Run the pickup inspection

Introduction

When a customer arrives to collect their vehicle, you walk through a short wizard in RentVisie called the Inspection. It records the state of the vehicle at the moment it leaves your yard — what was already damaged, what the odometer said, how much fuel was in it — and then flips the booking to Picked up and emails the customer a pickup receipt.

The same wizard runs again when they bring the vehicle back. RentVisie never asks which one you are doing — it reads the booking's status. A Confirmed booking gets the pickup leg; a Picked up booking gets the return leg. The screens are identical both times, so check the status before you start.

The wizard has up to five steps, but most companies do not see all of them: which steps appear is set once by an administrator, per type of vehicle. Skip the ones yours has turned off.

How to use

Configuration

Which steps the wizard shows is controlled by an Asset Settings record. Every vehicle points at one, and the wizard reads the settings belonging to the vehicle on the booking.

Before you start: changing Asset Settings needs the Company admin role; ordinary Employee accounts can see them but not change them. Everyone who works the counter — Employee, Employee (minimal) and Company admin — can run the inspection.

1. Open Settings from the main menu, then click Asset Settings.

2. Click New Asset Settings to make a new one, or click an existing record to change it.

3. Fill in Name. The name must be unique within your company for that type of vehicle — if you reuse one, Save refuses and tells you so.

4. Turn Default on if this is the set of settings new vehicles should fall back to. Only one record per company may be the default. If another one already is, Save refuses.

5. Turn the wizard steps on:

   Switch	What it adds to the wizard
   Damage	The damage step — record scratches and dents present at pickup
   Mileage	The odometer step
   Fuel	The fuel-level step
   Key cafe	Key-box access for this vehicle (not part of the wizard)
   Make	Shows the manufacturer — but only on records for items that are not vehicles
   Model	Shows the model — same, only on non-vehicle records

   The last three change nothing on a vehicle's own record; see Change which fields your vehicle records show.

6. Click Save. Cancel throws the whole record away, not just your last edit.

Two things surprise people here:

• Every switch starts turned off. A brand-new record gives you a wizard of checklist, then finish and nothing else. Nobody turns steps off to shorten the wizard — they turn them on to lengthen it.
• A switch you cannot find has been disabled higher up. Each one only appears if the type of asset allows it. If the asset type has no damage tracking, the Damage switch is genuinely absent, not scrolled out of view.

Careful with any "assign to all" action here. It pushes one Asset Settings record onto every asset your company owns, not just those of a matching type — which is why it is restricted to system administrators.

Customer-validation switches live elsewhere, under Settings → Operational settings: Drivers license, on by default, and min age, 18 by default. They govern what a customer record must contain, and do not stop the wizard — see What actually blocks a handover below.

Using the inspection

There is one way in, and it starts from the booking:

1. Open the booking — from the Scheduler, from a pickup tile on your daily overview, or by searching for it.
2. Click the Inspection tab.
3. Click the Inspection tile.

The tile only appears when the booking is Confirmed or Picked up. On a draft, quote, cancelled or already-returned booking the tab is there but the tile is not, with no message explaining why — so check the status first.

The wizard opens one step per screen. None of these screens has a Save button. Your answers are stored when you press Next; Back or closing the window loses the current step.

Step 1 — The checklist

The first screen is your pickup checklist: the walk-round questions staff must answer before a vehicle leaves. The pickup date and time sit at the top and can be corrected here; Update to current date stamps them with right now, which is what you want when a customer arrives late. (Un)check all flips every tick box at once.

A short notes screen follows — Pickup notes going out, Dropoff notes coming back — for anything the questions did not cover. It is optional. Press Next again.

Checklists have a page of their own, including what makes a required question refuse to pass: Set up pickup and return checklists.

Step 2 — Damage

Only if Damage is on. Record anything already wrong: scratches, dents, chips. Damage logged here is stamped as present at pickup, which is what stops the customer being charged for it on return. Damage that first appears at the return inspection is the damage that gets charged — so anything already on the vehicle must go in here.

Step 3 — Mileage

Only if Mileage is on. Enter the odometer reading — the box arrives pre-filled, so check it against the dashboard before saving.

Step 4 — Fuel

Only if Fuel is on. Record the fuel level as a percentage. Both number steps are covered in full on Record mileage and fuel readings.

Re-running the pickup inspection wipes every fuel reading on the booking, pickup and return alike. Re-running the return inspection clears only the return reading.

Step 5 — Finish

Whichever step comes last carries the finalise buttons, so if Fuel is on you finish from the fuel screen and never see a separate finish screen. Either way you get two buttons and no fields:

Both do identical work to the booking; the only difference is the receipt. Use Finalise (no email) when the customer has said they do not want it, when you are correcting an inspection you already ran, or when the email address on file is wrong.

