Introduction
Operational settings is one screen with the company-wide rules for your daily work. It sets the times a new booking starts with, how a vehicle is picked for a booking, how your fleet is spread over your locations, how old a customer must be, and which customer details count as required. Everyone in your company works with these rules, but only a company administrator can change them.
The screen is headed Operational settings, with a Back link above the heading. Below it is a row of eleven tabs: General, Lease, Customer portal, Payments, Customer validation, Default booking times, Documents, Self service, Web, Email and Payment Request. One Save button sits at the bottom right and saves every tab at once. Most settings are a pair of Yes / No buttons.
You come here when:
- New bookings keep opening at 08:00 while your counter opens at 09:00.
- Your company has decided to stop picking cars at random and wants the car that came back most recently to go out first.
- You are opening a second location and need to decide whether its vehicles belong to it alone.
- You are checking, before a busy season, what the app will do on its own.
Terms used on this screen
| The screen says | It means |
|---|---|
| Asset | A vehicle |
| Asset group | A vehicle class, such as "compact car" or "van 12 m3" |
| Fleet | All your vehicles, and which location or branch each one belongs to |
| Iframe | The booking widget on your own website |
| Shortlease | A hire of 30 days or more, which runs on its own contract |
Many settings on this screen already have their own page in this manual. This page gives the overview tab by tab and sends you to that page for the details.
How to use
Configuration
From the main menu, open Admin, then Settings. On the tile page, click the Operational tile. The screen headed Operational settings opens on the General tab.
- Click a tab and change what you need.
- Click Save, bottom right. It saves the changes on all tabs and closes the screen. If you leave with Back instead, your changes are not saved.
Each change applies from the moment you save. Bookings, customers and vehicles already in the system are not recalculated.
The General tab holds the settings below. Skim the table once; you will come back to particular rows as they come up:
| Setting | Starts as | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Hybrid fleet | Yes | Online bookings only. When a customer picks a location on your website, a class shows as available only if a free vehicle is standing at that location, not just somewhere in your fleet. See Your fleet model below |
| Fixed fleet group | No | Each vehicle class belongs to one location. See Your fleet model below |
| Fixed fleet asset | No | A class is offered at a location where one of its vehicles is standing. See Your fleet model below |
| Vehicles return dirty | No | Yes marks every returned vehicle as dirty. See Check where a vehicle is and whether it is clean |
| Existing customer validation | Yes | Refuses a new customer who matches a customer you already have. The two boxes below it decide what counts as a match. See Create a customer record |
| Validation type (Individual) | Shown only while Existing customer validation is Yes. What makes a new private customer a duplicate: the same Email or the same Social number | |
| Existing customer validation type business | Shown only while Existing customer validation is Yes. What makes a new business customer a duplicate: the same Chamber of Commerce number, the same VATNumber or the same Email | |
| Always allow change of contract dates | No | Only for date changes that come in from your website or another connected system, never for changes made in the app. No: such a change is accepted only if it makes the rental longer, if the booking is less than an hour old, or if pickup is less than 24 hours away. Yes: always accepted |
| Always allow switch to inactive asset | Yes | What happens when you switch off a vehicle that still has bookings. See Add a vehicle to your fleet |
| Block pickup when the vehicle is still out | No | Yes stops a pickup in the app while the same vehicle is still picked up on another booking. See Blocking a pickup below |
| Show name fields at company | No | Shows First name and Last name on business customers too. See Create a customer record |
| Use task queue | Yes | Yes sends invoice and credit note emails in the background, so you can carry on working. Leave it on unless RentVisie support tells you otherwise |
| Auto assign assets | Random | How a vehicle is picked for a new booking: Random, LastBooked or None. See Create a booking |
| Default booking type | Regular | Shortlease makes Bookings → New open with Shortlease? on Yes and a drop-off date 90 days ahead, at 08:00 |
| Use new booking screen | Yes for companies created after the new screen arrived, No for older ones | Yes opens every booking on the Booking details screen; No keeps the classic booking screen. See Find your way around the Booking details screen |
| Use new invoice screen | No | Yes opens invoices on the new invoice screen. See Use the new invoice screen |
| Outstanding amount type | Booking outstanding | Which customer balance the booking screens show beside the customer: Booking outstanding, Invoice outstanding, or both with Booking and invoice outstanding. See Check what a customer owes and take a payment |
| Auto assign asset on request in Iframe | No | For classes set to On request (web)?: Yes also puts a vehicle on those online bookings, using the Auto assign assets method. No leaves them without one. See Set up your vehicle classes |
| Default booking status | Draft | The status a new booking gets when you create it from Bookings → New or on the Scheduler |
| Young driver age | 0 | Customers at or below this age pay the young driver surcharge; 0 means nobody does. See Set up a damage fee, young driver surcharge or other special add-on |
| No smoking penalty | 0 | An amount your website can show to customers. The app itself never charges it |
| Default Country | Netherlands (filled in by the app the first time it needs a country, if the box is still empty) | Fills the dial code, nationality and address country of new customers. See Create a customer record |
The other ten tabs, and the page that explains each one:
| Tab | What it holds | Where it is explained |
|---|---|---|
| Lease | How long-term rentals are invoiced, including the day of the month a lease is billed (see Lease billing day below) | Set how a lease is billed |
| Customer portal | The address of your customer portal. The tab says Please contact RentVisie for assistance with the setup. | Set up the customer portal and help customers use it |
| Payments | At the top: how much a customer is asked to pay when paying from your website (see below). Under Payment advanced: Advanced payment configuration and its Setup button | Ask for an advance or full payment in the confirmation email |
| Customer validation | Which customer details are required, min age, and which boxes customers see | See below, and Set up the customer portal and help customers use it |
| Default booking times | The times and length a new booking starts with | See below |
| Documents | What prints on contracts and invoices, including Show own risk as 100% of damage (starts on No) | Change what prints on your contracts and invoices |
| Self service | Self service manual inspection control | Help a customer whose self-service return is refused |
| Web | web canonical path prefix, used in your website addresses | Write the website text and photos for a vehicle class |
| Manual invoice email and Manual booking confirm email: hold these emails back until you send them yourself | Invoice a booking, Confirm a booking | |
| Payment Request | Expiration period (Days), 10 to start with | Send a customer a payment request |
Customer validation tab. The tab has two columns of Yes / No switches.
