Check and correct a vehicle's odometer and fuel readings

Introduction

Every vehicle keeps a list of odometer readings of its own, separate from any rental. You find it on the vehicle record — the screen headed Edit Vehicle — on its Odometer tab, the fifth along, after Core, Asset groups, Tags and Notes. The tab is one list with two columns, Odometer and Date, a New button in the bar above the column headings, and a pencil and a bin at the end of each row.

Alongside it the app keeps one summary number per vehicle — the reading saved most recently, shown in the fleet list's Odometer column and rewritten whenever any reading is saved anywhere, including during a handover.

Fuel works differently: the vehicle record holds no tank level at all, so a level that looks wrong is corrected on the booking.

You come here when:

• a handover refuses a reading as lower than the last known value;
• the fleet list shows a mileage that is obviously wrong, or zero;
• you are booking a service and need to know how far the vehicle has run;
• every rental of one vehicle comes back with the tank recorded as full.

Words this screen uses

Readings reach a vehicle by several routes:

Use this page when you are looking at the vehicle rather than at one rental.

How to use

Configuration

The Odometer tab needs no setting up. What does is whether staff are asked for readings during a handover at all: from the main menu open Settings, click the Asset Settings tile, click Edit on the profile your vehicles use, and turn on Mileage, Fuel, or both. Both start off, and turning them on changes nothing about finished rentals. Full walkthrough: Change which fields your vehicle records show.

Before you start: reading the Odometer tab needs a counter role — Employee, Employee (minimal) or Company admin. On an Employee account you only see vehicles standing at a location you are assigned to. Adding a reading needs Employee or Company admin. Correcting or deleting a reading, and correcting a tank level on a booking, need Company admin — on any other account the pencil and the bin are not there at all. The Asset Settings tile is Company admin only.

Using the odometer readings

From the main menu, click Assets, then the Assets tile. On the Vehicles tab, double-click the vehicle's row, then click the Odometer tab.

1. Read the list. It shows every reading ever recorded for this vehicle, 20 rows to a page, in no particular order. Click the Odometer heading to sort by size or the Date heading to sort by when it was taken; each has a search box beneath it.

2. Add a reading with New, in the bar above the column headings. A small window opens with two boxes:

   Box	Starts as	What it does	What it will accept
   Odometer	1	The reading itself	Whole numbers only — no decimal point
   Date	Now	When it was taken	A date and time, picked or typed

3. Click Save. The reading is stored immediately. Pressing Cancel on the vehicle record afterwards does not take it back.

4. Correct a reading with the pencil icon at the end of its row. The same window opens with the existing numbers in it.

5. Remove a reading with the bin icon at the end of its row. It goes straight away, with no confirmation question and no undo.

Saving a reading rewrites the vehicle's summary figure. Whatever you save becomes the vehicle's last known mileage. A lower reading replaces a higher one, and a reading of zero replaces a real one, with no warning.

Deleting a reading does not rewrite it back. The summary figure stays where it was until another reading is saved, so correct a wrong reading with the pencil rather than deleting it.

The handover check looks at the highest reading, not at the summary figure. The refusal The mileage of the vehicle is lower than the last known value! You can correct the last known value under assets if needed. compares against the largest reading in this list. A reading equal to it is accepted; one kilometre below is refused.

To see the summary figure, open the fleet list's column-visibility control — the small icon at the top right of the table — and tick Odometer, which is switched off to begin with. The Fuel column beside it is the kind of fuel the vehicle takes, not a tank level.

A worked example

A van with plate 12-ABC-3 has readings of 84 210 and 84 655 on file, so the fleet list reads 84 655. At the next pickup a colleague means to type 84 900 and types 184 900. It is accepted, being higher than anything on file, and every later handover of that van is refused.

Open the van's Odometer tab, click the Odometer heading to bring the biggest reading to the top, click the pencil on the 184 900 row, change it to 84 900 and click Save. The fleet list now reads 84 900 and the next handover accepts 84 950 — or 84 900 exactly if the van has not moved, while 84 899 is still refused. Clicking the bin on that row instead would also unblock handovers, but the fleet list would go on showing 184 900.

Key details

Four things use these readings, all from the list rather than the summary figure:

A reading added on a booking's Mileage tab never reaches the vehicle. The Manual add button there creates a reading for that rental only. It counts towards the distance charged, but changes nothing on the vehicle's Odometer tab, on the fleet list, or at the next handover. Saving one needs Company admin.

The tab does not say where a reading came from. Readings from a handover, a return, typed in here and loaded in bulk all look identical. To tie one to a rental, open the booking's Mileage tab.

Deleting a reading can change what a rental charged. A rental's distance is its drop-off readings minus its pickup readings, so deleting a row that is a rental's pickup reading makes that rental's distance the whole drop-off reading the next time its price is worked out. Nothing recalculates as you delete, so it surfaces later, on an invoice.