When you press either one, RentVisie:

• moves the booking to Picked up;
• recalculates the booking total, so charges added during the wizard are included;
• queues the pickup receipt, unless you chose no email;
• closes the wizard and returns you to the booking.

A worked example

Booking B-10432, a Volkswagen Polo, collection at 09:00. The Polo's Asset Settings have Damage, Mileage and Fuel all on, so you get the full five steps.

1. Open B-10432 → Inspection tab → Inspection.
2. On the checklist, the customer is 25 minutes late, so you press Update to current date and the pickup time becomes 09:25. You answer the six questions — lights, tyres, warning triangle, documents in the glovebox, "Any smell of smoke?" (no), "Number of keys handed over" (2).
3. Next → the damage step. There is a 4 cm scuff on the nearside rear bumper. You record it. It is now on file as damage that existed at pickup, and the customer will not be charged for it in three days' time.
4. Next → the odometer step. The dashboard reads 42 180 km. You type that in.
5. Next → the fuel step, which is also the finish screen. The tank is seven-eighths full, so you record 88. The customer wants the receipt, so you press Finalise Inspection.

The booking is now Picked up, the receipt is on its way, and the wizard closes back to the booking.

Key details

What actually blocks a handover. Exactly two things stop the wizard before it opens, and both produce a red message and nothing else:

Blacklisting works on the licence number alone — not the name, email or date of birth. A customer with no licence number recorded can therefore never match, and matching is exact, so a number typed with a stray space will not match either.

Driving-licence dates do not block the handover. The Drivers license switch under Operational settings governs what a customer record must contain — a licence number, an issuer, an issue date in the past, and an expiry date that is both in the future and later than the issue date. The inspection itself re-checks none of that, so an expired licence does not stop you handing the vehicle over. If that matters to your company, it has to be caught when the customer record is opened, not at the counter.

Signatures are deleted every time you finish. Finalising removes every signature stored against that booking, so a customer who has already signed has to sign again.

The receipt does not always arrive instantly. Receipt emails are queued, so a minute or two of delay is normal, and RentVisie retries for up to a day if mail is down.

Not every rented item is a vehicle. For a trailer or equipment the wizard stops after the damage step and flips the status straight away — no odometer or fuel screen, whatever the Asset Settings say. A vehicle with no Asset Settings at all also goes straight to the damage screen.

The return leg does three extra things: it can mark the vehicle dirty, it moves the vehicle's recorded location to the drop-off location, and it discards provisional damage records.

What to do next: collect the customer's signature on the rental agreement — after the inspection is finalised, never before, because finalising deletes signatures. When the vehicle comes back, open the same booking and run the Inspection again; the booking is now Picked up, so you get the return leg. And if the wizard is showing the wrong steps for your fleet, ask a Company admin to review Settings → Asset Settings.

Q&A

The Inspection tile is not on the booking. Where is it? It only shows on bookings that are Confirmed or Picked up. A draft booking, an unconfirmed one, a quote, a cancellation or a booking already dropped off will show the tab without the tile. Confirm the booking first.

I get "Customer is blocked." — can I override it for one booking? No. The wizard stops before it opens and there is no override. The block has to be removed from the customer's record by someone with the rights to do it.

I get "Customer on blacklist." but this is not the person we blacklisted. Check the driving-licence number on the customer record. Blacklist matching uses that number and nothing else, so a mistyped or shared licence number will flag the wrong person. Correct the number, or check whether the blacklist entry itself is wrong.

Where is the Save button? There isn't one. Each step saves when you press Next. If you close the wizard part-way, everything you entered on the current step is lost.

I only get a checklist and then the finish screen. Where are damage, mileage and fuel? They are turned off in the Asset Settings attached to that vehicle, and they start off by default. A Company admin can turn them on under Settings → Asset Settings.

The Damage switch is not on the Asset Settings screen at all. That switch only appears when the vehicle's asset type supports damage tracking. It has been disabled a level up, in the asset-type configuration.

I finalised without the email by mistake. Can I resend the receipt? Not from the wizard — running the inspection again is not the fix, because it would wipe the signatures and, on the pickup leg, the fuel readings. Documents can be resent from the booking itself.

I ran the pickup inspection twice and the fuel readings have gone. That is expected. Re-running a pickup inspection clears all fuel readings on the booking so the new pickup figures are the only ones. Re-enter them.

Does the customer sign in this wizard? Signing is a separate part of the handover, and finalising deletes any signature already captured — so collect the signature after the inspection is finished, not before.

Can I start an inspection from the main menu? No. It only opens from an individual booking's Inspection tab.