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Fleet user guide

Updated

Overview

Fleet is your vehicle and driver management hub. Track every vehicle, driver, GPS location, maintenance record, fuel receipt, trip, and inspection. Fleet catches overdue maintenance before it causes breakdowns, flags safety incidents from telematics, reimburses employees for personal vehicle mileage, and gives dispatch teams a live command-center view of the road.

Fleet works with GPS dongles (Freematics and generic), fuel cards (WEX), and fleet-tracking services (Samsara) — or you can log everything manually. It connects to NHTSA to check for vehicle recalls and to IFTA for quarterly fuel-tax reporting.

Key Features

  • Vehicle records — VIN, make, model, year, license plate, mileage, insurance, registration, assigned driver, custom fields
  • Driver records — license info with expiration alerts, certifications, hire date, assigned vehicle, emergency contact
  • Maintenance — service records, interval schedules (miles or days), work orders with parts and labor
  • Fuel tracking — log fuel entries, compute MPG, cost per mile, emissions reports
  • Trip logs — origin/destination/distance/purpose by driver
  • Inspections — pre-trip, post-trip, DOT annual; reusable checklists
  • Incidents — accident/incident reports with severity and cost
  • Compliance — insurance, registration, license expiration tracking with alerts
  • Dispatch board — assign vehicles + drivers, optimize routes, track ETAs
  • GPS tracking — real-time positions, history, live map
  • Geofences — draw zones, get alerts when vehicles enter or exit, auto-generate visit logs
  • Safety events — harsh braking, rapid acceleration, speeding; driver scorecards + leaderboard
  • Recalls — NHTSA safety recalls read by make, model and year; refreshed for the whole fleet weekly
  • IFTA reporting — quarterly fuel tax report ready to file
  • HOS (Hours of Service) — monitor compliance for commercial drivers
  • Mileage reimbursement — employees log personal vehicle miles; approve and pay
  • Fleet Advisor — daily AI briefing with anomalies, risks, and recommendations
  • Reports — utilization, maintenance cost, fuel efficiency, cost per vehicle, driver activity, compliance calendar

How To: Add a Vehicle

  1. Go to Fleet > Vehicles
  2. Click Add Vehicle
  3. Enter VIN, make, model, year, license plate — make, model and year are what the NHTSA recall check reads
  4. Pick vehicle type, fuel type, ownership (owned / leased / financed)
  5. Enter current mileage
  6. (Optional) assign a driver, insurance policy, registration expiration
  7. Click Save — a vehicle number (VEH-XXXXXX) is generated automatically

How To: Add a Driver

  1. Go to Fleet > Drivers
  2. Click Add Driver
  3. Enter name, email, phone, license number, class, state, expiration date
  4. Set hire date
  5. Add certifications (CDL endorsements, medical card, etc.)
  6. Assign a primary vehicle if applicable
  7. Click Save

How To: Schedule Maintenance

  1. Go to Fleet > Maintenance > Schedules
  2. Click New Schedule
  3. Pick a name ("Oil Change"), interval (every 5,000 miles or 90 days), vehicle group
  4. Click Save — Fleet will show Due and Overdue status automatically
  5. When service is performed, go to Maintenance > New Record, pick vehicle + type, add cost, parts, technician, and mark complete
  6. The next due date recalculates automatically

How To: Create a Work Order

  1. Go to Fleet > Work Orders
  2. Click New Work Order
  3. Pick vehicle, priority, maintenance type, description
  4. Assign to a technician or vendor
  5. Add estimated hours, estimated cost, parts list
  6. Click Save — work order number (WO-XXXXXX) is generated
  7. As work progresses, update status (Scheduled > In Progress > Completed)

How To: Log a Fuel Entry

  1. Go to Fleet > Fuel
  2. Click New Fuel Entry
  3. Pick vehicle, enter gallons, cost per gallon (total auto-calculates)
  4. Enter odometer reading
  5. Add vendor and notes
  6. Click Save — MPG recalculates in real-time on the vehicle record

How To: Run an Inspection

  1. Go to Fleet > Inspections
  2. Click New Inspection
  3. Pick vehicle, inspector, inspection type (pre-trip, post-trip, DOT annual)
  4. Pick a template or check items one by one
  5. Mark each item pass/fail, add photos and notes for failures
  6. Click Complete
  7. Failed items can be converted into work orders in one click

How To: Set Up a Geofence

  1. Go to Fleet > Geofences
  2. Click New Geofence
  3. Enter name, draw a radius on the map or enter an address + radius
  4. Pick the vehicles it applies to
  5. Click Save — visit logs will appear automatically when vehicles enter or exit
  6. View visits under Fleet > Visit Logs

