Most fleet management tools require you to manually calculate when a vehicle is due for service. FleetVIP changes that. Our proprietary “Learn Mode” algorithm bridges the gap between usage and time. By analyzing your required odometer intervals and historical readings or engine hours, FleetVIP automatically calculates a predicted calendar due date for every maintenance task.
FACT 1: You need a method to convert odometer maintenance intervals to calendar dates.
FACT 2: A raw odometer interval such as 4,000 miles is much easier to schedule and manage once converted to a calendar date.
Method 1: Regularly take visual odometer readings. Compare the readings to the odometer intervals in the maintenance schedule. Problem: This method is time consuming and unreliable in a fleet maintenance situation.
Method 2: Do all maintenance sooner than required just to be safe. Problem: Doing maintenance sooner than required increase costs and you still need to keep doing visual odometer readings.
Method 3: Use software that includes electronic odometer telematics to transmit odometer readings every day. Problem: This is very expensive and incurs $ thousands of dollars of monthly and annual fees forever! You still won’t have actual calendar due dates.
Solution: Use FleetVIP Fleet Maintenance software. Due dates are automatically calculated for odometer intervals. Problem solved. Adds huge value with minimal cost. FleetVIP can also be used in parallel to enhance your legacy fleet software.
All fleet management software will tell you due dates for simple calendar intervals such as change the oil every 4 months.
But they can not tell you the calendar due date for an oil change every 4,000 miles.
Or every 4,000 kilometers. Or every 400 hours.
That means you have no due dates for those tasks!
Traditionally, preventative maintenance (PM) was triggered by a calendar interval or mileage (and often a combination of both). Using only calendar intervals is typically viewed as less cost efficient because they are not based on actual vehicle or equipment use.
It is theoretically more cost efficient to use odometer intervals because that reflects actual vehicle use. But the problem then arises that odometers do not have calendar dates so they have to be read frequently, even daily so as not to miss the day when maintenance is scheduled.
As a result, the fleet management software industry has cashed in on the enormous profit potential of bundling telematic services that simply read the odometer more often than necessary.
This means some fleet managers are paying up to $ thousands of dollars per year in over priced telematic fees that recur every month.
Because General Motors owns the patent on odometer telematics, other purveyors of odometer telematics may be selling even more expensive GPS-based technology to bypass the GM patent.
However, FleetVIP only needs odometer readings that are entered when maintenance tasks are performed, so the huge expense of monthly telematic odometer fees is eliminated saving you hundreds or $ thousands of dollars per year – EVERY YEAR!
And our technology adapts to actual vehicle usage because whenever you perform a maintenance task, FleetVIP uses that odometer reading and service date to calculate and adjust future calendar due dates for all other scheduled tasks!
That means when you perform even one scheduled service item and enter the date and mileage, FleetVIP reviews and adjusts ALL tasks in the vehicle’s maintenance schedule based on that updated information.
That saves you time and keeps you on track!
FleetVIP goes much farther than just converting tasks defined in miles, kilometers or hours to due dates.
For double-limit tasks (example: every X miles or Y months, whichever comes first), after calculating the mileage interval due date, it compares that due date with the fixed calendar due date and then presents you with earliest date of the two for each task you are tracking!
This date-driven approach is light years ahead of the obsolete methods you get from other software.
Unfortunately, many purchasers of fleet maintenance software assume that fleet maintenance software will give them complete calendar due dates when in fact that is hardly ever the case.
The fact is that many purchasers of fleet management software spend considerable time and money on fleet management software products that do not provide effective solutions when it comes to actually tracking when fleet maintenance is due based on calendar dates.
We even visited a website of a #1 rated by PC Magazine fleet maintenance software brand and found their own images proving their software provided wildly inaccurate due dates that could easily void your vehicle warranty! So be very cautious with online and magazine reviews since it is not the job of these media reviewers to expose false product claims.
Other industries rely on calendar dates to manage construction projects, infrastructure projects, even moon shots!
Unfortunately, almost all fleet management software does not provide calendar due dates for odometer-based maintenance tasks. This is a major deficiency of the fleet management software industry and imposes a severe hidden cost burden on organizations that overly rely on such deficient fleet management software.
