Managing your fleet
Adding vehicles, demo fleet versus inventory, availability, duplicates, model collapse and inter-branch transfers.
Your fleet in DriveDesk is the list of vehicles you can actually put a customer in — plus the ones you hold as inventory but do not demonstrate. Both live in the same place, with a single flag separating them.
Adding a vehicle
- By registration number — type the number and DriveDesk fetches the make, model, variant, year, colour and fuel type from the vehicle record, so you are not retyping a specification you already own.
- By hand — fill in the details yourself. The registration number is optional in this mode, which matters for vehicles that are not registered yet.
Cars and motorcycles both work; each vehicle carries its kind, which is what lets the marketplace run a dedicated two-wheeler storefront.
Demo fleet versus inventory
Every vehicle has an available-for-test-drives flag. Turn it off and the vehicle stays in your records with its chassis number and history, but it disappears from your public site and from the booking form's vehicle picker. Turn it back on and it returns.
Availability
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Available | Bookable |
| In use | Currently out on a trip |
| Maintenance | Not bookable — the reason is shown in the vehicle picker so nobody wonders where the car went |
| Retired | Out of the fleet; its registration is freed for reuse |
| Missing | Went out and never came back. Kept out of the fleet until a manager marks it recovered |
You can also block out windows on a vehicle's calendar — servicing, a hold for a specific customer, a public holiday — and the booking system keeps it out of those slots.
Archiving and restoring
Archiving takes a vehicle out of the active list without losing anything. It appears under Archived, its history stays intact, and it can be restored to the active fleet at any time.
Duplicates
- Two active vehicles at your dealership cannot share a registration number, and cannot share a chassis number.
- Retiring a vehicle frees its registration, so you can list a replacement carrying the same plate.
- If a different dealership adds a registration you already have, neither add is blocked — the contest is raised for the DriveDesk team to adjudicate using each side's ownership evidence.
How customers see your fleet
- Several units of the same model collapse into one card on your website and on the marketplace, showing the lowest price and how many trims you have.
- The customer picks the exact trim on the detail page with a variant switcher.
- On the marketplace, buyers can tick up to four vehicles and compare their specifications side by side, with a filter to show only the differences.
Moving vehicles between branches
A vehicle can be transferred to another dealership you control, temporarily or permanently. The transfer moves through requested, approved, in transit, received and back again, with a handover QR at each end and a staff member assigned to drive it. Temporary transfers that pass their return date are brought back automatically.
Common questions
- How many vehicles can we add?
- There is no hard cap on adding them, but your plan sets how many can be active at once — 10 on Starter, 40 on Professional, unlimited on Enterprise. The billing page meters your usage against it.
- We sold a demo car — what do we do?
- Retire it. That takes it out of the fleet and frees the registration so you can list the replacement with the same plate.
- We want to track a car but never demo it.
- Turn off its available-for-test-drives flag. It keeps its record and its chassis number but stops appearing publicly and stops being bookable.
Related guides
- Bookings and approvalsShowroom, home-visit and event bookings, per-customer time slots, the approval workflow, reminders and no-shows.
- Your public websiteYour branded storefront — the free address you always have, connecting your own domain, custom pages and opening hours.
- Billing and plansPlans, feature bundles, volume limits, usage metering, GST, payment methods and what happens if a subscription lapses.
Still stuck?
Check the FAQ for a quick answer, or ask us — we reply within one business day.