What's new

What changed in Lil' Rollout, newest first. Only things you can actually see are listed here — fixes and plumbing aren't.

4 September 2026 — Lil' Rollout speaks four languages

The app, and everything it sends you, is now available in English, Spanish, Vietnamese and Simplified Chinese.

• Pick your language at the top of any page. The picker shows the one you're reading — EN, ES, VI or 中文 — and switching changes the whole app at once. If your browser is already set to one of the four, you'll get it on your first visit without touching anything.

• Your choice is saved to your account, not just to this browser, so it follows you to your phone.

• Every message follows it too. Bill reminders, receipts, approvals, schedule changes and the notifications on your phone all arrive in your language — dates inside them included, so a Spanish email no longer says "September 3, 2026" halfway through a Spanish sentence.

• So do the account emails. Confirming your address, resetting your password and the sign-in link now match the language you signed up in. That one matters most: confirming your email is the first message we ever send, and until today it arrived in English no matter what.

• For admins: you still edit email wording in English only. The other three languages are rewritten from your English automatically when you save. While a translation catches up we send the current English rather than an out-of-date translation, and a translation that loses a {{placeholder}} is discarded rather than sent — see Email wording.

• Dates follow your language everywhere, not just in email. Your dashboard, pickups, pay tab and route all write the month the way your language does — "3 sept" rather than "Sep 3", and Chinese puts the month first.

• The name under the home-screen icon is in your language too, and so is the page you get when you open the app with no connection.

• Account emails now match too, subject line and all — confirming your address, resetting your password, your sign-in link. Previously the subject stayed English even when the message inside didn't.

• For admins: a Translations panel under the email editor shows whether each language is in sync, and lets you freeze one you've corrected by hand — see Email wording.

Amounts stay in US dollars in every language; the service only runs in the US.

3 September 2026 — We tell you what's happening, and admins can change how it reads

Five things that used to happen in silence now reach you. Until today the only messages the app ever sent a customer were about money you owed — so the first thing a new customer ever heard from us was "Your bill is due today".

• Approved or declined. When an operator answers your request you hear about it, either way. Approved names your operator, your first pickup and what's due; if you've installed the app it arrives as a notification too. Declined says so plainly and points you at the coverage check to find another crew.
• A receipt when your operator confirms your payment — the ledger's first message that isn't chasing you.
• A notice when a charge is cancelled, with the reason your operator wrote down. These used to vanish from your Pay tab with no explanation anywhere.
• A welcome when you finish setting up, covering what happens next.

None of these can be switched off, and that's deliberate: they describe things that already happened to your service or your money, so they aren't reminders to opt out of. Bill reminders are still yours to turn off.

The push notification card is easier to find. On your account it was called "Bill reminders", sitting inside a section also called "Bill reminders" — it now says Notifications on this device, which is what it actually controls.

We'll remind you if you didn't finish signing up. Stopping at the address step used to mean you never heard from us again — no bills, no pickups, nothing, because all of it hangs off having an address. Now you get one email the next day and one more a week later, and then we stop. The second one says so.

Logging in with a link actually works now. Email me a link instead, on the login screen, sends a one-time sign-in link — no password needed. The help guides have described this for a while; until today nothing sent the link. It only signs in an account that already exists, so it can't be used to sign up.

A schedule change reaches you the next morning. When your operator moves, adds, cancels or skips a pickup, you get one email listing everything that changed — and a notification, if you've turned them on. One message a morning however many edits they made: generating a schedule is a single click that can move a dozen dates. Operators don't have to warn anyone by hand any more. This one is yours to switch off under What we send you.

Two bills that used to change in silence now say so. A charge with no due date is announced when it's raised, because the reminder ladder never sees it. And if your operator corrects the amount on a bill that has already had its last reminder, you're told what it was and what it is now — previously that change reached you nowhere at all.

Operators hear about their own customers now. A customer saying they've paid, pausing, or cancelling all reach you by email — and on your phone, because operators can finally turn notifications on. Settings → What we send you has the switches, and Notifications on this device turns push on for the phone you're holding. Until now no operator could receive a notification at all.

And you choose what reaches you, per channel. The old pair of switches is a grid: one row per kind of message, with email and notifications decided separately. Keep the notification and drop the email, or the reverse. Customers see Bill reminders and Service changes; operators see Customer activity. Every email you're able to switch off now ends with Change what we send you, which opens your own grid — so there is nothing to go looking for.

Things that tell you what already happened — an approval, a receipt, a cancelled charge, an account closing — are always sent, alongside security emails about your login. Those aren't reminders, so there's nothing to switch off.

Nobody is left in the dark by an admin action any more. Being made an operator, having that access removed, having a business taken off the listings, or having an account deleted all send a message now. A business being deactivated tells its customers too — carefully, since deactivating removes a crew from coverage lookups without ending anyone's subscription. Admins are also emailed when somebody joins the waitlist.

