Introduction
A checklist is the list of walk-round questions staff must answer during an inspection — "Cleaned?", "Fuel card in the glovebox?", "Number of keys handed over". It is the first screen of the handover wizard, and for many companies it is the only step they use.
There are two kinds, and they are separate lists: a Checklist Pickup for when the vehicle goes out and a Checklist Return for when it comes back. They can hold completely different questions, or share the same ones.
Checklists are attached to individual vehicles, not to your company as a whole. A van can ask about the tail lift while a city car does not, and a vehicle with no checklist attached simply shows an empty first step. Building a checklist is therefore two jobs: writing the questions here, then pointing vehicles at the list you want them to use.
How to use
Configuration
Before you start: creating and editing checklists needs the Company admin role. Ordinary Employee accounts can see every checklist but cannot change one — the Save button is not available to them. Everything you create belongs to your own company and is invisible to other companies on the system.
Go to Assets in the main menu, then click Checklists. The screen is headed Manage your checklists and holds three lists.
1. Write the questions. In the Checklist Items list, click New Checklist item:
| Field | What to put in it |
|---|---|
| Description | The question or instruction as staff will read it |
| Required | On means the inspection cannot continue until this is answered. Off by default |
| Item type | How the answer is captured — see below |
Item type decides what staff see against that line:
| Type | What staff get | What counts as answered |
|---|---|---|
| YesOrNo | A tick box | Only a tick. Leaving it clear is not an answer |
| Number | A number box | Any number above zero. Zero is rejected |
| Text | A free-text line | Any text that is not blank |
| SpecialCleaning | A tick box | Only a tick, same as YesOrNo |
Click Save. Items are shared, so an item can appear on several checklists at once and editing it changes all of them.
2. Build the lists. Click New Checklist pickup (or New Checklist return):
| Field | What to put in it |
|---|---|
| Name | What you will call this list, e.g. Vans or Basic |
| Asset type | What sort of thing it is for. Starts on Vehicle |
| Fuel type | Which fuel this list suits. Starts on Fuel |
| Checklist item | Pick the questions. It is a multi-select — choose as many as you need |
Click Save. Cancel discards the whole record, not just your last edit.
3. Point vehicles at the list. A checklist does nothing until a vehicle uses it. Open the vehicle's own record and choose its pickup checklist and its return checklist there. Every vehicle is set individually.
To turn checklists off for one vehicle, clear those choices on the vehicle. There is no on/off switch: a vehicle with no checklist attached shows an empty first step in the wizard, and staff simply press Next past it.
Asset type and fuel type do not filter anything by themselves. They are labels on the checklist record to help you tell your lists apart when assigning them. What a vehicle actually uses is whatever is chosen on that vehicle, whether or not the types match.
Using the checklists
Checklists appear as the first screen of the inspection: open the booking, click the Inspection tab, then the Inspection tile. Which list you get is decided by the booking's status — a Confirmed booking shows that vehicle's pickup list, a Picked up booking shows its return list.
Work down the lines. Each shows its description and exactly one answer box, matching the item type — a number box on a Number item, a text line on a Text item, and nothing else beside it. (Un)check all flips every tick box on the list at once, and pressing it again puts them back, so it is a quick way to start from "all fine" and untick the exceptions.
Press Next when you are done. If a required question has not been answered, nothing moves and you get: Please check/ fill in all required fields. The message does not say which line is at fault, so scan for the empty one.
The pickup or drop-off date and time also sit on this screen and can be corrected while you are here. A notes screen follows the checklist — Pickup notes on the way out, Dropoff notes on the way back — for anything the questions did not cover. It is optional. Press Next again and the wizard moves on to damage, or to the finish screen if your fleet has the later steps turned off.
A worked example
Your return checklist for vans, Vans — return, has four questions: "Cleaned" (YesOrNo, not required), "Fuel card returned" (YesOrNo, required), "Number of keys returned" (Number, required) and "Anything the customer reported" (Text, not required).
