Vehicle

How it works

The mechanics of this kit, plainly — what runs and when, where the data lands, and what you look at.

• Vehicle sweep runs mondays · 7am and keeps the The logbook dashboard fresh. Mondays — reads the insurer, the garage and the licensing office; files the costs; warns thirty days out.
• What is captured lands in the Vehicle record dataset, which lives at Data/Vehicle Record in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Vehicle costs dataset, which lives at Data/Vehicle Costs in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Maintenance schedule dataset, which lives at Data/Vehicle Maintenance in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Check log dataset, which lives at Data/Vehicle Checks in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Faults dataset, which lives at Data/Vehicle Faults in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Who to call dataset, which lives at Data/Vehicle Contacts in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• The The logbook dashboard reads from the dataset and shows, at a glance: log a fill-up · routine checks · next dates · due in the next 60 days · cost by vehicle · on the register · running cost, all logged · cost month by month, every vehicle · last service · faults · fuel economy · who to call · how this board works.

The wiring, in one breath: Vehicle register writes to Vehicle record · Cost capture writes to Vehicle costs · Vehicle record shown by The logbook · Vehicle costs shown by The logbook · The logbook kept fresh by Vehicle sweep · Vehicle sweep run by Flint · Flint holds Vehicle register · Flint holds Cost capture · Flint holds Schedule and checks · Schedule and checks writes to Maintenance schedule · Maintenance schedule logs into Check log · Flint holds Faults and garage · Faults and garage writes to Faults · Faults and garage keeps Who to call · Flint holds Buying and selling.

Getting the most from it

A kit earns its place when it changes what you look at and what you say, not when it is installed. This is the rhythm that makes it pay.

• Give each vehicle the dates you know the day you add it — a rough month is fine — and Next dates is worth a glance from that moment. The blanks are honest; fill them as the letters arrive. When a vehicle goes, say so — "sold the van" — and it drops off the table keeping its history. The next one is a row, not a setup.
• Say a cost the way you'd say it to a passenger — "filled up, $62", "serviced today, $180 at the garage" — and Cost capture files it against the right vehicle. With two on the register, name which; if you don't, Flint asks rather than guessing.
• Read Due in the next 60 days on Monday morning, after the Vehicle sweep has been through your email. Amber at thirty days is the honest signal — it is drawn from the register and each vehicle's schedule, so a date nobody stated is never on it.
• Forward the renewal email, the MOT certificate or the garage invoice to Flint and the date on the register moves from the document, not from memory. That is the correction that keeps the table true.
• Look at Cost by vehicle once a month, not once a week: it answers which one is costing more, and the line beside it whether the total is growing. Neither reads a bank — they add up only what you and your email have said.
• At the pump, press Log a fill-up on The logbook and type the mileage on the clock, how much went in and what it cost, and tick it if you filled to full. That is all Fuel economy needs: after two full fill-ups with the mileage, the Monday sweep shows each vehicle's figure, worked out from your own numbers and never a maker's claim. Ask Flint "how many mpg is the van doing?" for the working.
• Read Flint the service page of the handbook once, or hand over a photo of it, and Schedule and checks writes each vehicle's maintenance schedule: the service items by months or mileage, the tyres and the battery from the day they were fitted, and a short list of checks with what to check against. Routine checks on the board then takes you through one vehicle's checks a step at a time and keeps how each one was. Anything it could not source stays blank.
• When something sounds or feels wrong, tell Flint in your own words and say when it happens. Faults and garage writes it down so you can tell the garage exactly that, follows it through booked in to sorted, and you tick it off on the board when it is fixed. Ask "what has the van had done?" and the answer comes from the cost log and the faults together. Flint never says what is wrong.
• Give Flint your breakdown cover's number and your membership number, and the insurer's claims line, once. They sit on the board under Who to call, so at the side of the road they are one tap away, and "I've broken down" in chat gets the right one first.
• Thinking of selling, or of buying another? Ask what one like it is going for. Buying and selling finds the figures with their sources and the dates they were read, and writes the paperwork from the official source as a note you tick through. What you ask, offer or pay is yours; Flint never says.

Make it yours

Nothing here is fixed. The pieces are ordinary agents, routines, datasets and dashboards, so anything you know about shaping those applies. Retire whatever earns nothing.

Things people usually change first

Say any of these in chat, or edit them on the kit’s page in the app.

• What you call each vehicle — the name on the register is the word Flint uses back.
• When the Monday sweep runs, or turning it off and keeping the register by hand.
• The garage and the insurer you use, so the sweep searches for them by name.
• Whether the log keeps fuel at all, or only the big things — services, tyres, renewals.
• The units each vehicle is measured in (miles or kilometres; litres, gallons or kWh), and how you like fuel economy put: miles per gallon, litres per 100 km, or miles per kWh.
• Which routine checks are on each vehicle's list, and what each is checked against. The list is yours to shorten.

Your first run

Installing starts a short setup conversation — not a form. Answer roughly, correct later.

1. Installing ends with "Meet Flint", a short conversation and not a form. Flint starts from what 1Presence already knows: anything you have told it before, and any registration document, insurance letter, MOT certificate or service invoice in your vault (it asks your permission to look there if it needs to). It shows you what it found so you can confirm or correct it, and asks only for the gaps. Then each vehicle in turn: what you call it, the registration if you know it, and the dates you know off the top of your head (MOT or inspection, tax or registration, insurance renewal, last service, rough mileage). Each row lands as you say it; a blank stays blank.
2. Nothing in that conversation touches your email. The Vehicle sweep is what reads it — every Monday, for what the insurer, the garage and the licensing office have sent about each vehicle — and it asks for email access the first time it runs, from its own screen, where the ask makes sense.
3. If you stop part-way, nothing is lost. A vehicle with no dates has nothing for the board to count down, so whatever is still missing waits on the Kit page with a way back to Flint, and Flint offers it once the next time you talk. Tell it a part does not apply to you (there is no MOT where you live, say), or that you have finished setting up, and it stops asking. Until a vehicle is on the register, the Monday sweep leaves one card inviting you in rather than searching for nothing.
4. The first sweep with a vehicle on the register looks back a year — filing the costs it can be sure of against the right vehicle, moving a date only when a document states the new one, and drawing Due in the next 60 days, Last service and Fuel economy. After that it scans only what is new, and says something only when a date is within thirty days, a document moved one, or an email could not be matched.

Watch the first pass, then tell it what you would have done differently — that correction teaches it more than any setup could.

The essentials

Learning, preferences and run costs work the same in every kit — so they are covered once, in the Kits guide.

Living with a Kit — the Kits guide →

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