Admins can reword any email the app sends. A new Emails area holds the wording of every message — bill reminders, operator invites, the "somebody requested service" notice — with a preview, a test send to your own inbox, and a version history you can put anything back from. Editing one takes effect on the next send; there is no deploy and no developer involved. See email wording.

• A delivery log shows what the mail provider did with each message, and the reason when one didn't land.
• A message can be switched off without removing it. Every send it would have made is still recorded, so the log stays honest about what went out.

Every message we send is recorded, not just bills. The notification log at Notices used to hold bill reminders and nothing else, so an operator invite that never arrived left no trace anywhere. Invites and the "somebody requested service" notice to an operator are logged the same way now, and every row says which message it was.

1 September 2026 — One clear answer, and signing up with Google

The coverage check answers you once. Picking an address used to stack three panels: your address under a green tick, "No service at this spot yet" on the map, and "Not covered yet" below it saying the same thing again — a green tick directly above a red cross. It's one card now: your address, one verdict, then the waitlist or the crews that serve you.

• The map is for fixing the pin, not for answering. It says so now — Confirm your spot on the map — and it opens by itself, under We could only place this to the street, whenever we found your street but not your house. Coverage boundaries can run down the middle of a road, so a pin a few doors off is the difference between covered and not.
• The same panel is on the other address boxes — finishing setup, and changing your service address — which both showed the address twice over a map that never closed.
• Clearing the box clears the answer under it, rather than leaving a pin and a verdict for an address that is no longer there.

Continue with Google is on the signup screen now, not just the login one. You agree to the Terms on the screen straight after rather than on the form — the trip out to Google and back can't carry a tick box with it.

Continue with Google now works on an account you already had, too. That Review and accept screen used to answer "we could not record your acceptance" and leave you sitting on it — you were in fact signed in, which you only discovered by reloading. Accepting now files the confirmation and takes you on to where you were going. See logging in.

Review and accept is also asked properly now. It used to be possible to leave it sitting there, open another page, and carry on into the app having answered nothing; every page now brings you back to it until it's done, and then sends you on to the page you asked for rather than to the front of the app.

31 August 2026 — Addresses that behave, and a clearer way in

Most of this is the address box — the one you use to check coverage, sign up, join the waitlist, change your service address, or set an operator's home base. It is the same box everywhere, so all of it lands everywhere.

• Suggestions show the full address. Type 1200 Maple St and the list used to offer you Maple Street — your street, with the number missing. It looked like we didn't have your address. We did, and picking that row always filled the number in correctly, but there was no way to know without trying it. The list now says so, on two lines with the town, state and ZIP underneath. What you see is what gets saved.
• The closest match comes first. It could turn up fourth or fifth, under streets you hadn't asked about — sometimes in other states — which made it look like we hadn't found your street at all.
• Each address appears once. Some came back listed two or three times over, identical rows you couldn't tell apart, and every copy used up one of the five suggestions. The freed slots now go to real alternatives.
• Your address follows you to the other crews. Find that a particular crew doesn't come down your street, and Check other crews brings the address with it — already typed in, suggestions showing, so you tap once instead of typing it out again to ask the same question.

Elsewhere:

• Signing up is the front door. Sign up is now a button at the top right of every public page, rather than something you had to find through the address check or the foot of the login form. The way in for people who already have an account is the smaller Log in link beside it — renamed from "Sign in", because two buttons a letter apart in the smallest text on the page was a needless thing to ask anyone to squint at. Sign out is Log out for the same reason. Nothing works differently, and if you're already logged in you will still see My account.
• We keep your street on the list. Sign up somewhere no operator covers yet and you can still finish — and now your street is recorded on the list we use to decide where to open next. It used to be kept only if you ran the coverage check before making an account.

29 August 2026 — A flyer you can actually print

Marketing → Flyer is real now, and it replaces the old greyed-out buttons. Pick one of three styles, choose what goes on it, and watch the preview change as you go. Your prices, description and the kids' names are on by default; your address and a phone number are off until you switch them on, and the phone is one you type in for the flyer rather than the number you log in with. The preview shows your crew photo too — it was only ever missing there, the printed PDF always had it.

Download it two to a page, cut down the dashed line, and the kids have a stack to hand out. There's a single-flyer version if you're using a print shop. Nothing is saved while you're trying things out.

Also: Login and security on your business settings page now starts closed, like the cards around it. Click the heading when you need to change your email or password.

28 August 2026 — Routes that keep up

• The route solves however you arrive on it. Reaching Today's route by tapping Route could leave the button on "Optimizing…" over a dashed line indefinitely, having never worked the route out. Reloading appeared to fix it, which is what made it look intermittent.
• It stops asking for your location. Opening the route no longer pops a permission box at you: it uses your location where you've already allowed it, and otherwise starts from the address under Where you start your route. A request that stalls now gives up after a few seconds and falls back to straight-line ordering rather than leaving the button spinning. Operators who set off from outside the area we have map data for get their stops ordered anyway.
• The list and the map agree. Roller mode's map worked out its own walking order while the cards underneath stayed in street order, so house 3 on the map wasn't card 3 in the list, and a kid following the numbers walked neither route. A house we can't place on the map keeps its card, at the end.
• It keeps up with the day. Adding or removing a stop while the page is open now works the route out again around it, and changes made elsewhere — a roller checking a can off, a customer added to the day — catch up the next time anything on the page saves. Stops you've ordered by hand stay where you put them; anything new joins the end.
• Lists you can scan. Your customer list, the admin businesses list, each business's roster and the People list now read A-Z by last name instead of by signup date, with unnamed accounts at the bottom. Coverage areas are alphabetical too. Payment history and the waitlist stay newest-first — those are records of when things happened.

27 August 2026 — A way out, and a map that draws itself

• You can leave the setup screen. "Finish setting up" had no way out except the browser's back button, which the installed app doesn't have — so anyone who reached it on a phone was stuck there. It now offers Cancel, which takes you back where you came from. Your dashboard's Add address button brings you back whenever you're ready. Operators still setting a password get Log out instead, since the account isn't usable until that's done.
• Today's route shows your stops straight away. The map came up empty until you happened to tap something, which made a one-stop day look like no day at all. The numbered pins and the route line are there the moment it opens, on both the operator route and roller mode.
• Every payment in your history says when. Voided charges showed an amount and nothing else; they now show Billed and the day the charge was raised.
• Walk and Bike open the right directions. Both used to open driving directions, and on a one-stop day the address landed in the "start" box with nowhere to go. They now ask for walking or biking, put your last stop in the destination, and start you from where you are. The same fix applies to Directions on the operator route.
• Routes start from where you are. When road routing is on, the day's stops are ordered from your actual location — or, if your phone won't share it, from the address you set under Where you start your route in business settings. Before this the order was worked out from whichever stop came first, which could be the far end of the neighborhood.
• Route maps can follow real streets. Where an admin has switched road routing on, today's stops are ordered by real travel distance and the map draws the roads and pavements between them instead of straight lines. Off elsewhere, and the old straight-line ordering is unchanged.
• Importing a city calendar from a photo is switched off and marked Coming soon — it wasn't reading dates reliably enough to put in front of you. Set your days under Recurring schedule meanwhile.

26 August 2026 — Times on your own clock

Every time and date in the app now reads on the clock of whoever is looking at it. They were being written in UTC, which for most people meant a can that went out at half seven in the morning was listed as going out at half one — and, late in the evening, listed on the wrong day entirely.

• Roll history — for operators on a customer's card, and for customers under Pickups — shows Out and Back on your clock.
• Payments now says when a bill was paid and when the last reminder went out, with the time of day, not just the date.
• Payment history on your Pay tab now shows when you paid and when your operator confirmed it, rather than only which month the charge was for.
• The notification log stamps each row with its timezone, since it spans operators in different places.
• Times settle before the page appears, so you never see one value replaced by another.

25 August 2026 — Bills that chase themselves

Your monthly charge now appears on its own, about a week before it's due, instead of your operator raising each one by hand.

• You hear about it. An email when the bill is raised, and again if it goes unpaid: on the due date, then a few times over the fortnight after, then never again. They arrive in your morning, not the middle of the night.
• Push notifications, if you've installed the app and turned them on. Tapping one opens that exact bill. Both channels have their own switch under Bill reminders in your account.
• You can take back a mistake. Tapped the wrong payment method, or tapped before you'd actually sent anything? I haven't paid this yet returns the charge to unpaid. See Paying your operator.
• Operators can void a charge that shouldn't have been raised — a paused month, a duplicate — with a reason that stays on the record.
• The installed app opens to your own home page instead of the public site.
• Switching between your accounts is quicker, and the chip you tapped spins while it works.

20 August 2026 — These guides

• Help ships with the app. The ? in the header opens the article for whatever page you're on.
• Clearer steps for installing on an iPhone, which Safari makes less obvious than it should be.
• Address search results show the full address, so two similar streets can be told apart at a glance.

19 August 2026 — One account, several roles

• If you're an operator and a neighbor on someone else's route, a switcher in the header moves between them. The two sets of data stay entirely separate.

6 August 2026 — Settings in one place

• Your profile, your address, and your notification choices are on a single account page instead of scattered across the app.

3 August 2026 — Flyers, and safer edits

• Operators get a printable flyer for their public page, illustration and all.
• Deleting a coverage area asks first. It used to just go.

31 July 2026 — Your own page

• Every operator gets a public page to hand out — services, pricing, and the streets they cover.

30 July 2026 — Terms and privacy

• Terms of service and a privacy policy, with a durable record of who accepted what and when.