Servicing by distance
Service by kilometres rather than the calendar — the countdown runs off the vehicle's own odometer and raises the job without anyone watching it.
A van doing 40,000 km a year and a van doing 6,000 km a year should not share a service interval, but on a calendar they do. One gets serviced too late, the other too often, and both cost money.
Distance-based servicing counts down against each vehicle's own odometer. Same rule, different due date per vehicle, no spreadsheet.
What goes wrong on a calendar
- High-use vehicles run past due. "Every 6 months" on a van doing 3,500 km a month means the oil is 21,000 km old.
- Low-use vehicles get serviced for nothing. A spare van does 4,000 km a year and still gets two services, because the calendar says so.
- Odometers get read once a year. Usually at service time, which is too late to plan for.
- Nobody knows what's coming. Workshop capacity gets planned in the week it's needed.
How Yipii handles it
| Problem | What you use | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Per-vehicle intervals | A service schedule with a distance interval (km or miles) | Each vehicle counts down against its own odometer, with kilometres-remaining on the list |
| Odometer readings | Automatic distance from the tracker, or manual odometer entries | The countdown advances without anyone typing anything |
| The same rule across the fleet | A Fleet Service Plan | One interval defined once, materialised into a real per-asset schedule for every vehicle it covers |
| Advance warning | The due-soon band (1,000 km before due) | Time to order parts and book a bay |
| Nothing slipping | Overdue schedules raise an issue and notify admins | The job chases you, not the other way round |
| Whichever-comes-first | A secondary time interval on the same schedule | "Every 10,000 km or 12 months" as one job with one history |
How the countdown actually works
Worth understanding, because it is where the surprises live.
When you create a distance schedule, Yipii sets the due odometer to the vehicle's current odometer at the moment you save, plus the interval. It does not ask what the odometer read at the last service.
So adding "every 10,000 km" to a van showing 84,000 km that was last serviced at 80,000 km makes it due at 94,000 km — 6,000 km late. Fix the vehicle's odometer first, or correct the schedule's due figure after saving. The kilometres-remaining column on the list is the quickest way to spot one that anchored wrong.
A background job sweeps every active schedule once an hour. Inside 1,000 km of due it emits a due-soon event; past due it opens an issue and notifies your admins — one open issue per schedule, not one per sweep.
A month in the life
1st — A new van joins the fleet. It is added to the Fleet Service Plan for light commercials, which materialises its own 10,000 km oil-change schedule anchored to its current odometer.
Ongoing — The tracker reports distance. Nobody records anything.
At 9,100 km — The schedule enters the due-soon band. It appears in the upcoming work for the month, so filters get ordered with the normal stock run.
At 10,000 km — Overdue. An issue is raised against the van and the workshop is notified.
In the bay — A work order is raised from the schedule, parts and labour go on it, and completing it resets the countdown and stamps the service history.
What you'll need
- A reliable odometer source. Either a tracker reporting distance, or somebody entering odometer readings. Without one, a distance schedule never becomes due — this is the single most common reason a schedule looks broken.
- Correct starting odometers on existing vehicles, for the anchoring reason above.
- A service task per job, so completing a work order resets the right schedule.
- No engine-hours option. Yipii schedules by distance or by date only. Plant that wears by run-time has to be approximated with a calendar interval.
Typical results
| Lever | Assumption | Annual effect |
|---|---|---|
| Services avoided on low-use vehicles | 6 vehicles × 1 unnecessary service, €180 each | €1,080 |
| Deferred wear on high-use vehicles | 1 avoided premature engine repair every 3 years, €3,500 | €1,170/yr amortised |
| Admin removed | 3 h/month of spreadsheet chasing, €18/h | €650 |
| Fewer breakdowns from missed servicing | 2 roadside call-outs avoided, €220 each | €440 |
Worked examples using the assumptions shown, not measured customer outcomes.
Get started
- Make sure each vehicle's current odometer is right.
- Create a service schedule with a
kminterval — or a Fleet Service Plan if the rule applies to many vehicles. - Add a secondary time interval if the job also has a calendar limit.
- Check the kilometres-remaining column after a day of driving to confirm the countdown moves.
Faults rather than distance? See fault-code-driven servicing.