Vehicle Manager 2008 Fleet Network Edition is the network version of Vehicle Manager 2008; as regards to everything else, both versions are just the same. This database has been designed to help companies that work with fleets of vehicles to administrate all the information related. This information refers to costs, fuel consumption, mileage, drivers, parts, services, maintenance schedules, and else. This "Network" edition has the advantage in that it can be used by multiple users on a network of computers (could be the Internet). There are no special hardware requirements to run Vehicle Manager 2008 since it’s a pretty lightweight application and it can use any regular Windows-based PC as the server.
The interface is very intuitive and neat. A big-buttons tool bar at the top of the screen allows you to get to the different sections of the application. These sections are: Vehicles, Services, Parts, Personnel, Vendors, Options, Reports, and Help. Let’s briefly describe what they are about.
Vehicles is where you list all units in your fleet, add service items with a particular schedule, and register fuel consumption among other information; Service contains a list of pre-created items for you to use at your convenience and allows you to create new items if you need to; Parts contains the database of spare parts you use to repair and maintenance your vehicles; Personnel contains your payroll, including information of drivers (license) and technical information as well; Vendors contains information related to them, mainly contact information; Options allows users to change the units of measure for currency, volume and efficiency; Reports shows links to access to the pre-existing reports that the application produces.
This tool has some weaknesses and advantages. As for the weaknesses, there are three that may be the most important ones: it doesn’t allow creating new reports besides the pre-existing ones; it doesn’t associate parts to service items automatically, so each time you do a routine service you have to associate the parts again; the report creation is rather slow and doesn’t create graphics. Regarding advantages there’s the easiness of use and its very competitive price.
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