Maintaining a fleet in a business is no easy task – you have to keep track of where your vehicles are at all times, you have to make sure that they are serviced on time, you have to get messages out to your drivers from time to time – there is a lot to be done and as a busy business owner you may not always have time to do it. In recent years there are apps and software that claim that they can do fleet management for businesses. Can you trust a fleet management app or software to get the job done properly?

So long as you take the time to choose an app that is reliable and suits your particular needs it can be an extremely valuable tool in fleet management. The best fleet management apps are those that are built around managing actual fleets and not hypothetical ones – the makers take the time to study a fleet of vehicles in real-time for a period and then create an app based on the information that they gather. If you choose the right app here are a few things that it can do for you on a day-to-day basis:

• It will help you know where all your vehicles are at all times. One of the biggest problems for businesses is drivers who don’t always do as they are instructed – a driver may make detours on the road or take unnecessarily long stops. Delayed arrivals and slow transport translates directly into losses. Using a good fleet management app you can track your vehicles at all times and problem drivers can be warned or dismissed.
• You can schedule all service and maintenance for each and every vehicle with the right app. The health of your fleet depends on how regularly each vehicle is serviced – if you go past the service date your vehicles’ life is shortened by a considerable span and this affects your bottom line. A good app will warn you when service for each vehicle is coming up. Your driver will also get a message so that he can deliver the vehicle to your mechanic. All the information gathered during maintenance will also be entered into the app for easy reference.
• It is easy to access historical records. Accessing old records can be a challenge especially in a busy work environment – documents get lost, file retrieval can be complicated and people forget important details. A good app will store all sorts of information on the cloud and you can access it any time you want.
• One smart cost saving strategy is to save fuel in fleet management – if you can track just how much each vehicle uses and find a way to streamline use you will be able to improve your bottom line. A proper fleet management app can help you do just that – you will be able to see when each vehicle is refuelled, how far the fuel goes, emissions and so on.

Before you buy a fleet management app make sure that it has a free test period. Try it out on one or two vehicles to make sure that it meets your needs.