Automatic MOT Reminders

Summary

Torqueflow reminds your customers when their MOT is due. Out of the box, each vehicle gets a reminder 60, 30, 14, and 7 days before its MOT expires, sent by email and SMS. You can switch individual tiers on or off, change the day counts, edit the message wording, and pause reminders for a single vehicle when you know its MOT is already sorted. This article covers how the reminders work, how the vehicle data stays fresh, and how to configure everything.

Prerequisites

• You have the settings.communication.manage capability (Owner and Manager roles) to configure reminder rules and wording.
• Your customers’ vehicles have MOT expiry dates on record. These come from the DVLA lookup or manual entry.
• Your business phone number is set under Settings > Organisation. The reminder includes it as the “call us to book” link.

Steps

Understand what gets sent

1. Each day, Torqueflow checks every vehicle on your books against the active reminder tiers. The defaults are 60, 30, 14, and 7 days before MOT expiry.
2. Each reminder includes the vehicle registration, the MOT expiry date, the number of days until it is due, and a tap-to-call link to your business phone.
3. Every reminder ends with “If you have already booked, please ignore this”. Customers who booked elsewhere, or by phone, are not chased further.
4. Reminders go out by email and SMS. WhatsApp reminders need an approved message template first. See Choosing how customer reminders are sent.

Know when a reminder is skipped

A vehicle is silently skipped when any of these apply:

1. The vehicle is registered as SORN (off the road). It legally needs no MOT.
2. The vehicle has a booked MOT appointment with you in the next 30 days.
3. The vehicle’s MOT data has not been refreshed from DVLA in the last 90 days. Stale data risks false reminders, so the system refuses to send on it.
4. A staff member has marked the vehicle’s MOT as done (see below).
5. The customer has opted out of reminders. See Customer reminder preferences in the portal.
6. The customer is classified as Trade (a dealer), or the vehicle is a courtesy or loan car. See “Classify trade and fleet customers” below.
7. The customer appears to have sold the car on: there is no work by that customer on that vehicle within the sold-on window. See “Stop reminding former keepers” below.

Understand how MOT data stays fresh

1. Torqueflow refreshes each vehicle’s MOT data from DVLA automatically in the background. Vehicles within 60 days of expiry are refreshed at least every 7 days. All other vehicles are refreshed at least every 30 days.
2. Newly imported vehicles start with no refresh date, so they cannot fire reminders straight away. The daily background sweep picks them up. Expect imported customers to become eligible within about a day of import.
3. To check a vehicle’s data freshness, open the vehicle’s detail page and look for its last refreshed date.

Configure the reminder tiers

1. Navigate to Settings > Communication > Reminders.
2. Find the MOT reminders section. It lists the four default tiers plus any custom rules you have created.
3. Toggle a tier on or off with the switch on its row. Disabling a tier shows an advisory count of how many vehicles are currently in that window.
4. To change a tier’s timing, edit its day count. Day counts cannot exceed 90 days. Reminders only fire on MOT data refreshed within 90 days, so a wider tier would never send. The form explains this inline.
5. To add a custom tier, create a new rule and give it a unique name.
6. If every rule shows a “paused org-wide” badge, MOT reminders are switched off at the organisation level. Re-enable them in the channel defaults section at the top of the same page.

Edit the reminder wording

1. On the same page, find the MOT reminder message card.
2. Each channel has its own editor panel: email (subject and body) and SMS (body). A badge on each panel shows “Customised” or “Using default”.
3. Type your message, or click a token chip to insert a placeholder at the cursor. Available tokens include {greeting}, {organization_name}, {vehicle_registration}, {mot_expiry_date}, {days_until_due}, {booking_link}, {rule_name}, and {rule_type}.
4. A live preview below the editor shows exactly what the customer receives, using sample vehicle data.
5. The SMS panel shows a segment counter (for example “2 SMS segments - higher cost”). Long messages and accented characters increase the segment count, which increases the cost per send.
6. Click Save. Saving is blocked if the message is empty, contains an unknown token, or has stray braces. The email subject is limited to 120 characters. Removing {booking_link} shows a warning but is allowed.
7. To go back to the platform wording, click Reset to default and confirm. An Undo reset button restores your custom wording until your next save.