A van comes back. You open the booking — status Picked up, so you get the return list. The van is filthy, so you leave Cleaned clear. The fuel card is in the door pocket, so you tick Fuel card returned. You type 2 for the keys. The customer mentioned a rattle, so you type that in the text line.
Press Next. Both required questions are satisfied, so you move on to the notes screen.
Had the customer kept the fuel card, you could not have recorded that here — a required tick box only accepts a tick. You would leave that question out of the required set, or put the fact in the notes.
Key details
Every company starts with one checklist item and two lists. A new company is seeded with a single item called Cleaned and two lists both named Basic — one pickup, one return — which share that same item. Because they share it, editing Cleaned changes both lists at once.
Pre-ticked answers only work on the way out. An item can be marked as starting already ticked, and the seeded Cleaned item is. That pre-tick is applied when a pickup checklist opens. When a return checklist opens, every tick box starts clear regardless — so the same item behaves differently on the two legs.
You cannot set the pre-tick yourself. The Default checked column is shown on the Checklist Items list, but there is no field for it on the item's own edit screen. In practice only the seeded Cleaned item has it, and nothing you create through the app will.
Reopening the checklist wipes your answers. Every time the checklist screen opens it throws away the working answers for that booking and rebuilds the list fresh from the template. Going Back and forward again means starting the checklist over. Answers are only kept once you have pressed Next past it.
Re-running a pickup inspection deletes both legs' saved checklists, pickup and return alike. Re-running the return inspection deletes only the return answers. This matches how fuel readings behave.
A vehicle with no wizard settings jumps to damage. If a vehicle has no inspection settings at all, the wizard goes from the notes screen straight to the damage screen, whatever any switches say elsewhere.
Questions cannot be reordered. There is no position field on an item, and the inspection screen lists them in the order the system holds them. If the sequence matters — walk round the outside, then the inside — build the list in that order the first time, and add a new item rather than rewording an existing one when you need to insert a step.
Changing a checklist does not change bookings already inspected. Answers are copied onto the booking when you press Next, so past inspections keep the questions that were asked at the time. Editing a list changes what the next inspection asks, never what a finished one recorded.
What to do next: once the lists exist, assign them to your vehicles, then run one inspection end to end on a test booking to see the questions in the order staff will meet them. The rest of the wizard is covered on Run the pickup inspection.
Q&A
The first inspection screen is empty. Is it broken? No — that vehicle has no checklist attached. Either that is deliberate, or nobody has chosen one on the vehicle record. Press Next to carry on.
I get "Please check/ fill in all required fields." but everything looks filled in. Three things count as unanswered even when they look done: a required tick box that is clear, a required number box containing 0, and a required text line containing only spaces. A required tick box cannot record a "no" — if the honest answer is no, that question should not be marked required.
Can I record that something was missing on a required question? Not on the question itself. Use the notes screen that follows the checklist, or make the question a Text item instead of a tick box.
I ticked the wrong boxes and pressed Back. Now the list has reset. That is expected — the screen rebuilds from the template every time it opens. Answer the questions again.
Where is the Save button on the checklist screen during an inspection? There isn't one. Answers are saved when you press Next.
Why does my "Cleaned" question start ticked at pickup but not at return? Pre-ticking is only applied to pickup checklists. Return checklists always start with every box clear.
I edited an item and it changed a checklist I did not touch. Items are shared between lists. If you want a question worded differently on one list, create a second item rather than editing the shared one.
I cannot change anything on the Checklists screen. You need the Company admin role. Employee accounts can read checklists but not change them.
Can I have a different checklist per fuel type? You can label a list with a fuel type, and you can attach different lists to different vehicles — which gives you the same result. The fuel type on the list itself does not select anything on its own.
I clicked the button that creates the default checklists and now I have duplicates. That action creates a fresh Basic pickup and return pair every time it runs, with no check for ones that already exist. Delete the extras from the Checklist Pickup and Checklist Return lists.