A fire department vehicle logbook without paper, callouts included

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.

Two kinds of trips, one odometer

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.

Way in 1: pickup and return on the booking

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:

• Any member of the organization can record, not only the person who booked. The youth leader booked, someone else drove: the name stored is the name of the person recording.
• Forgot the pickup? The reading can be added in the return form, so the trip still gets a correct difference.
• A reading below the previous one is never blocked. It has to be confirmed, in case someone mistyped. The person who recorded it, the person who booked and admins can correct it. The original value stays visible.
• The return has no deadline in the app. Someone who only remembers the next evening can still record it.

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.

Way in 2: QR quick entry after the callout

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:

1. The driver scans the code with the phone camera. The form for exactly this vehicle opens, with no login and no booking.
2. Check the reason. "Callout" is preselected. The other options are Workshop, Correction and Other.
3. Enter the odometer reading. The last known reading is shown for reference.
4. Enter your name and submit.

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.

What the equipment officer sees

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:

• Optional: buttons and logbook only, nobody gets reminded.
• Remind: missing entries are flagged and listed. If the return is missing, one reminder email goes to the person who booked, two hours after the booking ends.
• Enforce: in addition, an escalation email to the resource's contact person if the return is still missing after three days.

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.

The month for the municipality

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.

What this is not

• No telematics. No GPS, no hardware in the vehicle. The reading comes from the person looking at the dashboard.
• No replacement for incident reporting. Reason, odometer and name make a logbook entry, not an incident report. That stays in your records software. How the different systems split the work is covered in our overview of fire department software.
• No tax-compliant trip log. In Germany that would be the Fahrtenbuch the tax office accepts for company cars that are also driven privately. Entries can be corrected, route, address and business contact are not enforced, and the logbook is not tamper-proof. It is a usage log for shared vehicles and equipment. Where the line to a tax-grade trip log runs is explained in mileage and trip logs. When a logbook is required at all is covered in pool vehicle logbooks in Germany. Whether and in what form your municipality or authority expects a logbook is best clarified with them beforehand. This is general information, not legal or tax advice.
• The quick entry does not verify identity. Whoever scans the sign types in a name. The number of entries is limited technically, and an admin can reset or disable the code. Old printouts then stop working.
• One automatic reminder email per missing return, no chain of reminders. On top of that: no photos, no signatures, and field types are limited to text, number, select and counter. There is no native app; everything runs in the browser.

Checklist: set up in one evening

1. Open the vehicle, go to the "Pickup & return" section and choose the "Driver logbook" template. It brings odometer, driver, purpose, fuel level, "Refueled?" and damage/remarks.
2. The template asks for the odometer at pickup and return as required, everything else is optional. Remove what you do not need. Which details generally prove useful at a handover is covered in the handover checklist.
3. Enter the current odometer as the initial reading. You can do that directly when setting up the counter.
4. Check the enforcement level. The template starts on "Remind", a sensible first setting for the crew van.
5. For the other vehicles, use "Copy from resource" and set each vehicle's own initial reading.
6. Under "QR quick entry", create the QR code for each vehicle, print the sign as a PDF, laminate it and hang it at the parking bay, where the driver walks past after a callout anyway.
7. Scan it once yourself, with your own phone and in the light the bay actually has.
8. At the next drill night, spend two minutes showing it: the button on the booking, the sign on the vehicle.

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.