Check how much your fleet is being used

Introduction

Utilisation answers one question: out of the days you could have rented a vehicle out, how many did you actually rent it out? The app works this out for you on two screens — one headed Utilisation asset, which gives you a line per vehicle, and one headed Utilisation group, which gives you a line per vehicle class. Both are laid out the same way: two date boxes at the top for the period you want, a button that works the figures out, and a table of results underneath.

Neither screen shows you anything when you first open it. The table is empty until you press the button, and it fills in from scratch every time you press it again.

You will use it when:

• you are deciding which vehicles to sell, keep or replace at the end of a season
• a vehicle class is always fully booked and you want the numbers before buying another
• someone asks why a particular van has been sitting on the yard
• you are pricing a class and want to know how hard it is actually working
• you need the figures in a spreadsheet for a meeting

Words these screens use

The two screens

Use Utilisation asset when the answer is about a specific vehicle, and Utilisation group when the answer is about what to buy or retire.

Steps

Before you start: both screens need administrator rights. If you can open the screen but the button that works the figures out is not there, that is what is missing — ask whoever supports your account. These figures are also only as complete as your vehicle records: see the first two points under Tips and common issues for the two reasons a vehicle you expected can be absent from the table.

From the main menu, open Dashboards, then click Utilisation asset for the per-vehicle table or Utilisation group for the per-class table.

1. Set the period. Fill in From and To at the top. They arrive already set to the current week, so if you want a month, a quarter or a year you have to change both — a very short period is the usual reason the figures look far too low.

2. Press the button that fills the table. It is called Generate on Utilisation asset and Populate on Utilisation group. The same button is how you refresh: it clears the previous results and works them out again from the dates currently in the boxes.

3. Read the table. The columns differ slightly between the two screens:

   Utilisation asset	Utilisation group
   Registration number	Name
   Asset group, Asset group code	Code
   —	Number of assets
   Booked days in period	Booked days in period
   Total bookable days	Bookable days
   Utilisation	Utilisation

4. Sort or filter to find what you need. Every column has a filter box, and the number columns filter on a value — so you can ask for every vehicle whose utilisation is below a figure you choose, rather than reading the whole list.

5. Take it away as a spreadsheet. Tick the rows you want using the checkboxes down the left, then click Export selected to Excel. Nothing is exported until rows are ticked; there is a select-all control at the top of the checkbox column if you want the lot.

6. Close the screen with Back when you are done.

Utilisation is shown as a decimal, not a percentage. A vehicle rented for 11 days out of 30 shows as 0.37, not 37%. The two day columns sit right beside it, so you can always check the figure yourself.

A worked example. Take a van, on the fleet all year, and a period of 1–30 September — so Total bookable days is 30. During September it had:

Booked days in period is 11, and Utilisation is 11 divided by 30 = 0.37.

Only four booking statuses count as a real rental: Confirmed, PickedUp, DroppedOff and DroppedOffNotification. A booking sitting at Quote, Draft, Unconfirmed, Cancelled, TimedOut or NoShow adds nothing, which is why a busy-looking calendar can still produce a low figure.

Bookings are trimmed to your period. A rental running 28 September to 4 October counts only the days up to your To date, not the whole booking.

Nothing you do here changes a booking, a price or a vehicle. These two screens only read and count — with one exception, Populate active dates, which is covered below and does change vehicle records.

What to do next. Start on Utilisation group to see which classes are working hardest, then switch to Utilisation asset and filter that class to find the individual vehicles dragging the average down. If a vehicle you expected is missing from the list, deal with that first — the figures for its class are wrong until it is included.

Tips and common issues

• A vehicle is missing from the table entirely, and no message says so. A vehicle is only counted when both its active-from and active-to dates are filled in on its record. If either is blank it is skipped silently, and its class's figures on Utilisation group are understated too. Fix the dates on the vehicle's own record, or use Populate active dates — read the next bullet first.

• Populate active dates changes every vehicle in the company, not the ones you selected. This button on Utilisation asset opens a small window asking for an Active from and an Active to, both pre-filled with today's date and time. When you press Save it goes through every vehicle in your company that is missing either date and fills it in. Two things to know before you use it: it ignores whatever rows you have ticked, and where a vehicle is missing only its start date, its existing end date is replaced with the one you typed rather than left alone. Set the dates deliberately, and if only one or two vehicles are wrong, correct them on their own records instead.

• You press Save in that window and nothing happens at all. Both Active from and Active to have to be filled in. If either is empty the window stays open with no error message and no change. Put a date in both boxes and press Save again.

• Borrowed vehicles never appear, however you set the dates. Vehicles whose ownership is recorded as borrowed, or as other, are left out of both screens by design. If your fleet includes vehicles on loan, they are not in these figures and cannot be added to them.

• Utilisation comes out above 1.00. This is possible and does not mean the table is broken. Rentals are counted against the period in the date boxes rather than against the vehicle's own active window, so a booking from before a vehicle joined the fleet still adds booked days while adding no bookable ones. Two overlapping bookings on the same vehicle do the same. Narrow the period to the months you actually owned the vehicle and the figure settles.

• A vehicle class shows zeros and a Number of assets of 0. Utilisation group lists every class you have, including ones with no qualifying vehicles behind them. It is an empty class, not a class with terrible figures.

• The table only shows 100 rows at a time. With a fleet larger than that, use the paging control underneath the table, or filter the list down before reading it — scrolling alone will not show you the rest.

• Your results disappear when you leave the screen. Nothing here is saved. Come back and the table is empty again, with the dates reset to the current week, and you press the button to rebuild it. Export to Excel anything you need to keep or send on.

• The figures do not update on their own. There is no automatic refresh. If someone confirms a booking while you have the table open, press Generate or Populate again to see it.

• These screens will not tell you what a vehicle earned. There is no revenue column on either one. For money, go back to Dashboards and use Revenue / Asset / Month, Revenue / Group / Month or Asset revenue instead.

Related pages: Reschedule bookings on the Scheduler for the calendar the bookings behind these figures come from, and Check your daily overview for the day-to-day counters.