Updated Maintenance Module: Effective Planning and Costs Control

fleet, fleet management systems, gps, gps tracking

Fleet maintenance is a priority for any transportation and logistics industry. As fleets grow, logistics, car sharing, and transportation companies, as well as other haulage businesses are facing the need to manage repairs and inspections. However, keeping track of maintenance by hand is costly when considering the man hours it takes to enter and retrieve the information. This process involves someone going out to the vehicles each day to write down odometer readings or testing for an issue and researching diagnostic codes. This simply doesn’t work.

To make service works planning a breeze and effectively manage costs, we suggest using our Maintenance module. As you may already know, it was created to allow companies to easily schedule and monitor preventative maintenance and repairs based on telematics data. Starting now, the module can boast even more useful updates! Let’s get a closer look.

Creating Service Works for a Bulk of Vehicles

Today most companies prefer to purchase vehicles of the same make and model for a corporate fleet. In this case, the same services will be carried out at nearly the same time intervals. Based on the feedback from our partners, we’ve decided that it would be more convenient to schedule such works for several vehicles at once.

Now, in the Maintenance module, a technician can create the same service works for a group of vehicles by simply selecting the needed objects from the list. Besides, the users can make the created service work recurrent by switching the “Autorepeat” toggle on. This will reduce the time spent on routine operations by automating the everyday maintenance of vehicles.

Keeping Tabs on Unplanned Maintenance

Even regularly serviced vehicles can come across unplanned breakdowns: headlight lamps burn out, tires wear out, chipped paint appears, etc. As a rule, such minor repairs are carried out on a one-time basis, and their costs aren’t planned in advance. In large fleets, this can lead to authority abuse and cheating from the employees’ side. For example, a mechanic reports a tire puncture that in reality didn’t take place. After that, the company buys a new tire, which the mechanic will resell to get the money for private needs.

For more transparency, we’ve added the ability to mark a service work as “Unplanned”. This means the fleet owner will be able to browse all the unplanned services and their costs in a single checklist. Thus, companies can quickly track unplanned works in order to prevent cheating and budget drains.

It’s crucial to pay special attention to unplanned works for many reasons. Vehicle downtime due to unplanned maintenance is costly for any organization. For instance, unexpected repairs caused by aggressive driving take away from the bottom line, especially if the repairs have to be made more than once. Tires, turbines, and leaf springs are one of the elements that suffer most from reckless driving. To better manage the maintenance, Navy Track advises to use the module in conjunction with the ECO driving feature to offer your customers an effective control over the driving behavior of each driver.

Enhanced Budgeting + Proof of Work

When creating a service work on the platform, mechanics are required to indicate its cost. This allows the fleet owner to estimate a budget for the overall vehicle maintenance, but it doesn’t allow to verify the reasonableness of the price paid for the services. In this case, it’s crucial that mechanics provide details of the work performed, including photographs of the repair results.

Starting now, users can attach files to service works. These can be bills, invoices from service stations, confirmations of work performed, contracts, photographs of the results of repairs, etc. In total, up to 10 files, 16 MB each, can be attached to one service work. This way, the fleet owner can easily and quickly verify the reasonableness of the cost and confirm that the work has actually been carried out.

As you can see, there are many options on how to manage preventative maintenance and lessen costs using Navy Track Maintenance module, which comes in handy for both small and medium-sized enterprises. Besides, now mechanics and garage supervisors will have more time to focus on the main activities, while the fleet owner will get effective control over the operational expenses.

Updated Maintenance Module: Effective Planning and Costs Control