- The left column (Name, Email, Phone, Birth data, Address, Company name, Chamber of commerce, Tax number, IBAN, BIC, Drivers license) decides which details a customer record must have before it counts as complete. The check applies to customers who fill in their own details, in the customer portal or through your website. It does not stop staff saving a customer in the app.
- min age, at the bottom of the left column, starts at 18. It is the youngest a customer may be, and it is checked on the customer form in the app as well. Set it to 0 to switch the age check off. It is a different number from Young driver age, which only decides who pays the surcharge.
- Auto update KYC starts at No. KYC stands for "know your customer", the identity check described in Screen a customer before renting. Yes marks a customer as verified automatically when an identity-document scan for them comes back valid, which turns their Know your customer button green.
- The right column, under Whether to show the fields in the inspection app and customer portal., decides which boxes customers are shown. See Set up the customer portal and help customers use it.
Blocking a pickup. With Block pickup when the vehicle is still out on Yes, the app checks, when you start a pickup in the app, whether the same vehicle is still picked up on another booking. Only a booking with the status picked up counts; a booking where the customer has reported the vehicle returned but nobody has checked it in yet does not block. What happens depends on who you are:
| You are | What you see |
|---|---|
| A company administrator | A warning, The vehicle is still out on booking … You are an admin, so this pick-up goes ahead; check the odometer reading., and the pickup goes on |
| Anyone else | An error, The vehicle is still out on booking … Drop off that booking before starting this pickup., and the pickup does not start |
Return the other booking first, see Take a vehicle back at the end of a rental, then start the pickup again. With the setting on No, nothing is checked. See also Run the pickup inspection.
Lease billing day. On the Lease tab, Lease billing day from start date starts at No. With No, every lease is billed on Lease billing day (starts at 1, the first of the month). Switch it to Yes and that box is replaced by Days before start date (starts at 10): each lease is then billed on the day of the month that falls that many days before its own start date, never later than the 28th. The tab shows the example lease starts on the 20th and this is 10 → billed on the 10th of every month. A lease starting on 5 March with 10 days is billed on the 23rd. Billing terms set on the customer take priority over both; see Set how a lease is billed.
Before you start: the Settings menu, its tiles and this screen are for the Company admin role only. Staff without that role still work under every rule set here; they just cannot see or change it. If a setting looks wrong, ask your company administrator. The settings belong to your own company; no other company on the system sees them.
Using the settings in daily work
You do not open this screen to use these settings; you see them at work elsewhere. Open Bookings, then New, from the main menu to see the default booking times and the fleet model below in action.
Default booking times. On the Default booking times tab, Custom defaults starts at No. With No, a new booking opens with pickup today at 08:00 and drop-off tomorrow at 07:00. Switch it to Yes and the app uses your own values instead:
| Field | Starts as | What it accepts |
|---|---|---|
| Default booking start hours | 8 | A whole hour on the 24-hour clock, such as 9 for 09:00 |
| Default booking start minutes | 0 | Whole minutes, such as 30 for half past |
| Default booking end hours | 7 | A whole hour on the 24-hour clock, such as 17 for 17:00 |
| Default booking end minutes | 0 | Whole minutes, such as 30 for half past |
| Default amount of days | 1 | Whole days |
When the end time is later in the day than the start time, the drop-off falls on day number Default amount of days, counting the pickup day as day 1. When the end time is earlier than the start time, one more day is added, because the rental runs overnight.
