Run an airport transfer operation

What it is

A way to run airport pickups and drop-offs in 4fleet from the price list to the invoice, in four phases: price airport work, take the request, run the day, then close and bill. Each phase says what 4fleet does for you, what it leaves to a person, and where operators usually get caught out. The exact clicks are in the Help articles linked from each phase.

Who it is for

Owners who set the prices, and dispatchers who take the requests and run the day. Drivers have their own course on the driver app.

Why it matters

Airport work punishes small gaps. A request without a flight number is a flight nobody watches. A guessed return time becomes a driver's pickup time. Waiting that nobody recorded is waiting you cannot bill. Most of these gaps are closed in the first two phases, well before the day of the job.

Phase 1: Price airport work

An airport job is priced from your vehicle class rate cards like any other job. Two parts of the rate card matter more here than elsewhere: the waiting rate and the way pricing zones behave.

Set Waiting time rate (per hour) on each class rate card. When a booking is priced, its waiting rate is saved with the price, and the driver's waiting timer charges at that saved rate. The timer has no free waiting allowance of its own: it counts every minute between start and stop.

Pricing zones are often the first idea for airport prices, and they rarely do what operators expect. A zone applies only when every stop of the job is inside its circle. A circle around the airport will not give you a fixed airport to city center price, because the city center is outside it. 4fleet has no table of fixed prices per route, so check what your rate cards give for your main airport routes before you rely on them.

Meet and greet is best set up once as an extra under Extras & Add-ons, so it can be ticked under Extras when you generate the quote and shows as its own line. For depth, read Pricing zones and distance tiers and Extras, seasonal rules and event dates.

Tips

• Generate a test quote for each airport you serve, in each direction, and compare it with what you charge today.
• Decide your free waiting policy for arrivals and departures and write it into your terms. You apply it later, when you approve the driver's waiting charge.

Gotchas

• A zone is not a route price. A job that starts inside the circle and ends outside it is priced from the class rates.
• If meet and greet is both an extra and a fee on the same quote, the client pays for it twice.

Recommendations

• Fill in the waiting rate on every class before the first airport quote, not after a driver asks why the timer shows nothing to charge.
• Use a fee on the quote for one-off airport costs, and keep extras for what clients choose often.

Phase 2: Take the request

Most airport requests arrive by email, and the parser reads the pickup, the dropoff, the passengers and the flight number. It also reads whether the client asked for meet and greet. When it detects an airport but no flight number, 4fleet lists the flight number among the missing details.

A return is its own job. The client is dropped at the airport today and collected next week, so each part needs its own pickup time and may get a different driver. Keep both in one enquiry: open the Itinerary tab and use Add job for the return. When the return time is not known yet, leave it to be confirmed and ask the client. The Required details card counts it as missing, which is the point. If the parser finds a pickup and dropoff at the same place, it warns that a return or a destination was probably lost.

Record the passenger's name, not only the client's. On the day, the driver's greeting sign shows the passenger name; with no passenger name it shows a plain welcome, never the client company. For a request with an outbound and a return on different services, the Pricing scope choice Per job prices each job on its own. Read Returns, multi-stop and several jobs in one request for the reasoning.

Tips

• Ask for the flight number and the passenger's mobile in your first reply. One question now is cheaper than a phone hunt at arrivals.
• For departures, ask what time the flight leaves and work back from it to the pickup time, allowing for the airport and the traffic at that hour.

Gotchas

• A typed guess for a return time becomes a real pickup time on the driver's job. Nobody remembers later that it was a guess.
• An agency booking for a traveler: if only the agency is on the booking, the greeting sign has no name to show.

Recommendations

• Treat a missing flight number on an airport job as a reason not to send the quote yet.
• Keep the outbound and return in one enquiry so the client gets one quote and you get one booking.

Phase 3: Run the day

When flight tracking is on for your workspace (check Flight tracking in Settings > Integrations > Connected services), 4fleet checks the status of flights on upcoming pickups. The Calendar shows a Tracked flights tile. When a flight runs more than 10 minutes late, or is canceled, the office gets an in-app alert. When the delay grows past 30 minutes, or the flight is canceled, the passenger is emailed too, if 4fleet has their address. The driver is not told by 4fleet.

Flight tracking never moves the pickup time. A person decides the new time, because it depends on things 4fleet does not know: the airport, the bags, the driver's next job. Change it with Edit job, tell the driver yourself, and tell the client with Notify customer. See Flight tracking and live tracking.

In the driver app, the job has a Greeting sign button. When the client asked for meet and greet, the button is highlighted and marked Meet-and-greet requested. Under Waiting time on the Proof tab, the driver uses Start waiting and Stop waiting once the job is in progress. The recorded time is not billed by itself: it waits for the office to decide. The driver's side is in Waiting time, incidents and the proof photo.

Tips

• Look at the alerts before each wave of arrivals, not only when the phone rings.
• When you move a pickup, check the driver's next job straight away. A late flight often pushes into it.

Gotchas

• If nobody reads a flight alert, the driver still arrives at the original pickup time.
• Live tracking for the passenger is off until you switch on Live driver tracking. Turn it on before you promise clients a tracking link.

Recommendations

• Agree with your drivers when they start the waiting timer, for example at the scheduled pickup time or when the flight lands, and keep the rule the same for everyone.
• Have the driver message dispatch when the passenger is not at the meeting point, rather than leaving the timer running in silence.

Phase 4: Close and bill

After the job, the booking's Commercial tab shows what still needs a decision. Recorded waiting and other driver charges appear under Pending driver charges: choose Approve billable, Approve internal or Reject for each. This is where your free waiting policy is applied. Parking and tolls the client should pay go under Additional client charges.

If the booking was already invoiced, an Unbilled charges banner offers Create supplementary invoice, so the client gets a separate invoice for the extras rather than a changed one. When nothing is open, use Close booking. The details are in Extra charges, driver charges and closing a booking.

Tips

• Decide waiting charges the same day, while the driver still remembers what happened.
• Write a charge description the client will understand, such as the car park name and time.

Gotchas

• Recalculate Price works the price out again from your current rates and can move away from the agreed quote. Choose Keep current price when the client agreed to the old one.
• An approved internal charge is a cost you carry. Make sure billable ones really are on the client's side before you invoice.

Recommendations

• For airport work with variable waiting, invoice at completion so the invoice carries the final price.
• Review a month of airport bookings and compare approved waiting with what drivers recorded. A large gap usually means the timer rule in phase 3 is not clear yet.