Introduction
RentVisie hangs two different kinds of person off a customer, and they are easy to mix up. A sub account is somebody allowed to drive on that customer's bookings — a partner, a colleague, a second named driver. An employee is somebody who works at a business customer, such as the person you send the invoice to. Each is its own tab on the customer form: Linked subaccounts/drivers and Linked employees/subdivisions. A third tab, Linked accounts, is the same two relationships seen from the other end, so you can attach a person from either side.
Every one of these people is a customer record in their own right. Adding a driver creates a second customer and ties it to the first; it does not create a "driver" of some lesser kind. That is why a driver you add turns up in your customer list like anybody else.
Putting somebody on a customer is not the same as putting them on a booking. The customer's list of sub accounts is the pool to choose from; the booking's own Drivers screen is where you say which of them is driving this particular car.
You will use this when:
- a couple rents one car and both want to drive it
- a firm rents vans and a different employee collects each one
- a business customer wants invoices sent to their bookkeeper, not the driver
- a named driver says they never got the booking confirmation
Words used on these screens
| The screen says | It means |
|---|---|
| Linked subaccounts/drivers | The tab holding the extra drivers attached to a customer |
| Linked employees/subdivisions | The tab holding contacts at a business customer, or its branches |
| Linked accounts | The customers this person has been attached to, seen from their side |
| Drivers / sub rentee | The screen on a booking listing who is driving that car |
| Existing account v2 | The button that attaches somebody who is already a customer |
Every way to attach somebody
| Where you start | What you get |
|---|---|
| New sub account on the customer's Linked subaccounts/drivers tab | A short form that makes a new customer and attaches it as a driver in one step |
| Existing account v2 on that same tab | A list of your customers with a tick box, for attaching somebody you already have |
| New employee or Existing account on Linked employees/subdivisions | The same two routes, for a contact at a business customer |
| The Linked accounts tab on a person's own record | The same links from their side — pick the accounts they drive for or work at |
| New or Existing account v2 on a booking's Drivers screen | Attaches to the customer and puts them on that booking |
How to use
Configuration
There is nothing to set up in advance — no list to prepare and no switch to turn on.
Before you start: a normal staff account can do all of this. The person you are attaching has to belong to your own company; you cannot borrow a customer record from anywhere else. If the customer you are adding somebody to is brand new and unsaved, be aware that pressing either New button saves it first.
Using the linked-people tabs
From the main menu open Customers, then click the Customers tile. Find the person on the list headed Customer and click their row.
- Click Linked subaccounts/drivers. The list shows First name, Last name and Invoice name for everybody already attached, with two icons at the end of each row: one opens that person's own customer form, the other detaches them.
- To add somebody new, click New sub account. A short form opens with company, First name, Last name, Invoice name, Dial code, Phone and Email.
- Fill in at least the name and the Email, then press Save on that form.
- To attach somebody you already have, click Existing account v2 instead. The screen headed Link subcustomer / driver lists your customers in three columns: Linked, Invoice name and Email. Tick Linked on the right row, then click Back.
- For a contact at a business, click Linked employees/subdivisions and use New employee or Existing account in the same way. That list carries Phone and Email columns as well.
- To say who is driving a particular car, open the booking and click Drivers. The screen headed Drivers / sub rentee shows the drivers already on this booking at the top and the customer's linked accounts below. Tick the people who are driving and click Update.
The short form is the one to be careful with, because it is not the customer form:
| Field | Default | What it does | What it will accept |
|---|---|---|---|
| company | no | Makes this a business rather than a person. A sub account always opens as a person | Yes or no |
| First name / Last name | empty | The driver's name, and what Invoice name is built from | Any text up to 200 characters |
| Invoice name | filled from the name | The name on paperwork, and one of the two things a confirmation email needs | Typeable only when company is yes |
| Dial code | empty | The phone number's country code | Digits |
| Phone | empty | A number to reach the driver on | Any text — this form does not check it |
| empty | Where this driver's own booking confirmation goes | Any text — this form does not check it |
A worked example. A customer books a van and their colleague will collect it. On the customer's Linked subaccounts/drivers tab you click New sub account, type the colleague's first and last name and their email address, and press Save — the driver now exists and is attached. You then open the booking, click Drivers, tick the colleague in the lower list and click Update. When the booking is confirmed, the colleague gets their own copy of the confirmation, addressed to them.
Key details
Everything on these tabs saves the moment you do it. The tick box in the link screen writes immediately — the screen even says Changes are auto-saved. — and so do the two New buttons and the detach icon. Cancel on the customer form afterwards takes none of it back. Only the Linked accounts tab behaves like the rest of the form and waits for Save.
Update replaces the driver list, it does not add to it. On a booking's Drivers screen, whoever is ticked when you press Update becomes the complete list of drivers for that booking. Anybody who was on it and is not ticked comes off.
The short form checks nothing. The customer form refuses a phone number with a plus sign in it and insists on an invoice name; this small form does neither. A driver created here can end up with a malformed phone number or a blank invoice name that the customer form would never have accepted — see Create a customer record for what the full form enforces.
A driver only gets their own confirmation if two boxes are filled. When a booking is confirmed, each driver on it gets a copy addressed to them — but only if that person has both an Email and an Invoice name. Anybody missing either is skipped silently, with nothing on screen to say so. The main renter is deliberately left out of this, because they already get the booking confirmation itself.
Detaching a driver leaves the customer record behind. The icon on the row breaks the link only. The person stays in your customer list with their bookings, invoices and documents intact, and you can attach them again later.
What to do next: attaching somebody to the customer is only half the job — go to the booking and click Drivers to say who is actually driving, or the extra driver will never appear on the paperwork and will never be emailed.
Q&A
Why did a named driver not get the confirmation email? They are missing an Email address or an Invoice name, and nothing warns you. Open that person from the icon on the Linked subaccounts/drivers row, fill in both, and press Save on their form — then reconfirm the booking so the email goes out again.
Why did drivers disappear from a booking after I added one? Update on the Drivers screen sets the booking's driver list to exactly what is ticked. If you ticked only the new person, everybody else came off. Tick everybody who should be driving, including the ones already there, and press Update again.
I detached the wrong person — is their record gone? No. Detaching only breaks the link. Click Existing account v2, find them, and tick Linked to put them back.
Should this person be a sub account or an employee? A sub account is someone who drives; an employee is someone at a business who does not necessarily drive, such as the person handling the invoices. Somebody who does both can be attached on both tabs — they are separate lists over the same people.
Why does my new driver show up in the main customer list? Because a driver is a full customer record. There is no separate place for them, so they appear in searches and can be given bookings of their own.
I cannot type in Invoice name on the short form. It is filled from the first and last name for a private person, and only becomes typeable when you set company to yes. If you need a different invoice name for a person, save the short form and then open their own customer record, where the box can be edited.
Pressing New saved a customer I had not finished. Both New sub account and New employee store the customer you were editing before opening the short form. There is no undo for that, so finish the main record first when you can.
Related pages: Create a customer record for the full customer form these people also get, and Confirm a booking for the confirmation that sends the drivers their copies.