Introduction
This is the screen headed Assets, with two tabs under it: Vehicles and Other. The Vehicles tab is your fleet list — one row per car or van, with columns for its branch, location, registration, make, model, whether it is active, its odometer and its inspection date. Above it sit New Vehicle and RDW Import, and every row ends with a small delete icon. Other holds everything that is not a vehicle.
You come here when:
- a new car has arrived from the dealer and nobody can book it yet;
- a van joins on lease from somebody else and the owner must be recorded;
- you are setting the fleet up and working through the delivery list;
- a car has been sold or handed back and must stop appearing in searches.
Words this screen uses
| The screen says | It means |
|---|---|
| Asset | Any item you rent out. A vehicle is one kind |
| Asset group | A vehicle class — what a customer books, not one specific van |
| Asset settings | A named settings profile every vehicle must be attached to |
| Damage template | The diagram staff mark damage on. Two warning notes call it an inspection template |
| ASI | The date the statutory safety inspection expires |
| RDW | The Dutch national vehicle registry |
Every way a vehicle gets into the list
| Route | How you reach it | What you should know |
|---|---|---|
| New Vehicle | The button above the Vehicles tab | The full route. Fills in the links, dates and checklists listed under Key details |
| RDW Import | The button beside it | Starts from a Dutch registration and looks the detail up first |
| New Asset | The Other tab | For things that are not vehicles. No make, model or fuel |
| A spreadsheet import | Not on this screen | Bulk loading at setup. Skips the links New Vehicle makes — see the last question below |
Use New Vehicle for anything you are adding one at a time.
How to use
Configuration
Four things have to exist before a vehicle can be saved, and the screen will not tell you which one is missing until you are already halfway through.
1. A default pickup checklist and a return checklist. Without a pickup checklist the New Vehicle button does not open anything: you get the message Please set up a default pickup checklist first. and the app puts you on the checklist list instead. A missing return checklist is quieter — the vehicle screen opens, and Save refuses later with Checklist return is empty. Set both up before you start; see Set up pickup and return checklists.
2. A damage template. The diagram staff mark damage on. Without one, Save refuses with Damage template is empty.
3. An asset settings profile. From the main menu, open Settings, then click the Asset Settings tile. The vehicle screen picks your default profile automatically, so this only bites if no profile has been marked as the default — Save then refuses with Select your settings.
4. The company setting that decides what deactivating does. From the main menu, open Settings, then click the Operational tile.
| Setting | Starts as | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Always allow switch to inactive asset | On | Decides what happens when you switch off a vehicle that still has bookings on it. On: the app takes the vehicle off every future booking and lets you save. Off: it refuses to save and tells you to move the bookings yourself |
Only a company administrator can open the Operational tile.
Before you start: any staff account can add a vehicle and save it. A company administrator is needed to delete one, to use Enrich data, to set Branch, and to open the Asset groups and Tags tabs. If those are missing for you, they are not broken — ask a company administrator.
Using the vehicle list
From the main menu, open Assets. The screen is headed Assets; make sure the Vehicles tab is selected.
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Click New Vehicle, above the list on the right. A blank vehicle screen opens.
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Read the notes at the top of it. Up to three appear: Please add a pickup checklist, Please add a dropoff checklist and Please add a inspection template. Each names a tab to go to; ignore those names, because all three drop-downs sit together on the Core tab. Each note clears as you fill its drop-down in.
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Work down the top block, in the order it appears on screen. Skim this table once, then return to individual rows as you reach them:
Field Starts as What it does What it accepts Active On Counts as part of the fleet. Leave it on On or off Asset Type Car What kind of item this is Pick from the list Registration number Empty The number plate. Required Text Name (optional) Empty A nickname staff will recognise Text Internal number (optional) Empty Your own fleet number Text Current location Empty Where it stands now Your locations Make Empty Required Pick from the list Model Empty Required. Only offers models of the make, so set Make first Pick from the list Fuel Empty Required Pick from the list Transmission Empty Manual or automatic Pick from the list Ownership OwnAsset Own fleet or somebody else's: OwnAsset, FinancialLease, OperationalLease, Borrowed, Other Pick from the list Asset condition Clean Its current state Pick from the list Third party owner Empty Who owns it. Appears once Ownership is anything but OwnAsset Text ASI Empty When the safety inspection expires A date Asset settings Your default profile Required Pick from the list Branch Empty Its branch. Administrators only Your branches -
Open the Core tab and set Damage template, Checklist pickup and Checklist return — all three required.
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Click Save, at the bottom. Cancel beside it throws the record away.
If Save does nothing, a required field is empty. The app names it:
| Message | Fill in | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Registration number is empty | Registration number | Top block |
| Make is empty | Make | Top block |
| Model is empty | Model | Top block |
| Fuel is empty | Fuel | Top block |
| Select your settings | Asset settings | Top block |
| Damage template is empty | Damage template | Core tab |
| Checklist pickup is empty | Checklist pickup | Core tab |
| Checklist return is empty | Checklist return | Core tab |
The screen then closes and your vehicle is in the Vehicles list.
