Onboarding Guide

This guide takes you from an empty console to your first dispatched, invoiced job. FleetOps is layered: commercial records hang off a legal entity, trips hang off vehicles and drivers, and nothing dispatches until compliance passes. Working through the steps in order means every screen you reach already has the records it depends on, so you are never blocked halfway through a form.

Setup at a glance

Step 1 — Organisation backbone

Everything commercial (customers, invoices, the general ledger) attaches to a legal entity, so this is always first.

1. Open Organisation in the sidebar → New entity.
2. Only the Name is required — use your registered operating company. You can fill the tax and banking references (PAYE, UIF, SDL, bank name / branch / account) now or add them later on the entity's Edit page. They feed statutory payroll returns (EMP201) and are worth capturing early.
3. Save, then Open the entity to reach its overview hub, which links to three child areas:
   • Cost centres — the buckets every vehicle and expense is attributed to. They drive cost-centre P&L and trip/vehicle profitability, so create at least one meaningful bucket (for example Line-Haul, Workshop, Admin).
   • Depots — your physical operating bases. Add at least one (for example Johannesburg).
   • Divisions — optional. Only add these if you run distinct business units under one entity.

Step 2 — People & access

Two different things live here: user accounts (who can sign in) and drivers (staff who move loads — not necessarily console users).

User accounts

Open Users → New user. Assign each person the narrowest role that lets them do their job — FleetOps uses granular, permission-based roles rather than a single blanket "Admin". Keep the number of full administrators small.

Drivers

Open Drivers → engage a driver. Each driver needs either a South African ID number or a passport number — the form will not save without one. Capture licence, PrDP and medical details on the driver's compliance profile; these expiry dates feed the dispatch gate (Step 5) and the driver-renewals report (Step 7).

Step 3 — Fleet assets

Register the physical fleet, then the tracking hardware.

1. Vehicles → New vehicle. Name and Class are required; the Cost centre picker is optional but should be filled (see the note in Step 1). Class constrains what the vehicle can be coupled to.
2. Trailers → New trailer. Name and Type are required. Set the GVM (kg) — payload validation reads it when you load trips.
3. Combinations → couple a rig: a horse plus Trailer 1, and optionally an interlink Trailer 2. Pickers label assets by fleet number, falling back to name, so fill in fleet numbers on your vehicles and trailers first.
4. Trackers → Register a tracker with a label (1–100 characters). On save you get a one-time reveal of the device ID and key — copy them immediately; they are shown once and go into the tracker firmware. Then provision the tracker and allocate it to a vehicle.
5. Open the Live map to confirm a provisioned, allocated tracker reports in.

Step 4 — Commercial master data

1. Customers & Carriers → add the companies you invoice and the sub-contractors you engage. Creating a customer requires choosing the invoicing legal entity from Step 1 — that entity's details appear on the invoice and drive VAT.
2. Sites → add the depots, warehouses and customer premises you collect from and deliver to. Sites are customer-scoped and become the pick-up / drop-off points on orders and trips.

Step 5 — Compliance rules

This is what makes the dispatch gate meaningful.

• Requirement templates define the checklist a trip must satisfy before it can leave — valid vehicle licence disc and Certificate of Fitness, a licensed driver, and any required permits. The dispatch preflight in Step 6 reads these templates.
• If you run cross-border, dangerous-goods or abnormal loads, capture the relevant border/corridor master data and permits now so trips of that type can pass their checks.

Step 6 — Your first job

With the master data in place, run the operating cycle end to end:

1. Quote → draft a quote for a customer (optionally from a rate card), then send it, and mark it accepted.
2. Order → convert the accepted quote (or book an order directly), capturing cargo, and any dangerous-goods / reefer / corridor details.
3. Trip → plan a trip, assign a vehicle and driver, add stops and loads.
4. Dispatch gate → on the trip's edit page, run the dispatch preflight. Every required check must pass; only holders of the dispatch-override permission can override a failure, with a reason.
5. In transit → delivery → record border dwell and customs where applicable, then invoice the trip against the customer's legal entity.

Step 7 — Back office & reporting

Once jobs are flowing, the reporting sections come to life:

• Finance — VAT201, trial balance, cost-centre P&L, and trip / vehicle profitability. Accurate cost centres (Step 1) and invoicing entities (Step 4) are what make these correct.
• HR & Payroll — EMP201, driver risk and licence/medical renewals. The tax references (Step 1) and driver profiles (Step 2) feed these.
• Fleet — utilisation, downtime and delivery-performance reports built from the trips you run.