What each vehicle status means
There is no delete on a vehicle, and that is deliberate: every car keeps the contracts it was on, the money it earned and its condition photos. A car leaves daily use by status instead, and the status decides where it appears - the fleet tabs, the service wizard, your booking page. Two statuses are set for you: Rented, whenever the car has an active contract, and In service, from a contract vehicle swap. Draft is a half-finished car kept by Save as draft in the wizard. The rest you choose.
Remove a car you no longer own
- Open Vehicles and click the car.
- Click Mark sold at the foot of its drawer. It is offered while the car is Available or a Draft - mark a damaged car Available first.
- The car moves to the Sold tab, drops out of the service wizard's vehicle picker and comes off your booking page. Everything it was part of stays on record.
For a car leaving the fleet for any other reason, Archive does the same holding job - it is on the vehicle card and at the foot of the drawer - and Restore brings an archived car back as Available whenever you want it earning again.
Tip: No status change touches money. A Sold or Archived car keeps every contract, payment and photo it was ever part of - removing a car can never remove what it earned.
Where to find it: Vehicles → open the vehicle
Sold, Archived or Inactive
Sold and Archived behave the same - out of the pickers, off the booking page, history kept. The difference is what you are saying: Sold means the car left the business for good, Archived is a shelf you can take it back down from. Switching Active in fleet off when you add a car does not make a third state: it saves the car as a Draft - still yours and still in the service wizard - and Mark available in its drawer puts it to work.
Damaged, and the alert it raises
Mark damaged, in the same drawer footer, raises a red alert the moment you click it: in your notification bell, on the sidebar badge and on the vehicle's own card. A damaged car earns nothing and cannot be booked. Repair the car and click Mark available to put it back to work.
Why a car says In service
In service is set by one flow: swapping the vehicle on a contract. When you swap a car out and choose Needs service / cleaning for it, the old car is marked In service and comes off your booking page while the renter drives the replacement. When it is ready, click Mark available in its drawer.
A rented car cannot be archived
Rented is automatic - the car has an active contract, and its status follows that contract. While it does, there is no Archive button: archiving a car a renter is driving would shelve a rental that is still running and still billing. End the contract and the vehicle returns to Available - archive it then. A swap instead asks what happens to the old car: pick Ready to go to send it straight back to Available.
Delete this paragraph. (If kept after the status-mapper fix: "One tab note: In service has no tab of its own on the Vehicles page - find those cars under All.")
Related guides
- Add your first vehicle - Get a car into Fleetola with its rego, rates and photos.
- Service and rego reminders - Log a service, set when the next one falls due, and record a registration renewal.
- How the odometer works - Where each vehicle's odometer number comes from, and how to correct it.
- Files and photos on a vehicle - Where a car's papers live, and every condition photo across all its renters.