How To: Dispatch a Vehicle

  1. Go to Fleet > Dispatch
  2. Click New Dispatch
  3. Pick vehicle, driver, origin, destination, departure time
  4. (Optional) click Optimize Route for a best-route suggestion
  5. Click Save
  6. The dispatch shows on the dispatch board; ETA tracks in real-time once the vehicle is moving

How To: Track GPS in Real Time

  1. Go to Fleet > GPS
  2. See every vehicle's latest position on the map
  3. Click a vehicle to see its history for today
  4. Use the date picker to see history for past days
  5. Red markers = idle, blue = moving, gray = offline

How To: Submit Mileage Reimbursement (Employee)

  1. Open Fleet > Mileage
  2. Go to My Vehicles and add your personal vehicle if not listed
  3. Click New Trip, enter date, origin, destination, purpose, miles
  4. When ready to submit, go to Requests > New Request, pick the trips you want included
  5. Click Submit — your manager reviews and approves
  6. Once approved, you'll see Paid status after payroll runs

How To: Approve Mileage Requests

  1. Go to Fleet > Mileage > Requests
  2. Open any request in Submitted status
  3. Review the trips, dates, and total reimbursement
  4. Click Approve or Reject (add a note if rejecting)
  5. When payroll issues payment, click Mark Paid

How To: Check Vehicle Recalls

  1. Go to Fleet > Compliance
  2. Find the vehicle under NHTSA safety recalls and click Check Recalls — NHTSA is queried by make, model and year
  3. The vehicle's row updates with how many open recalls it has, plus the latest affected component and campaign number
  4. The tiles above the list show the fleet-wide status; a vehicle that has never been checked reads Never checked, which is not the same as "no recalls"

How To: Run an IFTA Report

  1. Go to Fleet > Reports > IFTA
  2. Pick the quarter and year
  3. The report aggregates fuel purchases and miles driven by state
  4. Click Download for the filing-ready PDF

How To: View the Fleet Advisor Briefing

  1. Go to Fleet > Fleet Advisor
  2. The daily briefing highlights overdue maintenance, safety events, expiring compliance, unusual fuel spend, and idle anomalies
  3. Click any item to jump to the detail
  4. Click Ask Advisor to type a question (e.g., "Which drivers had safety events this week?")

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need GPS dongles?

No. Fleet works fully manual. GPS adds live tracking, geofence visit logs, idle reports, and safety events.

Which GPS dongles work?

Freematics is first-class. Generic GPS devices can push to the ingest endpoint if they support HTTP POST.

How often does GPS refresh?

Positions are polled every 60 seconds. Live view is near real-time.

Are safety events detected automatically?

Yes, if you're using a GPS device that reports telemetry. Harsh braking, rapid acceleration, and speeding are scored into driver scorecards.

How does maintenance alerting work?

Based on intervals you configure (miles or days). Fleet runs a daily check and marks items Due/Overdue. You can also get email alerts.

Can I split costs across departments?

Yes. Use the Cost Allocation report under Reports.

Does Fleet file my IFTA return?

No, but it produces the quarterly report in the format your filing service expects.

What's HOS monitoring?

For drivers operating commercial motor vehicles — Hours of Service tracking warns when a driver is approaching or violating limits.

How does recall checking work?

By make, model and year against NHTSA's public database. Results are stored per vehicle and refreshed weekly, so an unchanged vehicle is not re-queried on every visit.

Can I export maintenance history for a single vehicle?

Yes. Open the vehicle, go to the Maintenance tab, click Export.

Troubleshooting

GPS position stuck or stale Check under GPS > Devices. If the device hasn't pushed in 10+ minutes it may be out of cell coverage or the ignition is off. Generic devices need their API key configured correctly.

Vehicle not showing up Make sure you didn't soft-delete it by accident. Check Settings > Deleted Vehicles to restore.

Maintenance schedule isn't triggering Open the schedule and confirm the interval and group are set. The overdue check runs daily at 07:00 UTC.

Fuel entry won't save Gallons and cost must be positive numbers. Odometer must be greater than or equal to the previous entry.

Mileage request rejected but no reason given Ask the approver to open the request and add a rejection reason.

Driver scorecard is empty Scorecards require safety event data from telematics. Without a GPS device, driver metrics stay blank.

Recall check returns nothing Confirm the vehicle's make, model and year are filled in — those are the three fields the NHTSA recall read takes. Otherwise, no results means no open recalls.

Geofence alert didn't fire Confirm the geofence is linked to the right vehicle group and is active. Visits are detected by the background worker every 5 minutes.

Dispatch optimize route doesn't find addresses Make sure origin and destination are full addresses including city and state.

IFTA report missing states IFTA needs fuel entries and GPS trips tagged with state. If you log fuel manually, include the state the fuel was purchased in.