with their number already attached.

If there genuinely is no carrier — your own tractor and trailer, off your own land, not going on a public road — leave the number blank and pick the reason underneath instead. Defra accept that. What they do not accept is a made up number, and a wrong one will come back refused.

Vehicle registration

The plate of whatever brought it in. Send us the plates you see most often and they become a list you tap instead of typing.

Hazardous consignment

Leave this blank unless the load came with a hazardous waste consignment note. If it did, the consignment code is printed on that note. If it did not, the app fills in the reason for you.

What is the waste?

Tap the box and your own list of waste types appears — the ones your permit lets you take, loaded in for you. Pick the one that has come in. You are not meant to search eight hundred codes, and you cannot accidentally choose something your permit does not cover.

If something regularly comes in that is not on your list, tell me the name of it and it gets added.

Weight

The number, in the unit already set for your site. Normally tonnes.

Estimated? matters. If you have a weighbridge, the weight is measured, and the box stays off. If you work it out from skip sizes or load counts, it is an estimate and the box must be on. Defra are completely fine with an estimate so long as it says it is one. Saying measured when nothing was measured is the part that is not fine. Tell us which you are and it is set once, for every load.

Containers, physical form, what happens to it

These are already set for your site where I knew the answer. Physical form is solid, liquid, sludge, powder and so on — if your wastes vary, this one is left for you to pick each time, because a wrong preset is worse than no preset.

What happens to it is the recovery or disposal code. It is on your own permit, and the app suggests it: you confirm it with a tap. Which R or D code, by type of site.

Save

The app checks the load against Defra's rules before it will save, so anything missing is caught while the lorry is still in front of you, not three days later.

After you save. The load sits in Loads and goes to Defra on its own about twenty minutes later. Then sent to Defra appears next to it. The twenty minutes is deliberate, so a typo spotted at the gate can still be put right.

The things people ask on day one

The second load is much quicker. Tap a load you have had before and the carrier, the vehicle and the waste come with it. You change the weight and the ticket number and save. About twenty seconds.

There is no signal at our gate. It does not matter. A load saved with no signal is kept on the phone and goes up by itself when the signal comes back.

We have made a mistake. If the load has not gone to Defra yet you can change or delete it yourself in Loads. Once Defra have accepted it, a correction goes through your own Defra account: within two working days if Defra or the app flagged it, within one month of finding it if you spotted it yourself.

Nothing is reaching Defra. Check Sites. If your Defra code is not on there yet, everything you record is safely stored but is not being reported. Getting the code is free and takes about ten minutes once: the ten steps are here.

How long have I got? Two working days, counted from the day after the load arrives. There is no need to cut it that fine, but it is the deadline.

We need our records out. Export, then Download every load, gives you a spreadsheet of every load at every one of your sites, sent or not.

Stuck on something this page does not cover?

There is an Ask button (the ? in the corner) in the app. It isn't a chatbot: it answers a set of common questions from your own site's settings, so it tells you what your site is actually set to rather than what it might be. Anything it cannot answer, email, and it gets answered the same working day.

Straight answers Guides: codes, carriers, deadlines wilf@byrnedigitalsolutions.co.uk