Transport

Buses, routes, stops, and the transport fee that bills itself. An hour to set up a fleet, then it runs.

Sidebar → Transport

This is a licensed module

If Transport is missing from your sidebar, your plan does not include it.

The order to set it up

Step	Screen	Why
1	Manage Vehicles	A route can point at a vehicle
2	Manage Routes	Routes carry the default fare
3	Stops, inside a route	Where the bus actually halts
4	Fee settings	How the fare becomes an invoice
5	Assign students	The daily job

Vehicles

Field	Required	Notes
Vehicle number	Yes	The registration plate
Model, capacity, note	No
Driver name, driver phone	No
Driver password	No	Creates the driver's login for the driver app
GPS device IMEI	No	Must be unique across your fleet
Tracking enabled	No	Whether this vehicle reports its position

The driver password is what gets a driver into the app

Set it here and give it to the driver. Without it there is a vehicle record but nobody can sign in to it.

Routes and stops

A route has a name and a fare — the default charge for anyone on it.

Inside a route, add stops:

Field	Required	Notes
Name	Yes	"Gandhi Chowk"
Latitude and longitude	Yes	Needed for the map and tracking
Fare	No	Overrides the route fare for this stop
Pickup time, drop time	No	What parents actually want to know

Stops are numbered in the order you add them.

Per-stop fares are how you charge by distance

Leave a stop's fare at zero and the route fare applies. Set it, and that stop's students are charged that amount instead. A route with four stops at increasing fares is the normal shape.

Fee settings — do this before assigning anyone

Transport → Fee settings decides how a fare turns into money owed.

Field	What it does
Fee type	Which fee head transport charges land on
Fee group	Which group the installments join
Billing months	How many monthly installments the fare is split into, 1–12
Session start date	The month the schedule starts from
Due day of month	Which day each installment falls due, 1–28
Auto-assign on route	Whether assigning a student to a route bills them automatically
Active	The master switch

With auto-assign on, putting a student on a route creates fare × billing months of monthly installments, dated from the session start on your chosen day.

Set this up before you assign a single student

Assign students first and no fees are created for them. There is no "bill everyone retrospectively" button — you would have to unassign and reassign each one.

Fee settings first, students second. Always.

Assigning students

Open the route, assign the student, and pick their stop.

You should now see the fee confirmed on screen: "Student assigned successfully. Transport fee of ₹12,000 …" — or, if the fare is zero, a note that no fee was created.

The parent is notified of the transport fee automatically.

A student can only be on one route assignment at a time.

Removing a student from transport

Unassigning removes their future transport fees — but only if none have been paid.

Paid installments block removal

"Cannot remove transport fees. Student has paid transport fee installments."

That is correct behaviour: money already collected cannot be un-billed by deleting a route assignment. Handle it as a refund or an adjustment on the fees side instead.

Live tracking

If your vehicles have GPS devices, or drivers run the driver app:

Screen	Shows
Live Vehicle Tracking	The fleet on a map, in real time
Timeline	Where a vehicle has been, replayed

Each tracked vehicle needs its IMEI recorded and tracking switched on, and an API token generated for the device or app to report with.

Tracking is only as good as the connection

A bus in a signal blackspot stops reporting and its marker goes stale. That is the network, not a fault in the system. Do not promise parents minute-by-minute accuracy you cannot deliver.

Real example

Apex Academy, 6 buses:

1. Vehicles added with driver names, phones and passwords — 20 minutes
2. Four routes, each with a base fare
3. Stops added with coordinates picked off the map, and per-stop fares rising with distance — the slow part, about half an hour
4. Fee settings: 10 billing months, due on the 5th, auto-assign on
5. Students assigned route by route; fees appeared automatically and parents were notified

What they got wrong the first time: assigning two classes' worth of students before configuring fee settings. Those 60 students had no transport fees at all, and had to be unassigned and reassigned one by one.

Common problems

What you see	Cause
Transport is missing from the sidebar	The module is not in your plan
Students assigned but nobody is billed	Fee settings were not configured, or auto-assign is off, or the fare is zero
A student is charged the wrong amount	Their stop has its own fare, which overrides the route fare
"Cannot remove transport fees…"	Some installments are paid. Resolve on the fees side
A stop cannot be saved	Latitude and longitude are required
A driver cannot log in	No driver password was set on the vehicle
A vehicle never appears on the map	Tracking is off, no IMEI recorded, or no API token issued
A marker is stuck in one place	The device has stopped reporting — usually signal
The IMEI is rejected	It is already recorded against another vehicle