Introduction
A transport is one trip of one vehicle from A to B that is not a rental. Examples: taking a van to the branch where the customer will collect it, bringing it home after the customer returned it somewhere else, or simply moving it between two of your branches. Each transport has a time window, a start and end point, an optional driver, and the odometer and fuel readings at both ends.
You work with transports on the screen headed Transport: a New button above a table of every transport your company has, one row per trip, with three icons at the end of each row. Opening a row gives a screen with the same heading, Transport, split into three blocks: the vehicle, booking and dates on the left; status, driver, addresses and a yellow Location helper box on the right; and the four readings underneath.
You come here when:
- a customer will collect a car at a branch where it is not parked today;
- a customer returned a van at another branch and it has to go back to its home branch;
- the fleet needs rebalancing — three cars from Utrecht to Amersfoort before the weekend;
- the driver is back and you need to record the trip and where the vehicle now is;
- you are just checking which trips are planned today and which are still open.
Words this screen uses. Skim this table once; you will come back to rows as they come up:
| The screen says | It means |
|---|---|
| Asset | The vehicle, picked by its registration |
| Location | One of your own branches or depots |
| Kenteken | Registration (a Dutch column heading in the table) |
| Van / Naar | From / To address (table columns) |
| Vanaf / Tot | Start / end of the time window (table columns) |
| KM Start / KM Eind, Brandstof start / Brandstof eind | Odometer and fuel at the start and end (hidden columns) |
| Transport planner | The list of bookings that still need a transport — see Plan transports for bookings |
Every way a transport is created
| Route | What you get | Covered on |
|---|---|---|
| New on the Transport list | An empty transport; you fill in everything | This page |
| Dragging across empty space on the Scheduler board, then Transport | A transport on that vehicle for the dragged dates, starting from where the vehicle is now, readings filled in | This page and Reschedule bookings on the Scheduler |
| Schedule on the Transport planner | A delivery before pickup or a collection after drop-off, linked to the booking | Plan transports for bookings |
Whichever way it was made, you finish every transport on the screen described here.
How to use
Configuration
There is nothing to switch on. Two things live elsewhere:
- Drivers. The Driver box only offers people already on the driver list — see Add drivers and assign them to transports.
- Branch addresses. The Location helper copies a branch's address into the trip. A branch with no address on record fills in nothing — ask your administrator to add it.
Before you start: opening a transport — to create, edit or complete it on its own screen — needs an administrator account (one made with New admin). With an ordinary employee account you can see the Transport list and use its row icons to complete or delete a trip, but the New button, the pencil icon and the Transport planner tile are not shown to you. The Location helper only lists the branches on your own profile. See Add an employee and set their permissions.
Using the Transport screen
From the main menu, open Bookings, then Show more. Scroll to the section headed Transport and click the Transport tile. The Transports tile on your daily overview (Operational) opens the same list.
- Find or start the trip. Each column has a filter under its heading. Click New to start a trip, or the pencil icon at the end of a row to open one.
- Left block — what and when. Pick the vehicle under Asset (by registration). Pick a Booking number only if the trip is for a rental. Set From and To to the start and end of the time window.
- Right block — who and where. Leave Transport status on Pending. Pick a Driver. Then, in the yellow Location helper, pick From location and To location. Each choice fills the From and To address boxes above it with that branch's address. You now see From and To twice on the screen: the ones on the left are times, the ones on the right are addresses.
- Delivering to a street address. Type the customer's address into the right-hand To box, but still pick a To location — see Key details.
- Readings. Below the blocks sit Mileage start, Mileage end, Fuel start and Fuel end. Whole numbers only; fuel is a percentage, so a full tank is 100.
- Save. Save stores the trip and closes the screen. Close and Back leave without saving.
- Complete the trip. When the driver is back, open it, fill in Mileage end and Fuel end from the dashboard, and click Mark as completed (green, bottom right). From the list, the double-arrow icon on the row does the same without opening it.
When it worked, Transport status reads Completed, every box on the screen is locked, and the row loses its double-arrow and trash icons.