Key details
What the app fills in for you. New Vehicle is not a blank form. It attaches the vehicle to your company, your default asset settings profile, your default pickup and return checklists, and its tags. It sets the asset type to a car, Active from to now, and Active to ten years ahead. A vehicle arriving any other way gets none of this.
The active window does not control availability. The Financial tab holds Active from and Active to, with a note directly above them: Active period is only for data purposes. It currently does not impact the availability. A date in Active to does not stop anyone booking the vehicle; the Active switch is what does that. Saving also re-stamps Active to with the current moment whenever it is empty or already past — only a future date survives untouched, which is why a vehicle created today reads ten years ahead.
Switching a vehicle off. Untick Active and press Save. Active to is stamped with the current moment unless you put a future date there. Then the app looks for bookings on this vehicle: any already picked up, and any not yet picked up whose pickup date is still ahead.
| What it finds | Always allow switch to inactive asset | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| No bookings | Either | Saves |
| Future bookings | On | Saves, after taking the vehicle off every one of them. They stay, without a vehicle |
| Future bookings | Off | Refuses, with Active bookings found. Please move all (future) bookings to another asset first or change your settings.. |
A worked example. It is 9 September and you switch off a van with Active to empty, one customer out on rental now, and reservations on 20 September and 4 October. With the setting on — its normal state — saving writes Active to as 9 September, takes the van off both reservations, and leaves the current rental untouched. Both reservations survive, with their dates and customer, and no vehicle against them. With the setting off, nothing is saved.
What to do next. A saved vehicle is not yet bookable. Open it again and use the Asset groups tab to link it to a vehicle class — an availability search counts active vehicles inside a class, so a vehicle in no class never appears. See Search for an available vehicle.
Q&A
Why have two reservations lost their vehicle after I switched a car off? Because Always allow switch to inactive asset is on, which is how it arrives. It takes the vehicle off every future booking rather than stopping you, and it does not warn you first or tell you afterwards which bookings it touched. Find them on the Scheduler — they are the bookings with no vehicle against them — and put another vehicle on each. If you would rather be stopped than have this happen silently, ask a company administrator to switch the setting off on the Operational tile.
Why is a car I just deactivated still showing on a live rental? The app only strips the vehicle from bookings that have not started. A booking already picked up keeps its vehicle, so the customer's paperwork and the return inspection still work. Nothing to fix — but the vehicle will come back to you, so plan when it actually leaves the fleet.
Why does the delete icon refuse to work? Deleting is the small icon at the end of a row, and on the Vehicles tab it asks Are you sure? This cannot be undone and may impact data analysis., with Proceed and Cancel. Two things stop it, and the app only mentions the first: a vehicle must be switched off before it can be deleted — untick Active, save, then delete — and the icon is only there at all for a company administrator. The same icon on the Other tab is looser: any staff account can use it, it asks only Are you sure?, and it does not check whether the item is active.
Why will Save not go through when every box on screen is filled? Three of the eight required fields are not in the top block — Damage template, Checklist pickup and Checklist return all sit on the Core tab. Open it and check all three.
Why do the notes at the top send me to tabs that do not exist? Please add a pickup checklist and Please add a dropoff checklist both say to go to the checklists tab, and Please add a inspection template says to go to the damage template tab. There are no tabs by those names. All three drop-downs are on the Core tab.
Why did New Vehicle not open anything? You will have seen Please set up a default pickup checklist first. and landed on the checklist list. No vehicle can be created until a pickup checklist exists. Create one — see Set up pickup and return checklists — and create a return checklist while you are there, because the vehicle screen will not open a second complaint about it, it will simply refuse to save at the end.
Why does Active to keep changing to today? Every save on a switched-on vehicle re-stamps Active to with the current moment unless the date in it is in the future. So clearing the field, or typing a date that has passed, gets you today's date back. Put a real future date in if you want one to stick, and remember it does not affect whether the vehicle can be booked.
Why can I not see Third party owner? It only appears once Ownership is set to something other than OwnAsset. Change Ownership first and the field appears underneath Asset condition.
Why are Enrich data, Link, Branch, Asset groups and Tags missing for me? All five are for company administrators only. An ordinary staff account can create a vehicle and save it, but cannot fill in its branch, attach it to a vehicle class, tag it, or pull its details from the registry. Ask a company administrator to finish those.
Why does Reporting code appear twice on the Specs tab? It is the same field shown twice, not two different numbers. Fill in either one.
Why does a vehicle behave as though it is not attached to anything? Only the New Vehicle button attaches a vehicle to your company, location, branch, checklists, damage template and tags. A vehicle loaded from a spreadsheet or pushed in by another system arrives without them, and then behaves oddly everywhere else — missing from lists, failing an inspection, refusing to price. Open it and check Current location, Branch, Asset settings, and the three drop-downs on the Core tab, then save.
Related pages:
- Set up pickup and return checklists — the checklists this screen insists on
- Search for an available vehicle — what makes a saved vehicle bookable
- Run the pickup inspection — where the checklists and damage template are actually used
- Reschedule bookings on the Scheduler — putting a vehicle back on a booking that lost one