Are you a Bolt, FreeNow or Uber fleet partner managing your cars in Excel? It is a waste of your time and nerves! See which areas of your fleet you can optimise. An electronic vehicle file, a digital handover process and automatic reminders about upcoming deadlines are just some of the modern solutions in the package!
All the operational knowledge in the fleet coordinator's head
Every business is built on people, and the better the people, the better the business runs. The problem starts when that business is several dozen or even several hundred vehicles. It does not matter how many there are: each one has to be in good condition and ready to drive. If photos of the cars are sent by WhatsApp to the fleet coordinator's number, then when they go on holiday or leave, who will handle a vehicle return in their place? Who will find their way around their "know-how" for filling in agreements and handover reports? And what happens to the vehicle's whole history? Staff turnover may not happen often, but it would still be nice to pull a smartphone out of your pocket and check what is going on with a car: who is using it, what damage has been reported and what equipment was issued with it. At Navifleet we know this exactly, which is why we built an app in which you can gather all the data on cars and drivers in one place and display their full history!
A pile of paperwork at every vehicle handover
Issuing a car is not just handing over the keys. It also means signing a rental agreement, terms of use and sometimes even a table of fees and penalties for driver negligence. Unfortunately, this involves an enormous amount of printed, photocopied and scanned paper. After a while you can get used to it, but why?! First, it costs you: paper, electricity and the fleet coordinator's time. Second, digging up a piece of information later is a nightmare! Leafing through hundreds of pages, checking binders or shared drives… Spare yourself that. In the Navifleet Manager app you can run the entire vehicle handover process on your smartphone, and the documents upload themselves to the cloud, into the file of the relevant vehicle. And if you wish, to the driver's e-mail as well!
How does it work?
- You upload to the app the templates of agreements, terms, instructions and all the other documents you sign at handover.
- You issue the vehicle in the app.
- You add photos of damage, reference photos and the equipment list.
- The app fills in all the documents with data by itself.
- You hand the smartphone to the driver so they can read the documents and sign them.
- You add your own signature.
- Everything is sent to the cloud and to the driver's e-mail.
Excel will not send you a reminder that a policy is expiring
"It has happened to me a few times that a car at the other branch was driving around without valid insurance." I would not want to be in the shoes of the person who forgot to renew a policy for another year. Especially since having a good, cheap policy in this industry is one of the most important pieces of the whole puzzle! Keeping track of important dates in Excel is fine: it will remember policies, roadworthiness tests, cash register calibrations and services for you. But will you remember to check it? And again, you can force yourself, set reminders in your calendar or stick notes on your monitor, but why? Instead, simply enter all the important dates into the app and we will notify you with the lead time you set. You can enter anything: policies, leases, roadworthiness tests, cash register calibration, even the expiry of a driver's licence!
"I've had a bump, what do I do?!"
If drivers keep calling with the same questions, and you or your fleet coordinator answer them with stoic calm, another "quick win" is within reach. From what I have seen, not all fleet partners use this tactic, which is a pity, because it cuts out a great deal of phone traffic. Every driver can create an account in the app at your invitation, and once a car is issued to them they get access to the vehicle's data (such as the registration number, VIN and fuel card PIN) and can view the files you have added for that vehicle (such as a scan of the policy, a scan of the roadworthiness test, and so on). On top of that, the driver can see all the handover reports, agreements and terms they signed at every handover and return.
What do taxi company owners say about us?
Not a day goes by without one of our users completing an electronic handover or return report. Before writing this article we talked to them and asked how they find using our app in their daily work. Alongside many interesting development suggestions, which we plan to implement soon, we received plenty of comments that probably best illustrate the impact our fleet app has on their business. Here is a selection:
