When a telematics screen is empty
Tell the difference between having no data and us reading the wrong field.
If your log book shows no hours, or IFTA shows no distance, there are two possible reasons and they look identical from the screen: your fleet system holds no such records, or we are asking for a field by a name it does not use.
Telematics has a check that settles it. Open “What is your fleet system actually sending?” and press Ask beside the thing you are missing. It reports how many records came back and what each field is called.
- No records at all: your system holds nothing for that period. A field name cannot be the cause — there was nothing to name.
- Records came back: compare the field names shown against what is missing on screen, and send us the list. That is usually a one-line fix.
Vehicles and Positions are already known to work. They are there so that if everything fails, including those two, you know the problem is the connection rather than any single thing.
What an import brings across
Where your fleet system holds a driver’s licence number and province, importing from Telematics puts them on the driver file. They arrive awaiting review — your fleet system knows the number, not the licence — so a manager still checks them against the real document and attaches the scan. The hours of service cycle comes across the same way where one is recorded.
Units get the same treatment: make, model, year, VIN, serial number, plate and plate jurisdiction come across where your fleet system holds them. Geotab decodes the VIN, so most of what a vehicle file needs arrives without anybody typing it. Tire size is the one part it cannot supply.
Nothing already on a file is ever overwritten. A licence you have recorded, a cycle you set on purpose, a make you typed — all left exactly as they are, even where your fleet system disagrees. The person with the vehicle in front of them is the better source than a VIN decode.
Names, addresses and licence numbers are never printed, and any column with more than a handful of distinct values has its contents withheld whatever it holds. Nothing it returns is saved. It is safe to screenshot.
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