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At Smartrak, we’re often asked:
“Why don’t I just manage fleet bookings in Microsoft Outlook?”
It’s a fair question. There’s no denying that you can certainly manage a shared fleet with Microsoft Outlook Calendar. However, we genuinely believe you’d be doing your organisation a great disservice.
Outlook is primarily a communications tool. Outlook is widely used, familiar, and handles email and personal calendars well. But when it comes to managing shared vehicle fleets, Outlook is trying to do a job it wasn’t designed for.
Here’s a breakdown of why Outlook falls short and how PoolCar delivers the features you need as a Fleet Manager and will serve you better in the long run.
What happens when a driver runs late?
Outlook relies on people to notice conflicts and manually update bookings. If a vehicle is delayed and another staff member is waiting, this can lead to major disruptions. How do you ensure the next person has enough notice to change their booking and secure an alternative vehicle?
When managing your pool vehicles in a Shared Outlook Calendar, you are relying on staff to be proactive in these situations. Have you ever had to kick someone out of a meeting room because their booking has run overtime, and they haven’t updated the Outlook Calendar booking? Now imagine how much harder that would be if the asset is a vehicle that hasn’t returned to the office.
In contrast, PoolCar is built to manage delays automatically. It can insert a buffer between bookings to allow for small overruns or time needed to return keys. If a vehicle isn’t returned on time, an alert is sent to the Fleet Manager, who can take immediate action - such as rebooking or arranging alternative transport - without needing to contact the driver.
With PoolCar:
Winner: PoolCar
Who last had the keys? Where are they now?
Key management is often ignored or downplayed. Organisations are generally focused primarily on the ability to manage bookings. Outlook offers no control over who can access vehicle keys. Lost or unreturned keys create frustration, downtime, and audit headaches.
When managing your pool vehicles with a shared Outlook Calendar, you also lack a key management system; you rely on staff to make not take the wrong keys and return keys on time to the right location/hook. Often in these scenarios a member of the administration staff is tasked with their management, or worse, keys are stored in a communal area. If keys go missing or are lost, it is very difficult to audit who last had them.
In contrast, PoolCar integrates directly with our two key management solutions: KeyMaster and Keyless Entry. Both require a valid vehicle booking for staff to access a vehicle’s keys. Utilising these solutions also ensures only authorised staff can access vehicles, and should keys disappear, fleet managers can easily identify who last had them.
With PoolCar:
Can any staff member book any vehicle? They shouldn’t.
Some vehicles require specific licences or training - manuals, utes, or maintenance vans, for example.
Not all vehicles in an organisation’s fleet are shared equally. In some cases, vehicles might only be used for specific purposes or by a select group of staff. It makes sense to restrict who can access these vehicles.
Outlook Calendars have limited capacity to restrict who can access a shared resource. If a user can search for it in the scheduling assistant, there’s no way to stop them from booking it. That means you’d have to add in additional layers of administration to ensure you’re gatekeeping mission-critical assets.
PoolCar has the ability to restrict usage on a vehicle-by-vehicle basis. What’s more, you don’t need to allocate more resources to police these restrictions. If a user doesn’t have permission, they simply won’t see the vehicle as an option. Does this truck only need to be driven by the maintenance staff? Does the bus require a special driver’s licence? PoolCar’s vehicle and group permissions make solving these scenarios simple.
With PoolCar:
How are you tracking vehicle distance and wear?
If you’re relying on manual data entry or paper logs, errors are inevitable - and you may be missing out on tax claims.
It’s important to keep an eye on the odometer readings of fleet vehicles. Readings are used to ensure vehicle maintenance is completed on time, and also tracks the lifecycle of an individual vehicle. It can also be used to claim tax incentives, such as RUC and Fringe Benefits Tax (FBT) in New Zealand, and both FBT and Fuel Tax Credits in Australia.
When organisations rely on Outlook Calendars to manage pool vehicles, it often means they’re also relying on manual paper odometer records. Without fail, this means they’re running into a whole host of problems, including manual data input and tracking data via spreadsheets.
PoolCar has multiple ways to track vehicle odometers, including staff logging into PoolCar and updating their trip distance. When combined with a KeyMaster key cabinet, this data can be captured when the vehicle is returned. The process can also be completely automated by combining PoolCar with a GPS tracking solution like Smartrak’s OBD-II. The data can be pulled directly from the vehicle into the PoolCar system. This means there’s no room for user error.
