Connecting Geotab

Fleet → Telematics is where you connect the fleet system your trucks already run on. Once it is connected, hours of service come from a certified device rather than a log book somebody fills in, which is what a federally regulated carrier needs.

Only an owner or an admin can open this screen. It holds a credential to a system that is not ours, and the fewer people who can point it somewhere else the better.

First, make an API user in Geotab

Do this in MyGeotab before you come back here. Add a new user — something like api-user@yourcompany.ca — and give it read-only clearance on vehicles, duty status and inspections. Then use that user here, not your own login.

Two reasons, and both matter later rather than today. A dedicated user can be revoked on its own, without changing anybody’s password or locking a manager out of their own fleet system. And read-only clearance means this connection cannot alter anything in Geotab even if somebody wanted it to — we only ever read.

Then fill in four fields

• Server: my.geotab.com unless you were told otherwise. If your database actually lives on a different server, Geotab redirects us to it, so the common case needs no thought.
• Database: your database name, which is not your company name. It is usually something like Demo_Your_Company.
• API username: the user you just created.
• Password: that user’s password.

The password is encrypted before it is stored and is never shown again. When you come back to change something else, leave the password box blank and the stored one is kept.

Test it before you rely on it

Press Test connection. The status reads Connected, Not tested yet, or Not working, with the time it was last checked. A saved connection that has never been tested is not evidence of anything — a typo in the database name saves perfectly well.

Match your vehicles and drivers

A connection on its own does not put anything anywhere. Hours and inspections arrive from Geotab naming a Geotab vehicle and a Geotab driver; until each is tied to one of yours, there is nowhere for them to land.

Press Sync vehicles & drivers. That reads the vehicles and drivers in your database and matches what it can against your own records — vehicles by VIN, serial number, plate or unit number, drivers by email, employee number or name. Whatever it cannot match with confidence is listed as unmatched for you to point at the right record yourself. Nothing is changed in Geotab.

What starts working

• Hours of service: press Pull hours on Telematics, and duty status from the device fills the log book for matched drivers.
• Odometers: press Pull odometers, and readings from the truck drive the maintenance intervals in your PM program, so a service comes due on distance actually travelled.
• Fuel & IFTA: pull distance by jurisdiction for a quarter, taken from what the device recorded at each border crossing.
• The fleet map: positions for matched units.
• Unit and driver files: make, model, year, VIN, serial, plate and plate jurisdiction come across where Geotab holds them, and licence details arrive awaiting a manager’s review.

Each of those is a button you press, not a background sync that runs without you. If something you expected is missing after pulling it, the diagnostic on this same screen tells you whether Geotab has no such records or we are asking for a field by a name it does not use.

Removing the connection

Remove deletes the stored credential. Everything already synced — hours, distance, odometer readings, unit and driver details — stays exactly where it is, because those are now your records rather than a view of somebody else’s.