Guide

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.

5 min read

This guide answers

  • How do I check a vehicle back in?
  • Why is Start return greyed out?
  • How do I charge for damage or fuel?
  • What if the customer never returned the vehicle?
  • How do I compare return photos with pickup photos?

The return handover closes a hire: it records the vehicle's condition coming back, works out anything owed for fuel, distance or damage, and settles the bond.

Open the booking and click Start return. It appears while the booking is on hire. The dashboard's Next up card and its upcoming list carry the same button against each return that is due, with the time in red once it is overdue, and the fleet calendar offers it when you click the booking's bar.

Before you start

The pickup handover must have been completed. If it was not, the button is there but disabled, with the reason on hover: Complete the pickup handover first. A hire with no recorded pickup has no odometer or fuel reading to compare against, so there is nothing to check the return in against.

That is worth knowing rather than fighting: it is showing you a missing pickup, not a broken button.

The steps

  1. Confirm — the booking and the vehicle.
  2. Photos. The same guided tiles as pickup: front 3/4, driver side, rear 3/4, passenger side, windscreen, wheels and tyres, underbody, roof, interior, cargo area, odometer and fuel, existing damage, or the location's own set if it has one. Each tile shows the pickup photo faded behind it, so you are matching the shot rather than remembering it. At least one return photo is required. Add more photos takes anything the tiles do not cover. A pickup taken before guided tiles existed shows its photos in a strip above instead.
  3. Odometer and fuel — both required. The reading cannot be lower than it was at pickup, and Glovebox will refuse it rather than let a typo through.
  4. Damage — if you mark new damage found, you have to describe it. Photograph it too.
  5. Bond — release it, or capture against it.

Charges

Fuel and distance are worked out from the readings you just entered against what the booking allowed. Damage is an amount you enter, with its own photos.

Anything charged is against the bond you are holding, which is why the bond step comes last: you cannot sensibly decide how much to release until you know what is owed.

What happens when you finish

  • The booking goes to Completed and the return time is stamped.
  • The vehicle comes back into availability.
  • The return photos, readings and any charges are saved against the booking alongside the pickup record.

When the vehicle never came back to you

Sometimes there is no drop-off to run: the customer left the car at an airport, or a colleague took it back and never opened the flow.

Use Complete return without drop-off on the booking's actions. It asks for the odometer reading and the fuel level, and tells you whether a bond is still held so you can deal with it deliberately rather than leaving it hanging.

Use it for a hire that genuinely finished off-screen — not as a shortcut past a return you could have run properly. It records less evidence, and that is exactly what you want the full flow for if a charge is ever questioned.

Things worth knowing

  • Nothing completes with the bond unresolved. Release or capture; the flow will not let you past it.
  • The odometer floor is a real guard. If the reading genuinely is lower — a swapped vehicle, a replaced cluster — sort the booking's vehicle out first rather than entering a number you know is wrong.
  • The comparison is only as good as the pickup. A pickup handover done in a hurry with one photo makes a disputed return charge hard to defend. Tiles with no pickup photo behind them are exactly the angles you cannot argue about later.
  • The return is a record of its own. The photos, readings and charges are saved as a return handover against the booking, alongside the pickup record, so the two can be read side by side.

If it did not work

  • Start return is greyed out. The pickup handover was never completed. Finish that first, or use the override above if the hire is genuinely over.
  • The odometer will not accept your reading. It is below the pickup reading. Check you are looking at kilometres, and check the booking has the vehicle the customer actually took.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • See your revenue and what is owing Three screens answering three different money questions — what you earned, what you are owed, and what is coming.

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