Sending a repair to an outside shop

Send work to a vendor and keep it in your work queue, so an outside repair is tracked the same way as one you did yourself.

Most small fleets send some work out: tires, alignment, warranty, anything needing a lift they do not have. The usual problem is that once it leaves the yard it also leaves the record, and the invoice comes back weeks later with no link to the defect that caused it. An outside shop order keeps the two together.

Creating one

The order gets its own number and records the date it was sent, so you can see how long a truck has been sitting at a shop.

Tracking it

Outside shop orders have their own filter on the Work Orders screen, grouped by unit. Each one shows the vendor, the date sent, its status, and every work item attached to it. Each item still links back to the work order it came from, so the trail from reported defect to outside repair stays intact.

Closing it out

When the work comes back, use Close and Upload Invoice. The invoice is stored against the order, which means the repair, the defect that caused it, the unit and the cost all live in the same place. That is what turns an outside repair into a maintenance record you can produce later.

Why this matters beyond bookkeeping

Federal rules require a carrier to keep maintenance and repair records for the vehicles it operates, and to be able to show that a defect a driver reported was actually repaired. A repair done by somebody else is still your record to keep. An invoice in a folder is a record in theory; the same invoice attached to the unit and the defect is a record you can find.