Mark a vehicle’s MOT as done

When a customer tells you their MOT is already sorted, pause that vehicle’s reminders:

1. Open the vehicle’s detail page.
2. Click Mark MOT done and confirm. The vehicle stops receiving MOT reminders.
3. The pause lasts until the vehicle’s next MOT cycle. When the DVLA refresh detects a new expiry date, reminders re-arm automatically. No manual step needed.
4. Click Undo on the status card to un-mark the vehicle at any time.

Classify trade and fleet customers

A motor-trade dealer should never get reminders about the cars they have for resale. A genuine fleet customer should. Torqueflow handles this with a customer classification.

1. Open the customer’s record. Set their classification to Retail, Trade, or Fleet. Retail is the default.
2. Trade customers are excluded from MOT reminders entirely. Fleet customers still receive them. Retail is normal.
3. To classify many customers at once, use the bulk classification tool. It lists customers with several vehicles and proposes Trade or Fleet for each, flagging the ones it is unsure about.
4. The tool only proposes. Nothing changes until you confirm each one, so a real customer is never silenced by accident.

If you un-classify a customer (set them back to Retail), their vehicles re-enter normal reminders from the next daily check. There is no catch-up for the reminders missed while they were Trade.

Stop reminding former keepers

When a customer sells a car on, you do not want to keep reminding them about it. Torqueflow skips a reminder when there is no work by that customer on that vehicle within the sold-on window (24 months by default). You can change the window in the rule’s settings. A diagnostic shows how many vehicles a given window would suppress, so you can judge it before turning it on.

Expected Outcome

• Customers receive timely, accurate MOT reminders by email and SMS without staff doing anything.
• Each garage controls its own tiers, timing, and wording.
• Vehicles with a booked appointment, a SORN status, stale data, or a marked-done MOT are skipped automatically.

Troubleshooting

Problem: A customer never received an MOT reminder. Cause: One of the skip conditions applied, or the relevant tier is off. Fix: Check, in order: is the tier enabled? Is MOT reminders paused org-wide? Open the vehicle detail page - is the last refreshed date within 90 days? Is there a booked MOT appointment in the next 30 days? Has someone marked the MOT done? Has the customer opted out?

Problem: A customer received a reminder after they had already booked with us by phone. Cause: The booking was logged without being identifiable as an MOT appointment, so the stop-condition did not match. Fix: The “please ignore this” line in the message covers the customer. To stop further reminders for that vehicle, mark the MOT done on the vehicle’s detail page, or re-log the booking as an MOT appointment.

Problem: Freshly imported customers are not getting reminders. Cause: Imported vehicles have no DVLA refresh date yet, so the 90-day freshness rule excludes them. Fix: Wait about a day. The background sweep refreshes them automatically and they become eligible.

Problem: I customised the wording but customers in another language got the standard message. Cause: Custom wording currently applies to your primary language only. Customers with a different preferred language receive the platform default in their language. Fix: None needed. Per-language editing is planned.

Problem: A trade dealer received reminders about their resale cars. Cause: The customer is not classified as Trade yet, so their vehicles are treated as normal retail customers. Fix: Open the customer record and set their classification to Trade, or use the bulk classification tool. They are excluded from the next daily check onwards.

Problem: A customer got a reminder about a car they sold months ago. Cause: The sold-on window may be longer than the gap since their last visit, or sold-on suppression is not enabled. Fix: Check the sold-on window in the reminder settings. The customer can also reply to say they no longer own the car, and you can mark the vehicle accordingly.

Permissions

Action	Required capability
Configure tiers, timing, and wording	settings.communication.manage
Mark a vehicle’s MOT as done	vehicles.manage or vehicles.mot.mark_complete
Edit a customer’s reminder preferences	customers.consent.manage
Classify a customer as Retail, Trade, or Fleet	customers.manage

Notes

• Technicians can be given the vehicles.mot.mark_complete capability so the person who does the MOT can mark it done without gaining wider vehicle-edit rights.
• Wording changes apply to all reminders sent from the moment you save, including any already queued.
• If the platform default wording changes after you have customised, a banner on the editor lets you view the new default or reset to it. Your custom wording is never replaced silently.
• You are responsible for the accuracy and compliance of any custom wording.
• MOT reminders are service reminders about the customer’s own vehicle, not marketing. Marketing consent is handled separately. See WhatsApp consent and opt-in.