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There is a notebook in the door pocket of the crew van, with a pen tied to a string. The first pages are neat. After that, three different handwritings alternate with empty lines. Nobody wrote anything after the callout at three in the morning, and nobody holds it against them. At the end of the quarter the equipment officer sits down with the notebook and tries to turn odometer readings and memory into a list for the municipality. (In a German volunteer fire department this is the Gerätewart, the member who looks after vehicles and equipment, usually alongside a day job.)
Willingness is rarely the problem. The entry is due at exactly the moment nobody has time for it. This post shows how to collect the odometer reading at the moment someone is looking at the dashboard anyway: on booked trips, and after the callout that nobody books. The same applies to the local unit of a rescue or relief organization.
A fire engine moves for two reasons. The planned trips are known in advance: drill night, the regular run that keeps a rarely used vehicle in working order, the youth fire brigade's outing, a training course, the roadworthiness inspection. The others come unannounced: the callout, the follow-up alarm, the unplanned trip to the workshop.
A paper logbook treats both the same and loses on the second kind. A booking calendar on its own loses there too, because a callout has no booking. A logbook for a fire department therefore needs two ways in that end up in the same log.
In Dispoly the feature is called "Pickup & return". It is set up per resource, which here means per vehicle, not across a whole category. That fits the apparatus bay: on the crew van you want the odometer and the fuel level, on the generator the operating hours, on the training room nothing at all.
| Booked trip | Trip without a booking | |
|---|---|---|
| Examples | Drill night, maintenance run, youth fire brigade | Callout, workshop |
| How it is recorded | "Pickup" and "Return" buttons on the booking, or the QR sign at the vehicle | QR quick entry at the vehicle, or "Entry without booking" in the app |
| Access | Members in the app, guests through the link in their email, anyone through the QR code without a login | Through the QR code without a login, name typed in; in the app as a member |
| In the logbook | Pickup and return, the return with the trip's difference | "Without booking" with name and reason |
Whoever booked the crew van for drill night or a maintenance run finds the "Pickup" and "Return" buttons on the booking: on the dashboard, in the reservations table and on the resource page. Pickup can be recorded from 24 hours before the booking starts, and the counter is prefilled with the last known reading. At return the pickup reading sits next to the field, and the difference updates as you type, for example "+55 km".
What makes the difference in a fire department's day-to-day:
If the neighboring department borrows a vehicle through your public booking page, it has no account with you. It gets the recording link in the confirmation email, in the approval email and in the reminder 24 hours before the start, and records in the browser, with no app and no login. The link works until 90 days after the booking ends.
For everything without a booking, a sign hangs at the vehicle: an A4 PDF with a QR code that an admin generates and prints for each resource. When the engine is back in the bay after a callout, it goes like this:
Required are the name and whatever the equipment officer set up as required, which with the "Driver logbook" template means the odometer. Required fields carry an asterisk, and if something is missing the form points to the field when you submit. The browser on the phone remembers the name for next time. Anyone who also wants to report the fuel level or damage does it in the same form. The entry appears in the logbook as "Without booking", with name and reason.
Two things you should know. If a booking is open right now, say the youth fire brigade's trip, the page first asks "What are you recording?" and offers that booking's pickup or return, without showing who booked. For the callout, tap "Without booking". And the sign carries a different code from the booking QR code on the door, which leads to the booking page. Label both clearly, or someone will scan the wrong one.
And if nobody scans after the callout? The kilometers do not vanish. Counters carry over from booking to booking, and at the next pickup the gap shows up in the logbook, for example as "+38 km without booking". That only works if the real odometer reading goes into that pickup. The field is prefilled with the last known reading, and whoever saves it without checking pushes the callout kilometers into the difference of the next trip. Say that out loud once at drill night. Anyone who knows the reading after the callout can add it in the app through "Entry without booking", with date and time, back-dated if needed.
In Reservations there is a "Handovers" tab with the groups Pickup due, Out, Overdue, Return missing and Pickup missing. From there, as an admin, you record on someone's behalf, copy the guest link for the neighboring department, or follow up with "Remind now". A "Handovers" card on the dashboard is visible to all members.
How much weight sits behind it, you decide per vehicle under Enforcement:
No level blocks bookings. Someone who forgot the return can still book the crew van again. For a volunteer organization we think that is right: drill night should not fall through because of a missing odometer reading.
The logbook for each vehicle shows, month by month, the reading at month end, the difference within the month and the number of trips. Below that are the entries, with markers such as corrected, late entry, cancelled, via link, via QR code and without booking.
In Germany, the state fire services acts make fire protection a municipal duty: the municipality sets up, equips and funds its fire department, so the vehicles usually belong to it. If the municipality wants to see the kilometers, an admin exports the logbook as CSV or Excel, for one vehicle or for all, one month at a time. Each booking gets a row, and entries without a booking get rows of their own. Per counter there are columns for pickup, return, difference and difference without booking, plus a "Driver" column. Numbers arrive as real numbers, including in German Excel with its decimal comma, so the town hall can add them up without rework.
The reservations export also gains the columns "Picked up at", "Returned at" and "Logbook" (complete or missing). The resource export shows the current reading per counter. If you need the odometer readings of all vehicles in one list, for maintenance planning say, that is where you find them.
Counters are not only for kilometers. The "Operating hours" template is meant for generators, pumps and machines, so for the portable generator or the portable fire pump. A vehicle can carry several counters, for example the odometer and the pump's operating hours. Each resource can have up to 20 fields, of which at most 8 are counters.
If you do not have a shared booking calendar yet, start one step earlier: Digitizing equipment management in the fire department. How Dispoly fits a fire department or the local unit of a rescue organization is on the pages for fire departments and for rescue organizations. The feature in detail is on the vehicle logbook page.
Pickup & return is included in all plans, Starter too, at no extra cost. Trying it costs nothing: no contract, no setup fee, 30 days free.