What this guide covers
Booking a vehicle in for service, handing its keys to the workshop, and getting it back — the service visit. A visit is the record of one off-road period: why the vehicle went, where it is, who has the keys, when you expect it back, and what the odometer read at each end.
It also covers the workshop directory, and the off-road report that tells you how much of the fleet's time is being lost to the workshop.
Why this exists
A vehicle used to be marked "in service" by typing it into the vehicle's Status field. That said the vehicle was off the road and nothing else — not since when, not why, not where it was, not when anyone expected it back, and not who to ring. Worse, the keys stayed recorded against whichever driver last held them, so a vehicle sitting at a workshop still looked like it was in that person's hands.
A service visit replaces that. The vehicle's status is now worked out from its open visit — nobody types it any more.
Where to find it
- Fleet → Service Visits — the list of visits, open ones first.
- Fleet → Workshops — the workshops you send vehicles to, each with its own addresses and contacts.
- A vehicle's own detail page has a Service panel showing its current visit and its whole service history.
How a visit runs
1. Book it (Draft → Placed)
The fleet manager opens a visit for the vehicle, says what it is for (service, repair, inspection, tyres, body work, licence, or other), and places it with a workshop using Place with a workshop, along with the date you expect it back.
Placing a visit does not take the vehicle off the road. The card shows a "Service booked" chip, but the vehicle stays available to drive right up to the moment the keys change hands — which is the point: a booking made a week ahead should not strand the vehicle for a week.
2. Hand it over (→ In Service)
There are two ways in, depending on whether the vehicle can be driven.
It can be driven. The driver holding the keys drives it to the workshop and taps Leave at service on the vehicle card when they arrive. They do not need to be a fleet manager to do this — the person who drove it there is the person who knows it arrived, and asking them to phone someone to press a button just means the record gets written late by someone who was not there.
It cannot be driven. It is towed or collected, and the fleet manager taps Mark in service directly.
Either way, the same three things happen at once:
- the keys pass to the workshop — whoever was holding them is released, and the vehicle now reads as Keys at , so nobody goes looking for a driver who no longer has them;
- the vehicle goes off the road and its keys cannot be taken;
- the odometer is recorded. Where the vehicle has a tracker, the reading is fetched from it automatically; otherwise you type it in, and the record says which of the two it was.
3. Ready for collection
When the workshop says the work is finished, press Ready for collection. The vehicle is still at the workshop and still off the road — this state exists so that "finished" and "fetched" are not the same event, and so a vehicle waiting to be picked up is visible rather than forgotten.
If the workshop finds more work after saying it was ready, put it back to In Service with Mark in service. One off-road period stays one record.
4. Collect it (→ Completed)
When someone fetches the vehicle, press Collect (or Complete visit). The keys are released, the vehicle comes back on the road, and the visit closes.
The closing odometer is required. It is the only reliable measure of what the vehicle did over that period, and it cannot be reconstructed afterwards. If the tracker cannot answer, enter it by hand — the record notes that it was typed rather than read.
The cost excluding VAT is optional here. It is not shown to everyone; see Who sees the cost below.
Cancelling
A visit can be cancelled with Cancel visit only while the vehicle is still with us — that is, before the keys change hands. Once the vehicle has gone to the workshop, cancelling would leave it off the road with no record of how it comes back, so complete it instead, even if the workshop did nothing.
Workshops
A workshop is kept in the shared party directory, the same one suppliers and customers use, so it can have several addresses and several contacts rather than one line of free text. Open Fleet → Workshops to add one, then use its detail page to keep its branches and the people you deal with there.
You choose the workshop — and optionally which of its addresses — when you place a visit.
What everyone else sees
Each visit has its own chat channel. Every step posts a short message naming who did it and what changed: booked with the workshop and when it is expected back, handed over with the odometer reading, reported ready, collected. Open it from the comment icon beside the visit number, and use the star to follow or mute it.
This is how the record of an off-road period gets written as it happens rather than remembered afterwards. It is also how anyone looking for the vehicle finds out where it is without asking.
If a vehicle is not back by the date you gave, the channel says so — once, the morning it becomes late, not every half hour.
The off-road report
Fleet → Reports, then the Off road button, shows what the workshop is costing you over a window:
- fleet availability and total days off road;
- per vehicle: days off road, availability, how many visits, and the last workshop that had it — worst first, because the reason to open this report is to find the vehicle that keeps going back;
- per workshop: days held, visits, and average days per visit — which is how you find out that one workshop keeps your vehicles twice as long as another for the same job.
Days are counted only within the window you asked for, so a visit that spans two months does not make either of them look worse than it was.
Who can do what
- Anyone with fleet access can see visits, and a vehicle's service history on its detail page.
- A driver holding the keys can hand that vehicle over to the workshop (Leave at service). That is the only step a driver performs.
- Booking, placing, marking ready, collecting and cancelling need fleet service, dispatch or fleet admin rights.
- The off-road report needs fleet report rights.
Who sees the cost
Money is a separate permission from the report itself. Being able to open the off-road report does not show you what the work cost — the cost columns appear only for fleet admin, whoever runs service visits, and accounting. If you cannot see them, they are not blank because nothing was spent; they are simply not yours to see.
Things worth knowing
- You no longer set a vehicle's status by hand while it has a visit. The status follows the visit. The Status field on the vehicle dialog is still there for a vehicle with no visit at all (for example, correcting an old record), and its old "In service" label now reads At workshop / off road, which is what it always meant.
- A vehicle can only have one open visit at a time. Book the next one after this one closes.
- A vehicle that has ever had a service visit — open, completed or cancelled — cannot be deleted. Visits are history and are never removed with the vehicle. If the vehicle has left the fleet, set its Status to Inactive instead; the refusal message tells you the same thing.
- Its custody history will show "At a workshop" for the period the workshop held the keys, with a link to the visit. That is a real record, not a gap.
Related
- Taking and returning vehicle keys — the normal key flow, and what changes when a workshop holds them.
- Managing vehicles — the vehicle record, including the Status field and why you rarely touch it now.
- Vehicle details: photos, documents, trips and custody history — where a vehicle's own service history and custody trail live.
- Fleet Management — the map of the whole module.