Guide

Hand a vehicle over at pickup

Seven steps at the counter, in a fixed order, ending with the hire on. The order is deliberate — the customer signs before the bond, and the bond is taken before the keys.

7 min read

This guide answers

  • How do I start a pickup?
  • Why can't I finish the handover?
  • Can I hand over if the balance is not paid?
  • What does Start pickup actually record?
  • Can I change which photos are taken at pickup?
  • Where do I start a pickup from?

The pickup handover is the guided flow that turns a confirmed booking into a hire that is on. It captures the evidence you will need if there is ever an argument about condition, fuel or distance, and it is the only thing that puts a booking on hire.

Open the booking and click Start pickup. The button only appears while the booking is Confirmed. If the booking is still an enquiry, or already on hire, it is not there.

You do not have to go through the booking page. The dashboard's Next up card lists the next movements waiting on you, each with its own Start pickup button, plus Call and View booking. Every row in the dashboard's upcoming list carries the same button. On the fleet calendar, clicking a confirmed booking's bar offers Start pickup in its panel. All three open the same flow.

Before you start

The vehicle must be allocated. A booking with no specific vehicle cannot be handed over, and the flow will say so rather than let you get to the end.

Have the customer and their licence with you. Steps four and five need both.

The seven steps

They run in a fixed order and you cannot skip ahead:

  1. Confirm — check you have the right booking, customer and vehicle.
  2. Photos. At least one is required. The guided tiles are front 3/4, driver side, rear 3/4, passenger side, windscreen, wheels and tyres, underbody, roof, interior, cargo area, odometer and fuel, and existing damage. Add more photos takes anything beyond the tiles. Take the lot: this set is your before-photos, and at return each tile shows this shot beside the new one.
  3. Odometer — the reading and the fuel level, both required.
  4. Licence — both sides scanned, and the expiry date. If the licence is overseas and your settings require it, the passport photo page is required too and the step will not pass without it.
  5. Sign — the customer e-signs the rental agreement and accepts your terms.
  6. Bond — authorise it, or record that you took it as cash. You cannot continue without one or the other.
  7. Review — check and finish.

Signature before money, money before keys. Step five has to pass before step six can be reached, and step six before the hire starts. That order is deliberate: it means you never hold a bond against an agreement nobody signed.

Choosing which photos are asked for

The tile set above is the standard one. If a location needs a different set, open the location under Settings › Locations, go to its Handover tab, and fill in Guided photo slots under Condition photos: a short key and the label the customer sees for each tile. Leave it empty to keep the standard set. Whatever you choose at pickup is what the return flow asks for, so the before and after always line up.

If the balance is not paid

You can still hand over, but not silently. Glovebox asks for a reason, and that reason is written to the booking timeline with your name on it.

This is a soft gate on purpose — operators take cash at the counter, and a hire should not be blocked at 7am because a card payment has not settled. But the override is a record, so write something a colleague could read back in three months: "paid cash, receipt 4821" rather than "ok".

What happens when you finish

  • The booking goes to on hire, and the pickup time is stamped.
  • The vehicle's status becomes Hired, so it stops being offered for other bookings.
  • Everything you captured is saved as a handover record against the booking — the before-and-after trail.
  • The customer is emailed a checkout confirmation.

Things worth knowing

  • The bond is checked again at the finish, not just at step six. If the hold has gone by then, the handover stops rather than putting a vehicle on hire with nothing held against it.
  • A cash bond is recorded as a note on the booking, so the money is visible even though no card was touched.
  • You cannot start a return until this is done. The return button stays disabled with "Complete the pickup handover first" — a hire that never had a pickup has no readings to compare against.

If it did not work

  • Start pickup is not on the booking. The booking is not Confirmed. An enquiry has to be confirmed first; a booking already on hire has had its pickup.
  • It will not let you past the photos. At least one photo is required. If the camera is not cooperating, upload from the device instead.
  • The tiles are not the ones you expected. The location has its own set under its Handover tab. Clear it to go back to the standard set.
  • It stops at the end with a bond error. The hold was not placed or has expired. Take the bond again, or record it as cash.
  • Take a vehicle back at return The mirror of the pickup flow. Readings are compared against what you recorded at handover, and nothing completes until the bond is dealt with one way or the other.
  • Set up and release bonds A bond is the security amount you hold against a hire. This covers the default amount, the difference between an authorisation hold and a capture, and how long after return the hold is released.
  • Set up your rental agreement terms Until you add your own terms, the rental agreement customers sign carries a platform default and none of your conditions. This shows the two ways to set your terms and how to clear the warning about a blank agreement.
  • See your week on the fleet calendar The calendar is one row per vehicle across time. It is where you see the shape of your week or your season, move a booking by dragging it, start the day's pickups and returns, give an unallocated booking a car, and take a vehicle off the road.

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