⚠️ Important: Loan car management is included in the Auxo Workshop Elite plan. Until the Elite plan is released, it is available to workshops on the Auxo Workshop Pro plan.
🧪 Beta Release:
This change is currently in beta testing and is only available to select customers included in the beta. It will proceed to full release pending beta feedback.
Set up your workshop's loan cars, allocate one to a job, and print an agreement for the customer to sign.
Loan car management lets you keep your courtesy vehicles in Auxo Workshop instead of on a whiteboard or in a spreadsheet. You add each loan car once, allocate it to a job when a customer needs one, and print an agreement carrying your workshop details, the customer's details and the vehicle's details. Because every loan is linked to a job, you have a record of who had which car and when, which is what you need when a parking fine or an infringement notice turns up weeks later.
🔑 Who Can Manage Loan Cars
Access splits into two parts:
Workshop Owner and Workshop Admin roles can do everything: set up loan cars, edit the agreement, open the Loan Cars Scheduler, and allocate a car to a job.
Other staff roles can allocate a loan car to a job and print the agreement from that job, but cannot open the loan car setup screens or the Loan Cars Scheduler.
➕ Adding a Loan Car to Your Fleet
Loan cars are set up once and then reused. To add one:
Go to Settings > Loan Cars to open the Loan Cars settings page
Stay on the Manage tab.
Click + New Loan Car to open the Add Loan Car window.
Type the registration into the Registration field
Select the matching vehicle if the registration already exists in Auxo Workshop
Click + New Vehicle if there is no match, then fill in the Year, Make, Model and Variant fields. Make and Model work the same way as they do when you add a customer's vehicle.
Click Save. The vehicle appears as a card on the Manage tab.
Each card shows the registration, make, year, model and variant, and the heading above the cards shows how many loan cars you have set up.
📝 Note: A workshop can have up to 20 loan cars. Once you reach 20, the option to add another is no longer available.
✏️ Editing and Removing Loan Cars
Click the ... icon on a loan car's card for these options:
Edit Vehicle Details: opens a short form with the same fields you filled in when adding the car, so you can correct the registration, year, make, model or variant.
Go to Vehicle Page: opens the full Edit Vehicle screen for that vehicle, the same screen you see for any customer vehicle. A Loan Car tag appears at the top right so you can tell at a glance that it is part of your fleet.
Remove from loan list: takes the vehicle off your loan car list.
When you remove a loan car, a confirmation message appears: "Are you sure you want to remove {registration} from your loan cars? The vehicle itself will be kept." The vehicle record itself stays in Auxo Workshop along with its service history, so removing it from the loan list does not delete anything.
⚠️ Important: A loan car with a current or upcoming booking cannot be removed. Reallocate those jobs to a different car first, then remove it.
If you add the same vehicle back to your loan car list later, it keeps its original loan history rather than starting fresh.
📅 Allocating a Loan Car to a Job
Allocate a car from the job itself, at the point the customer needs one:
Open the job the customer's vehicle is booked in for.
Click More Actions at the bottom right of the job header.
Select Allocate Loan Car
Choose a car from the list of available loan cars
The list only shows loan cars that are free for the job's booking and pick up dates, so anything you can select is available for the whole loan. If every car is already committed for those dates, the list shows "There are no loan cars available."
Once allocated, a Loan Car tag showing the registration appears below the Internal Job Notes section of the job header. The tag is visible whether the header is expanded or collapsed.
The loan runs for the job's drop off and pick up dates. Auxo Workshop tracks loans by date rather than by time of day, which means one car can be handed back and go out again on the same day. For a fuller picture of availability across your whole fleet, see Using the Loan Cars Scheduler.
🔄 Changing or Removing the Loan Car on a Job
Click the Loan Car tag below Internal Job Notes on the job header to open the Available Loan Cars window. The dates the car is needed for are shown at the top.
To swap cars: click a different car so it shows a blue outline and tick, then click Swap Loan Car. The change takes effect straight away and the tag updates to the new registration
To take the loan car off the job: click the currently selected car to deselect it. The button changes to Remove Loan Car. Click it to remove the allocation
🖨️ Printing the Loan Car Agreement
The agreement pulls the workshop details, the customer's details from the job, and the loan car's details into a single printable form for the customer to sign.
Allocate a loan car to the job first. The print option only appears once a car is allocated.
Click More Actions on the job header.
Select Print Loan Car Agreement
The agreement opens in your browser's print preview, ready to print and hand over for signing.
💡 Tip: To email the agreement instead of printing it, change the destination in your browser's print window to Save as PDF or Print to PDF, save the file, and attach it to an email.
The printed form includes blank Driver Licence, Mileage Out and Mileage In lines for you to complete by hand at handover and on return, plus a signature and date line for the customer.
⛔ Critical Information: The conditions supplied with Auxo Workshop are a starting point only and are not legal advice. Review and update them to suit your business before using the agreement with customers, and make sure they give you the legal and insurance cover you need.
The wording, the fields that appear, and your logo are all yours to control. See Setting Up Your Loan Car Agreement for how to change them.
📌 Important Notes
A loan car is still an ordinary vehicle record. Service history, vehicle reminders and the vehicle page all work exactly as they do for a customer's vehicle.
Loan cars are hidden from Contacts > Vehicles. Manage them from Settings > Loan Cars instead.
A vehicle that belongs to a customer stays on that customer's record if you add it as a loan car. It still appears in the vehicle list on their customer record.
Cancelling a job does not release the loan car. If a booking is cancelled, remove or reallocate the loan car so the vehicle shows as available again.