Putting a logistics fleet on ERPNext: vehicles, fuel, and maintenance in one system

The client

A road-freight and distribution company in Tunis running a mixed fleet of trucks and delivery vans across domestic routes. Accounting already ran on ERPNext. Everything about the vehicles themselves did not: positions lived in the telematics provider's web portal, fuel in monthly supplier statements, maintenance in the workshop manager's own spreadsheet, and insurance and vignette renewal dates in a wall calendar.

The problem

Nobody could answer what a single truck cost to run. The data existed, in four places that never agreed and were reconciled by hand at month end, when it was already too late to act on. Preventive maintenance was scheduled from memory rather than from odometer readings, so servicing happened late and roadside breakdowns were treated as bad luck rather than as a missed interval.

The constraints

ERPNext stays the system of record. Accounting, suppliers, and customer invoicing already ran in ERPNext and the finance team had no appetite for a second system. Fleet data had to land inside the ERP, as ERP documents, not in a satellite tool with its own login and its own version of the truth.

Drivers will not use a complicated app. Drivers are on the road, often in low-signal areas, frequently wearing gloves. Anything requiring more than a photo and a number would simply not get filled in, and a fleet system nobody enters data into is a report that lies.

The telematics contract was not up for renegotiation. The GPS units were already installed under a running contract with a provider whose API is what it is. The integration had to work with the provider's existing polling API and its rate limits rather than assuming a webhook feed that was never on offer.

Vehicles as first-class ERP records

Each vehicle, trailer, and piece of yard equipment became an ERPNext asset record carrying its registration, acquisition cost, depreciation schedule, insurance and technical-inspection expiry, and current odometer. Cost lines from fuel, maintenance, and parts post against that record, so the running cost of a vehicle is a report in the ERP rather than an exercise in spreadsheet archaeology.

Telematics polled, not trusted blindly

A Node.js connector polls the telematics provider on a schedule and writes trip distance, engine hours, and odometer readings into ERPNext through a PostgreSQL queue with idempotency keys. Readings that jump implausibly, a common failure when a GPS unit reconnects after a dead zone, are flagged for review instead of silently corrupting the maintenance schedule they feed.

Fuel reconciled against distance actually driven

Fuel card transactions import and match to vehicle and driver by card number and timestamp. Litres are compared against the distance the telematics recorded for the same period, so a consumption figure that drifts away from a vehicle's own baseline surfaces as an exception, whether the cause is a mechanical fault or a fuelling that never reached the tank.

Maintenance scheduled from odometer, not memory

Preventive maintenance plans are defined per vehicle type in kilometres and engine hours. The odometer feed triggers a maintenance work order in ERPNext before the interval is passed, with parts drawn from ERP stock so a service consumes inventory and posts cost like any other operation. The workshop spreadsheet was retired rather than integrated.

A driver app that asks for almost nothing

Drivers confirm a trip, photograph a fuel receipt or delivery note, and report a defect from one screen. Submissions queue on the device and sync when signal returns, because the alternative on a domestic freight route is data that is simply never captured. A reported defect opens a workshop request against that vehicle immediately.

Expiry dates that chase people

Insurance, technical inspection, vignette, and driver licence expiry dates live on the ERP records and generate escalating notifications ahead of the date. An immobilised truck at a roadside check costs a day of revenue; the renewal that prevents it costs an email nobody had been sending.

One running cost per vehicle

Fuel, maintenance, parts, and depreciation post against the same asset record, so cost per vehicle and cost per kilometre are standing ERP reports. The month-end reconciliation between the telematics portal, the fuel statement, and the workshop spreadsheet no longer happens, because the three sources now write to one place.

Servicing happens on the interval

Work orders are raised from odometer readings before the interval is passed rather than after a driver mentions a noise. Maintenance moved from reactive to scheduled, which is visible in the workshop's own planning: services now appear in the week they were predicted.

No more expired documents

Insurance, inspection, and vignette renewals are driven by notifications from the ERP record instead of by a wall calendar. The category of incident where a vehicle is stopped at a roadside check over an expired document is now a process failure with an owner, not an accepted cost of operating.

Fuel exceptions surface in days, not months

Consumption that drifts from a vehicle's own baseline raises an exception while the trips are recent enough to investigate. Whether the cause turns out to be a mechanical fault or a fuelling discrepancy, it is found within the week rather than inside a month-end total.