Options to Share Vehicles Between Locations

Options to Share Vehicles Between Locations

Overview

If you have multiple locations and your vehicles frequently move between them, you may end up with a surplus of vehicles at some locations and be unable to meet demand at others. As such, the Availability Engine allows you to deploy various strategies to address this issue. 

The simplest way to allow vehicle sharing between locations, is to group then according to an Availability Master Location. This is discussed in more detail in the following article Availability Engine - Vehicle Sharing Between Locations. 

It is possible to implement more complex sharing rules, between location you do not want to link by Availability Master Location. To access this go to System Setup >> Availability Engine Settings and expand the first section labelled Vehicle Sharing Between Locations. These rules can be controlled by the bottom two settings in this section, "Temporary Vehicle Sharing Between Locations" and "Override the Location Restriction".



Using a combination these settings, you are able to implement one of 3 different strategies to control vehicle movement. In order of increasing control by the Availability Engine, these options are:
  1. Self-Management of Vehicle Movement
  2. Accepting Far-Future Bookings
  3. Creating Temporary Vehicle Sharing Rules
Each of these is discussed in more detail in the following sections including things you will need to be aware of for each option. We recommend that you read each of these sections before you implement any rules and if you have any questions about these contact RCM Support (support@rentalcarmanager.com).

Self-Management of Vehicle Movement

This option means that the Availability Engine will only accept booking when there is a vehicle available at the Pickup Location. To implement this, set the "Override the Location Restriction" option to "0". This means that it will never override the location sharing rules, no matter how far in the future the booking is. 

To use this strategy, you will need to:
  1. Regularly check which locations have a surplus of vehicles and which may be fully booked. This can be done using the Daily Category Availability (AE) Report. For more information on this report please see the Vehicle Relocation Reports article. 
  2. Plan out and indicate when vehicles are being transferred between locations to counteract vehicle shortage. This is done by creating one-way non-revenue, maintenance or placeholder bookings.
  3. Be pro-active about planning vehicle transfers in the future, so that so that the vehicle availability in any location does not reach zero.
Points to be aware of if you are using this option:
  1. You will have full control of the vehicles and the Availability Engine will never overbook a location.
  2. By using non-revenue, maintenance or placeholder booking, you have full manual control of how many vehicles are transferred between locations and when this happens.
  3. There is the risk of losing booking if the availability in a location reaches zero at any point in the future, so regular checks are required if you want to prevent this from happening.
  4. Utilization rates may decline unless you proactively reorganize your fleet to match the predicted future demand.

Accepting Far Future Bookings

This approach enables the Availability Engine to confirm new bookings even when the Pickup Location has no available vehicles, as long as there's enough time to move a vehicle from another location. You can specify how long this length of time is by setting the "Override the Location Restriction" to whatever value. For example, as seen below, if this value is set to 30, then any booking in Location A will be accepted even if there are no vehicles available there, so long as there is a 30-day gap between the last drop-off of a vehicle of that category in any location and the bookings pickup date. This is because the Availability Engine is assuming you will relocate this vehicle in that 30-day gap.


To use this strategy, you need to:
  1. Be aware that although the Availability Engine has confirmed the booking and assigned it to a vehicle, you will still need to transfer a vehicle from a low demand site to this location before the booking's pickup.
  2. Know that when the number of days until the booking falls below the value set in the Override the Location Restriction, the booking will be marked with an ALERT.
  3. Monitor the Availability Conflicts Report to identify any bookings that have been marked with an ALERT, as these need a vehicle to be transferred from another site. For more information on this page, please see the Availability Conflict (Availability Engine) article.
  4. Monitor the Vehicle Relocation (AE) Report to identify how long you have before a vehicle needs to be relocated, taking special note of those that have a small number of "Days allowed for relocation" and those that have been marked with an ALERT, as these are the relocations that are most urgent. For more information on this page, please see the Vehicle Relocation Reports article.
  5. Schedule the transfer of vehicles between locations, prioritising transfers to the pickup locations of bookings that have been marked with an ALERT, so that the vehicles are where they need to be.
Points to be aware of if you are using this option:
  1. You will never miss a future booking, as long as you have vehicle available to other locations and there is a large enough of a gap before the pickup.
  2. This option gives you a large window in which you can organise the vehicle transfers, but you will still need to do this manually.
  3. This setting applies to ALL locations and ALL categories, with no way to restrict the number of vehicles to be transferred. So, the length of your window will need to be at least as large as the longest transfer you will perform.
  4. The entire window of time must be free for the booking to be confirmed, potentially leaving the vehicle unused for a large period of time, unless you are proactive with scheduling transfers to mitigate this.

Creating Temporary Vehicle Sharing Rules

This option allows the Availability Engine to accept future bookings based on predefined rules for specific locations, categories and/or dates. This means that new bookings will be confirmed at a location with no available vehicles, if there are vehicle accessible at another specified location and there is a rule that allows the transfer. This option is helpful in dealing with seasonal fluctuations between locations.
These rules can be created by clicking on the link in the Temporary Vehicle Sharing Between Locations section:


This will take you to the Availability Engine Vehicle Movement Rules page where you can add a new rule by selecting the "Add Availability Engine Vehicle Movement Rules" button. This will open the form shown below where you can enter all the information about the vehicle sharing. 


Once created, this record will allow a booking to be confirmed in a location without any available vehicles if:
  1. The booking has this specified Pickup Location.
  2. There are available vehicles in the specified Last Drop off Location that can be transferred.
  3. The length of time between the Last Dropoff and the Pickup is at least as long as the Turnaround Hours set between these two locations.
  4. The booking is against the specified vehicle Category and Category Time.
  5. The bookings Pickup Date is between the set date range.
  6. The booking was made before the Booking Date To value.
There is no limit to the number of Rules that you can create.
The management of this option is fairly similar to that describe in the above strategy. You need to be aware that although the booking has been confirmed, the actual vehicle still needs to be transferred with a non-revenue, maintenance or placeholder booking. You are able to monitor when vehicle transfers are required using the Availability Conflicts and Vehicle Relocation (AE) Reports.

Points to be aware of if you are using this option:
  1. You have a great deal of control of which vehicles can be transferred between which locations and when this can happen.
  2. There is no way to limit the number of vehicles that can be transferred, but you can deactivate a rule by setting the Booking Date To field to the current date, to stop accepting new bookings.
  3. This requires a lot of advanced planning, with new rules required for each period or seasonal change.

Transferring a Vehicle

No matter which of these options you are using, when you arrange to transfer a vehicle from one location to another, you need to enter it as a booking so that the Availability Engine knows where the vehicle is at all times. In general, we would advise that at first you block out a large period during which you would transfer the vehicle, before shortening it once the transfer plans have been locked in.  E.g. allow a week for a move even though it might end up being 2 days. 

There are a few different ways recording a vehicle transfer, they include:

  1. Entering a one-way Maintenance booking.  This will be an allocated booking against a specific vehicle.  If you don’t care which vehicle moves, choose another option below…
  2. Enter a one-way Non-Revenue booking.  Very similar to the maintenance booking above, however it is possible that this could be entered as unallocated (meaning that any vehicle of that category may be shifted).
  3. Enter a Placeholder Booking – this is a special kind of one-way booking that will secure a place in the schedule where a vehicle needs to be relocated to a different location.  Unallocated Placeholder Bookings will be replaced by any new one-way reservation if the pickup and drop-off locations are the same and it overlaps with the date range, giving you the opportunity for a paying customer to transfer the vehicle for you. Please see the Placeholder Bookings article for more information.


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