Example. Your counter opens at 09:00 and most rentals are three days. You set Custom defaults to Yes, start 9 and 0, end 17 and 0, and 3 days. At 07:30 on Tuesday 6 October you open Bookings → New: pickup shows Tuesday 09:00 and drop-off Thursday 8 October 17:00. Open it again at 11:15 and pickup shows 11:15, because a start time already in the past is replaced by the current time; drop-off stays Thursday 17:00. Change the end to 8 and the end time is now earlier than the start: drop-off becomes Friday 9 October 08:00.
You see these values in three places. Bookings → New and the shortlease screen open with them. Moving the pickup date to on or after the drop-off date resets the drop-off with them. A new booking dragged on the Scheduler snaps to them. Your website booking widget does not use them.
Your fleet model. Three switches on the General tab decide which vehicle classes Bookings → New offers for a pickup and drop-off location:
| Fixed fleet group | Fixed fleet asset | A class is offered when |
|---|---|---|
| No | No | The class belongs to the same branch as both locations. This is the usual set-up |
| Yes | Either | The class's own Location (on the class's settings) is both the pickup and the drop-off location |
| No | Yes | The class has a vehicle standing at the pickup location and one at the drop-off location |
For Fixed fleet group, each class needs its Location filled in. See Set up your vehicle classes. How this looks when you search is described in Search for an available vehicle. Hybrid fleet does not change which classes the app offers. It only changes the count your website shows. With Yes, a website search for a location needs a free vehicle standing at that location and a free vehicle in the class as a whole.
What your website asks a customer to pay. At the top of the Payments tab, Payment base picks what the amount is worked out from: Rent, Deposit or RentAndDeposit. Percentage (0 to 100, starts at 100) and Amount (starts at 0) are the two ways of working it out, and Payment terms calculation picks Percentage, Amount, the Highest of the two or the Lowest. A percentage or amount of 0 means the whole base. Example: rent €480 including value-added tax (VAT), nothing paid yet, Payment base Rent, Percentage 25 and Amount €150. Percentage asks €120, Amount €150, Highest €150 and Lowest €120. Once the customer has paid anything, the next payment asks for everything still owed, rent and deposit together.
Key details
Renaming the two booking dates. The names your website booking widget gives its two date fields, such as "Pickup" and "Dropoff" instead of "Start date" and "End date", are not on this screen. Open Admin, then Settings, click the Asset Settings tile and open the Dates Settings tab. The names only reach widgets created after you change them. See Set up the booking widget on your website.
Switching to the new booking or invoice screen. Use new booking screen and Use new invoice screen change only which screen opens; the bookings and invoices themselves stay the same. Every way of opening a booking follows the setting, from the booking list to the Scheduler. You can switch back to No at any time.
What to do next: if you changed Custom defaults, Auto assign assets or Default booking status, open Bookings → New and check a new booking starts the way you expect. Then go through the pages in the table above for any tab you are setting up for the first time.
Q&A
Why did a vehicle class disappear from the search after we changed the fleet settings? With Fixed fleet group on Yes, a class is only offered at the location filled in on its own settings, and a class with no Location is never offered. Open Admin → Product design, click the Asset groups tile, open the class and fill in Location. See Set up your vehicle classes.
Why does a new booking still start at 08:00 after I changed the default hours? The hours are used only while Custom defaults is on Yes. Switch it on, on the same tab, and click Save.
Why is the pickup time now, and not our default start time? The default start time for today has already passed. The app never starts a new booking in the past, so it uses the current time. Change Pickup by hand if the customer is coming later.
Why was a customer's date change from the website refused, when we can change the same booking in the app? Always allow change of contract dates is on No. Changes from outside the app are then only accepted in the cases listed in the General table. Change the dates in the app yourself, see Change a booking's dates, or ask your administrator to switch the setting to Yes.
Why was a 21-year-old customer accepted when our Young driver age is 24? Young driver age never refuses anyone; it only decides who pays the young driver surcharge. The age below which a customer is refused is min age on the Customer validation tab.
Why is a customer whose record is missing an IBAN still saved? The left column on Customer validation does not stop staff saving a customer in the app. It only decides when a record counts as complete for customers who fill in their own details. See Create a customer record for what the customer form checks.
Why does a pickup stop with "The vehicle is still out on booking …"? Block pickup when the vehicle is still out is on Yes, and the vehicle is still picked up on the booking named in the message. Check that booking in and start the pickup again; see Take a vehicle back at the end of a rental. A company administrator gets a warning instead and can go ahead.
Why did a customer with a new email address still count as an existing customer? For business customers the check may be set to Chamber of Commerce or VATNumber instead of Email, and for private customers to Social number. Check Validation type (Individual) and Existing customer validation type business on the General tab.
Why does a colleague see the classic booking screen, while the manual shows Booking details? Use new booking screen is on No for your company. Both screens work; see Find your way around the Booking details screen for where each button moved.
Why can I not find the Operational tile? The Settings menu and its tiles are for the Company admin role only. Ask your administrator.
Related pages: Create a booking for how Auto assign assets picks a vehicle, Search for an available vehicle for how the fleet model shows up at the desk, and the financial settings page for payment terms, credit limits and invoice numbers.