Sold Vehicle History?

[motley06]

Curious how you folks are handling customer's files that sell their car. We don't want to delete the vehicle and lose all the history of the work we did to it, but we also don't want them coming up in our list of customers we haven't seen in 6 or 9 months.

[timbre4]

6057 Change Ownership: http://youtu.be/M-jqc2jCtZI

[ARS]

We made a Account called Sold Vehicles- We move all customers vehicle to the sold file if they do not have them any more- (unless we know that the vehicle went to the junk yard- then we delete it)

When we do this-- We delete the license & move the recommends to the memo.

HTH
ARS

[motley06]

Thanks, exactly what I was looking for

[ARS]

I forgot- we also put the customer's name who formerly owned the vehicle on the top of the memo- we have had to dig vehicles out of the sold file- either the customer got the vehicle back or one of our other customer's bought it. so this has saved us many times...

ARS

[Rich]

hmmmm, interesting. I ASSUMED that if we deleted the vehicle that if it came back in its next life the system would recognize the VIN. I figured this was true as when we bring up the customer history the vehicle still shows up. Guess we need to change that way of thinking.

[ricmorin]

hmmmm, interesting. I ASSUMED that if we deleted the vehicle that if it came back in its next life the system would recognize the VIN. I figured this was true as when we bring up the customer history the vehicle still shows up. Guess we need to change that way of thinking.

I don't have any hard evidence to back this up with, but with history of a deleted vehicle, the history shows up because it's connected in the database with the customer number and no longer with a VIN. Once deleted, a vehicle (read VIN) can be re-introduced but there's no way to reconnect history since that path (VIN) has been removed. I'm assuming that's what happens behind the scenes. Hope I'm close.

In any event, it would be interesting if the program could retain that VIN an a ghost state. If a matching VIN were entered at a later date, the program could ask you if the history should be connected. I've always just deleted old vehicles.

[Rich]

Completely understood Ric.

Would be nice. As there are times I ask the customer about updating cars, and ridding the ones they don't have. Generally I get a "nope, don't have that any more". With out being able to "track" the VIN I'd almost have to be an investigator to find out what happen. Shy of "no we totaled that one and it got scrapped" I would have to assume that it may come back with a new owner. The one good thing we have going is that we aren't to up-to-date and keeping the customer vehicles updated.

On a side note. If we have a PIA customer I could assign their email to the "ghost" account and mark every car as a CRM account!

[ARS]

We have deleted vehicles & then found out the customer still has them or just gave them to their kids-- once you delete a vehicle-- it is gone! No Vin match or History. That is why we have the sold vehicles account!

[ricmorin]

We have deleted vehicles & then found out the customer still has them or just gave them to their kids-- once you delete a vehicle-- it is gone! No Vin match or History. That is why we have the sold vehicles account!

To be precise, the VIN is gone but the History is still there. If you click on History tab and select Display for Customer, you'll see the history is still there.

[DynaBMan]

Is there any advantage to removing the vehicles, other than having to sort through them in the vehicle screen? Does it save any room in the database, etc?

We service a Fed Ex fleet and there are numerous vehicles that have been retired, ie. scrapped. I could remove several from their list of vehicles, which would make it somewhat easier to sort through the list of 68 vehicles we currently have listed for them.

[Rich]

Is there any advantage to removing the vehicles, other than having to sort through them in the vehicle screen? Does it save any room in the database, etc?

We service a Fed Ex fleet and there are numerous vehicles that have been retired, ie. scrapped. I could remove several from their list of vehicles, which would make it somewhat easier to sort through the list of 68 vehicles we currently have listed for them.

Can't imagine it would save any HD room. As if you open the customers history and hit the Display/customer button all of the history is there, even for the deleted vehicles. It would only make it so you had 40 Fedex truck to look through instead of 80. I am debating this for the Sheriffs office. We have about 50 patrol cars and I bet only 20 are still in service.

[DynaBMan]

Is there any advantage to removing the vehicles, other than having to sort through them in the vehicle screen? Does it save any room in the database, etc?

We service a Fed Ex fleet and there are numerous vehicles that have been retired, ie. scrapped. I could remove several from their list of vehicles, which would make it somewhat easier to sort through the list of 68 vehicles we currently have listed for them.

Can't imagine it would save any HD room. As if you open the customers history and hit the Display/customer button all of the history is there, even for the deleted vehicles. It would only make it so you had 40 Fedex truck to look through instead of 80. I am debating this for the Sheriffs office. We have about 50 patrol cars and I bet only 20 are still in service.

Exactly! We also service a fleet of ambulances and several police departments. It would save a little bit of time, I think.

[artadot]

I would like to see an easier way to edit vehicles. When a customer comes in I start the repair order, then verify customer information and their vehicle bank. If I need to edit the vehicle bank I can't do it in the repair order screen as it says this vehicle has a current order. I have to go into utilities: customer screen to edit. Previous to the update I could do it all in the same screen as long as I didn't convert to a repair order. I know many people don't agree with this but there are certain circumstances that I need a VIN attached to 2 different customers. It would make my life easier if I had the option to do that.

[timbre4]

I'm not seeing this, let's break this down to understand better.

I have an RO on the screen and realize the vehicle is a 4 door SW and not a 4 door sedan; so I go to the Vehicle screen and change the body style. Click the Order tab and the system displays this:

changing.png (5.25 KiB) Viewed 7174 times

I answer yes and continue with the order.

As far as VIN goes, we made the determination that VIN is unique like license plates and in use one instance at a time. You might recall this post where Change Ownership is used to handle any temporary VIN change situations: http://managerforum.net/viewtopic.php?f ... hip#p88394

[artadot]

Sorry I should have added that I want to delete a vehicle they no longer own, not change the vehicle on the repair order

[timbre4]

Typically the removal of customers or vehicles is thought of as a file maintenance function under Utilities, safely away from current open repair orders.

For an existing repair order change that sequence would be:
1) Go to the Vehicle tab and add the new vehicle record
2) Select the new vehicle ("Are you changing vehicles on this order? YES)
3) Select the unwanted vehicle
4) choose Edit - Remove Vehicle (as long as there are no other ROs for warning - remove? YES)

[artadot]

Steps 3 & 4 don't work for me. Here is my procedure: when a customer comes in I go to the schedule screen, click on their name, create the repair order which goes to the order screen. I then go to the customer screen to verify address and phone number and verify that they still own the vehicles listed there. If there is a vehicle they don't own anymore I go to the vehicle screen to remove it, but it comes up with "this vehicle has an existing order, can't remove". This is the way I used to clean up vehicles that customers don't own anymore before the schedule update. Now I need to go into utilities, customer screen etc. It would be more efficient if I could do this all in the same screen.

[timbre4]

Which screen you do this on is less relevant than the fact that the vehicle is tied to an existing order.

To maintain data integrity, the program is never going to let you delete a customer or vehicle record that is tied to an existing order. You have to deal with that first.