With PoolCar:
You can’t improve what you can’t measure.
Outlook doesn’t provide insights into vehicle usage, underutilisation, or booking frequency.
It’s important for Fleet Managers to be able to make informed decisions about how their vehicles are being utilised. Fleet budgets are often razor thin, so the ability to make potential cost reductions can only be a good thing. Having the tools to do that is therefore incredibly important.
Unfortunately, because a Shared Outlook Calendar is primarily a scheduling tool, it doesn’t capture vehicle utilisation data or have inbuilt reporting capabilities. We often get enquires for PoolCar for exactly these reasons.
PoolCar has a whole suite of inbuilt reports designed specifically to inform Fleet Managers about how their fleet is performing. With this data you can start making informed decisions about your fleet. Do you need more vehicles, or do you have too many? What’s more, you can enhance PoolCar with a GPS tracking solution like our OBD-II. This allows you to gain even more insights on how vehicles are being used when they leave the car park.
With PoolCar:
How do you recover fleet costs across departments?
Outlook doesn’t provide a reliable way to attribute bookings to cost centres.
Often, organisations spread the costs of their fleet across multiple departments. By analysing the number of bookings each department has made, Fleet Managers can charge the individual departments for their usage. This ensures whoever is running the Fleet Department isn’t responsible for all vehicle running costs.
As far as we can tell, there is no easy way to report on who has booked a shared resource in Shared Outlook Calendars. It may be possible to download an excel report as an Outlook administrator. However, this would likely be a time-intensive process involving data manipulation in various Excel spreadsheets.
PoolCar has the native ability to assign a cost centre to individual users. It can also be a required piece of information when making a booking, so the data isn’t skipped or missed. This means that every vehicle booking is automatically allocated to a department in your organisation. This makes the job of assigning fleet costs a simple and straightforward process for Fleet Managers.
With PoolCar:
You booked it. So did someone else. Now what?
Outlook can allow double bookings, especially in shared calendars.
Imagine this scenario: You’re heading out to an important client meeting and you did the right thing by planning ahead and booking a car. Unfortunately, when you go to collect the keys another staff member claims they have a booking for the same vehicle.
In certain cases, Outlook Calendars will allow users to double-book resources. While this might be uncommon, it’s certainly not how a system designed to manage shared resources should operate. Especially when the organisation’s success relies on travel.
PoolCar is a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution. This means it is designed from the ground up to be managed in an online environment. Consequently, as soon as a booking is created, that booking can be viewed by everyone who is logged into the system. It will also not allow another booking for that vehicle and time slot to be created afterwards. This means that double bookings cannot occur.
With PoolCar:
What if you only have a few vehicles?
If you manage fewer than five shared vehicles, a full PoolCar solution might be more than you need right now.
While we believe that PoolCar is the perfect tool to help organisations manage their shared fleets, we do recognise that it’s not going to be suitable for every use case. If you are a small organisation or only have a couple of (<5) shared vehicles, then it might be worth exploring alternative solutions. PoolCar really starts creating value when its managing 20, 50, or more than 100 vehicles.
Outlook might work - for now. But when you grow PoolCar is scalable and starts delivering real value as your fleet expands.
However, while a Shared Outlook Calendar might be the best solution for your needs today, it may not always be the case. We’re always more than happy to discuss how Smartrak and PoolCar can help manage your shared fleet.
So, there you have it. While Outlook might seem convenient, it's not a true fleet management tool. It lacks the automation, control, and visibility that modern fleet operations need.
| Feature / Consideration | Outlook | PoolCar |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic rescheduling | ❌ | ✅ |
| Key management | ❌ | ✅ |
| Vehicle permissions / access control | ❌ | ✅ |
| Vehicle odometer tracking | ❌ | ✅ |
| Reporting & fleet insights | ❌ | ✅ |
| Cost centre recovery | ❌ | ✅ |
| Prevent double bookings | ❌ | ✅ |
| Suitable for very small fleets (<5) | ✅ | ⚠️* |
| More (visit PoolCar or get in touch below) | ❌ | ✅ |
*PoolCar can be overkill for very small fleets but scales effectively as your fleet grows.
PoolCar is built for fleets - and it takes the pain out of managing vehicles, keys, and staff bookings. If you’re ready to modernise and simplify how your organisation manages its shared vehicles, we’re here to help.
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AUS +61 3 9600 0477