Every fuel reading starts completely full. The Fuel level box in a handover arrives pre-filled at 100, as a percentage, so clicking past it stores a full tank. A booking RentVisie checks out by itself, an hour after an unanswered self-service link, also records 100% and copies the vehicle's most recent reading, or 1 if it has none. Those bookings carry the note Auto accepted pickup.

What to do next: check the fleet list's Odometer column shows the number you expect, then go back to the handover that was refused and save the real dashboard reading. If the reading you changed belonged to a finished rental, check that rental's total before it is invoiced.

Q&A

A handover says the mileage is lower than the last known value, and the dashboard reading is definitely right. How do I unblock it? Somebody has saved a reading higher than the truth. Open Assets and the Assets tile, double-click the vehicle, click the Odometer tab, click the Odometer heading to sort the biggest to the top, click the pencil on that row, type the real number and click Save. Then go back to the handover and save the dashboard reading.

A rental has come back with an enormous mileage charge. What happened? Its pickup reading has most likely been removed, so the whole drop-off reading counts as distance driven. Open the booking, click the Mileage tab and check there is a reading for the pickup as well as the return. If one is missing, a Company admin can put it back with Manual add on that tab.

The fleet list shows zero for a vehicle that has clearly been driven. Either it has no readings yet, or somebody saved a reading of zero — the Odometer tab accepts zero without complaint, and the fleet list simply shows the most recently saved reading. Open the Odometer tab, sort by Date with the newest first, and correct the zero row with the pencil. A zero does not block handovers, because those compare against the highest reading instead.

Every rental of one vehicle records the tank as 100% full. Is the gauge being read? Probably not — the box starts full, so clicking past the fuel step stores 100%. Ask counter staff to set it to what the gauge shows: three quarters is 75, half is 50. If those bookings also carry the note Auto accepted pickup, nobody was at the counter at all; see Take a vehicle back at the end of a rental.

How do I correct a tank level that was recorded wrongly? On the booking, never on the vehicle. Open it, click the Fuel tab and find the list headed Fuel from inspection period, with Refueling period, Date and Fuel level. Click the pencil at the end of the row, change Fuel level to a whole number between 0 and 100 and click Save — Date and Refueling period cannot be changed. No data : please perform an inspection first. means no reading was ever taken for that rental, so there is nothing to correct. You need a Company admin account.

Where is the fuel level on the vehicle record? There isn't one, and there is no list of past levels either. Fuel on the record is the kind of fuel the vehicle takes and Tank size on the Specs tab is how much it holds. Levels only exist against a rental.

Why can't I see the pencil and the bin on the Odometer tab? They are shown to Company admin accounts only. On an Employee account you can add a reading with New but not change or remove one. Ask a colleague with a Company admin account — adding a fresh, correct reading does not remove a wrong one, so a mistakenly high reading would still block handovers.

A brand-new vehicle shows zero, and the first handover will not accept a reading. A vehicle with no readings starts at zero, and the odometer step refuses zero or less with Mileage should be positive. Type the real dashboard reading; 1 is the smallest it takes. There is nothing to fix on the vehicle record first.

Can I record that the odometer has been replaced and reset to zero? Not in a way the app will honour. Readings are only ever compared upwards, so a genuine reset leaves every later handover refused against the old high reading. The only way through is for a Company admin to correct that old reading on the Odometer tab to something below the new one, which loses the true history. Agree with your administrator how to record the change first.

There is a reading dated on a day nobody rented the vehicle. Where did it come from? Most likely it was typed in here by hand, or loaded in bulk when the fleet was first set up. Check the vehicle's Bookings list before assuming a reading is stray, and do not delete it just because no rental is obvious.

A vehicle is missing from the fleet list altogether, so I cannot reach its readings. On an Employee account you only see vehicles standing at a location you are assigned to, and a vehicle with no location at all is invisible to you. See Check where a vehicle is and whether it is clean; a Company admin can put the location back.

What does Max allowed mileage in active cycle do? It sits on the Specs tab and starts at 500 000. Nothing on the vehicle record, the fleet list or the planning board acts on it — you get no warning and nothing is blocked when a vehicle passes it — so treat it as a note for your own reference. If your company relies on it, ask your administrator what they use it for.

Related pages:

• Record mileage and fuel readings — taking the readings during a handover or return, and adding a fuel charge to a rental.
• Take a vehicle back at the end of a rental — the return, and what an unanswered self-service link records on its own.
• Change which fields your vehicle records show — the Mileage and Fuel switches that put the two steps into a handover.
• Add a vehicle to your fleet — the rest of the vehicle record.
• Check where a vehicle is and whether it is clean — why a vehicle can be missing from the fleet list.