Vehicle presence and the On site screen

Summary

Every work order records where its vehicle is: Not on site, Checked in, Customer waiting, Ready for pickup or Picked up. You can change this from the work order itself, and the On site screen lists every job whose vehicle is checked in, has its customer waiting, or is ready for pickup. Front of house uses it to recognise the customer who has just walked up to collect, and to clear vehicles that left long ago but are still marked as here. A vehicle wrongly left on site keeps its job on the default lists and stops it being cleaned up, so keeping presence accurate matters.

Prerequisites

• To change presence on a work order you need permission to check vehicles in, check them out, or both. Owners, managers and service advisors have both as standard. Workshop access or My Jobs access also lets someone change presence in both directions, so anyone who can work jobs can check a vehicle in and undo a mistaken check-in.
• To open the On site screen you need access to vehicles. Owners, managers and service advisors have it. Technicians do not, because the screen shows customer names and phone numbers.
• Presence applies to jobs done at your workshop. Mobile jobs record arrival against the visit instead (see Notes).

Steps

Change presence from a work order

1. Open the work order.
2. The first button in the row of actions at the top of the page shows the vehicle’s current presence, for example Checked in. Select it.
3. The menu lists the states your role can set. The current one is greyed out.
4. Pick the new state. Any state can follow any other. A vehicle can go straight from Checked in to Picked up, because that happens.
5. If you pick Checked in, a dialog asks for the mileage. Enter the reading and select Check In, or select Skip. The dialog warns that checking in may email the customer to say their vehicle has been dropped off. That email cannot be taken back.
6. For any other state the change saves straight away and a message confirms the new state.

States your role cannot set are left out of the menu. Checking in and marking a customer as waiting need check-in permission. Not on site, Ready for pickup and Picked up need check-out permission. Workshop access or My Jobs access covers both.

If your permission is removed while the page is open, choosing a state shows “You don’t have permission to change this vehicle’s status.” and the page refreshes without the control.

Marking a job complete does not change presence. Front of house often closes a job and raises the invoice days before the customer collects, so set Picked up yourself when the vehicle actually leaves.

Open the On site screen

1. In the sidebar, under Operations, select On site.
2. The screen shows one card per job whose vehicle is checked in, has the customer waiting, or is ready for pickup. There is no page limit. A long list on your first visit usually means old records need tidying, not that the screen is wrong.
3. Cards are grouped with Ready for pickup first, then Customer waiting, then Checked in. Within each group, finished jobs come first, then the most recently updated. Records nobody has touched for months sit at the bottom.
4. The screen refreshes itself every 30 seconds while it is open and on screen. If a refresh fails, a banner says the cards may be out of date.

Read a card

1. The registration plate, the vehicle’s colour (a swatch plus the colour name in words), make and model.
2. The customer’s name and phone number.
3. The presence state and the job status.
4. The job description, and the customer’s own description of the problem under Customer said when one was recorded.
5. Record not updated in 45 days: how long since anything changed on the job record. This is not how long the vehicle has been on site. Torqueflow does not record when a vehicle arrived. The line is hidden for a job updated today.
6. A coloured marker when the job is closed but the vehicle is still marked here:
   • Finished, still marked on site: the job is done and nobody has collected the vehicle, or nobody updated the record when they did.
   • Abandoned, still marked on site or Will not be completed, still marked on site: the job was abandoned or cancelled with the vehicle still recorded as here.
   • Closed, still marked on site: the job is in a final status, but no status in your workflow is marked as the job-finished one, so Torqueflow cannot tell whether this one means finished or cancelled.
7. 2 jobs on this vehicle: the same vehicle is on site against more than one job. Each job gets its own card, because presence is recorded per job, not per vehicle.

Find the vehicle someone has come to collect

1. Type in the search box. It matches registration, customer name, phone number, make, model and colour, ignoring capitals and accents.
2. Several words narrow the list. “blue golf” finds the blue Golf, not every Golf and every blue vehicle.
3. Select a card to open its work order. Middle-click, or Ctrl-click (Cmd-click on a Mac), opens it in a new tab.
4. If nothing matches, the screen names your search. Select Clear to start again.

Clear a vehicle that is no longer here

1. On the card, select Not on site.
2. The card leaves the list and a message says “Marked not on site. The job record still needs closing.”
3. Select Undo within 15 seconds to put the vehicle back.
4. If the same vehicle has another job on the screen, the message says so. Clearing one card does not clear the other.
5. If your role can clear a vehicle but not put it back, a short confirmation appears first instead of an Undo, because a colleague would have to restore it on the work order.

Not on site from this screen is a correction, not a close. It fixes the vehicle’s whereabouts and nothing else:

• It does not complete, cancel or abandon the job. The job still needs closing.
• It does not email the customer, for any state, including an Undo back to Checked in.
• It does not count as activity on the job. A job that was idle for months stays idle, so it still shows under Stuck on the work orders list and under Possibly abandoned on the Workshop board. A manager can then abandon it in the normal clean-up.

Clearing the yard and retiring old paperwork are two separate jobs. Doing the first no longer hides the second.

Expected Outcome

• Presence on each work order matches where the vehicle really is.
• The On site screen lists only vehicles that are in the yard, with the customer due to collect easy to find by plate, name, phone or colour.
• Stale on-site records are cleared, and the jobs behind them still appear in the clean-up views so they can be closed.

Troubleshooting

Problem: A vehicle has been gone for months but its job still appears on the Active work orders list and cannot be bulk abandoned. Cause: The job still records the vehicle as on site. A job with a vehicle on site stays on the default lists, and bulk abandon skips it with the reason “vehicle on site”. Fix: Find it on the On site screen and select Not on site, or change presence on the work order. Then abandon or close the job as normal.

Problem: A customer received a “your vehicle has been dropped off” email twice. Cause: The email goes each time a job is checked in, for a customer who has an email address and has never opened their portal link. Checking the same job in again sends it again. Fix: Avoid re-checking a vehicle in when it is already recorded as here. Choose Customer waiting or leave the state as it is.

Problem: The presence button is missing from a work order. Cause: The job is a mobile job, or your role has no check-in, check-out, workshop or My Jobs permission. Fix: For mobile jobs, arrival is recorded against the visit. Otherwise ask the owner to check your role in Settings > Roles.

Problem: The “Record not updated” number is much lower than the time the vehicle has been here. Cause: The number counts from the last change to the job record, and any change resets it. There is no record of when a vehicle arrived. Fix: Treat it as a guide to neglect, not as a time on site.

Problem: I cleared a vehicle, and a moment later a colleague’s change to the same vehicle seems to have been lost. Cause: Undo puts back the state the card had when you cleared it. If a colleague changed that vehicle’s presence inside the 15 seconds, Undo overwrites their change. Fix: Only use Undo straight after a mistaken clear. If in doubt, open the work order and set the correct state there.

Problem: I cannot tell who cleared a vehicle from the On site screen. Cause: Corrections from this screen are not recorded in the job’s history. Fix: Agree who does the housekeeping pass, and do it in one sitting.

Notes

• Mobile jobs never show the presence control and never appear on the On site screen. The technician marks themselves as arrived at the customer’s address from the job card instead. See Viewing and working on jobs from My Jobs.
• Setting presence on the work order counts as activity on the job, because you are recording something that just happened. Clearing from the On site screen does not, because you are correcting an old record.
• Technicians can still check vehicles in and out from their own job card.
• The work orders list shows an OS flag on any job whose vehicle is on site. See Using the work orders list.