Key details
What completing does. In one go, the app:
- sets the vehicle's location to the To location (see Check where a vehicle is and whether it is clean);
- adds an odometer reading of Mileage end and a fuel reading of Fuel end, both dated at the trip's To time (see Check and correct a vehicle's odometer and fuel readings).
It does not check that the end mileage is higher than the start, and it cannot be undone on screen.
Worked example. Booking 10482 collects van VX-123-B at Amersfoort at 09:00 on 14 October, but the van is parked in Utrecht. The planner creates a delivery before pickup: Utrecht to Amersfoort, 07:00 to 09:00, with Mileage start and Mileage end both 48,210 (the van's highest reading) and fuel 100 at both ends. The driver arrives after 23 km with the tank at 95%. You enter Mileage end 48,233 and Fuel end 95 and click Mark as completed: the van now shows Amersfoort, and its reading lists gain 48,233 km and 95% at 09:00 on 14 October.
The three kinds of trip.
| Kind | From → To | Time window |
|---|---|---|
| Delivery before pickup | Where the vehicle is now → the booking's pickup branch | Two hours before pickup, until pickup |
| Collection after drop-off | The booking's return branch → the vehicle's current branch | Drop-off, until two hours after |
| Move between branches | Any branch → any branch | Whatever you set |
The first two come only from the Transport planner; a trip you make with New or on the board is always a plain move. Planner and board trips arrive with readings copied from the vehicle's highest odometer reading and a 100% tank, so overwrite the end values with what the driver actually saw.
Every trip made in the app is a Location trip. The Transport type column reads Location for every trip made in the app; Address only appears on trips sent in from an outside system.
Transports block the vehicle. While a trip's window overlaps a rental's dates, the vehicle counts as unavailable in Search for an available vehicle. On the Scheduler board, completed trips turn grey. Clicking a trip on the board opens this screen — in a new browser tab if Open booking in new tab is on.
What to do next: plan trips for this week's bookings on the Transport planner first, then give each open trip a driver (drivers); complete trips as drivers report back.
Q&A
I completed a transport and the vehicle's mileage now looks wrong — pickups are refused for a reading "too low". Completing adds Mileage end as a new odometer reading, and the app treats the highest reading as the truth. A typo such as 482330 instead of 48,233 becomes the vehicle's mileage. Correct or delete that reading on the vehicle — see Check and correct a vehicle's odometer and fuel readings.
I clicked Mark as completed and got "Location / address missing." No To location is picked. Pick one in the Location helper and try again. Typing an address into the To box is not enough on its own.
The trip shows Completed, but the vehicle never moved and no readings were added. Someone set Transport status to Completed with the dropdown and clicked Save. That only changes the label. Set it back to Pending, save, reopen and use Mark as completed.
How do I undo a completed transport? You cannot reopen it; every box is locked. The vehicle's location and the two readings stay as they are even if you delete the trip. Change the location on the vehicle and remove the readings there (location, readings).
I see two Delete links at the top of an open trip. Both delete the trip at once, without asking. On a completed trip one is left, and it still works. The trash icon in the list only appears on trips that are not completed.
The customer wants the van delivered to their home — where do I record that it goes on a trailer? Nowhere. The screen has no field for the address as a destination of its own, for driven versus trailer, or for notes. Type the street address in the right-hand To box, pick the nearest branch as To location, and tell the driver the rest. Completing will place the vehicle at that branch.
My transport does not appear on the Scheduler board. The board only shows trips whose start and end branches are both on your profile. A trip made on the board has no To location until you pick one. Pick it, or ask your administrator to add the branch to your profile.
The Van and Naar columns are empty for trips made by the planner. The planner fills in the branches but not the address text. Open the trip and pick From location and To location again in the Location helper.
I clicked Transport on the Scheduler board and got an access message. Opening a trip needs an administrator account. The trip may already be created: find it on the Transport list by registration and remove it with the trash icon.
The daily overview tile says 2, but the list shows dozens. The tile counts today's trips; the list shows all of them. Use the Vanaf filter to pick today's date. The tile can be switched off — see Change which tiles your dashboard shows.
Related pages: Plan transports for bookings to find bookings whose vehicle is at the wrong branch; Add drivers and assign them to transports for the driver list; Reschedule bookings on the Scheduler for creating trips by dragging.