School bus fleet management that tells you which bus should not leave the yard
A live map answers where the bus is. It does not answer whether that bus is legally allowed to be carrying children this morning, whether the person driving it holds a licence that is still valid, or whether the child whose parent is asking actually got on.
Transport Operations is the back-office half of the transport module. It holds the fleet, its five mandatory papers, the drivers and their licences, the roster that says who drives what, the trip register with its boarding scans, arrival alerts at a stop, and the maintenance, fuel and incident history. Its governing rule is that a missing record is a finding, not a blank — because a school that reads "nothing wrong" about a bus with no fitness certificate on file has been told something untrue.
What you get
Five papers per bus, and "not recorded" is its own answer
RC, insurance, fitness, permit and PUC are tracked with four distinct states — valid, expiring, expired, and no record on file. A vehicle missing a mandatory document is reported as not roadworthy, with the reason named. Expiry is worked out each time you open the page, so it cannot go stale.
Drivers, licences and a roster the trip register cannot contradict
Licence expiry is judged exactly as a vehicle's papers are, and an unrecorded licence is never reported as a valid one. A trip takes its vehicle and driver from the roster rather than asking anyone to retype them, so the register and the roster cannot disagree about who drove.
A child with no scan is not a child who did not board
Boarding and alighting are recorded against the trip, and an unscanned child is counted as unscanned — never folded into "did not board", and never into "fine". A parent asking about a day nobody scanned is told exactly that, because the alternative is a system that answers confidently when it does not know.
Arrival alerts go to the families of that stop, and no further
A geofence around a stop turns an arrival into an alert for the children allocated to it — not a broadcast to the whole route, which would let any parent follow a bus their child does not ride. Alerts the system cannot actually observe, such as a diversion phoned in by a driver, are recorded as asserted rather than detected.
The fare is a contract, not today's tariff
A rider's charge is fixed on their allocation when it is made. Raising next year's tariff cannot silently re-price the months a family has already had, and a mid-year stop change raises a pro-rated adjustment. Where the adjustment would be in the family's favour it reports the over-billing and refuses to invent a credit — how money is given back is the school's decision.
Maintenance, fuel and incidents on the record
Services due, fuel fills and incidents are logged per vehicle, so cost per bus is read from what was actually recorded. Where an odometer reading is missing the figure says so rather than treating the gap as a short distance.
How it works
- 1
Put the fleet on file
Add each vehicle with its RC, insurance, fitness, permit and PUC. The compliance view immediately names what is missing or lapsing.
- 2
Roster the drivers
Record drivers and their licences, then assign who drives which vehicle on which route.
- 3
Run the trip
A trip is opened against the roster, boarding and alighting scans are recorded against it, and the manifest states plainly what it can and cannot tell you.
- 4
Allocate and bill the seat
A rider is allocated to a route and stop at a fare taken from the tariff and then held on the allocation, and the charge flows into the same ledger the rest of the fees use.
Frequently asked
Is this the same thing as the live bus tracking?
No — they sit alongside each other. Live tracking is the map a parent opens to see where the bus is. Transport Operations is what the transport office runs: the vehicle papers, the driver licences, the roster, the trip register and the upkeep history. Both are part of the same module family and share the same routes and stops.
Will we get an email when a fitness certificate is about to expire?
Not today, and we would rather say so than imply it. Expiry is computed every time the fleet or compliance view is opened, so the answer is correct the moment you look — including for documents recorded after the last time anyone checked. What SkoolBook does not do is claim to have sent you a reminder it never sent.
Can parents see the whole fleet?
No. A family sees their own child's route, stop, vehicle and the driver's name. Driver licence numbers, phone numbers and blood groups stay staff-only, the tariff table stays staff-only, and asking for another child's details returns nothing rather than a different child's answer. That boundary is enforced in the database, not in the interface.
What happens if a child rides a bus they are not allocated to?
The scan is accepted and flagged, and listed apart from the expected riders. Refusing it would make the register say a child who was on the bus was not on it, which is the worst of the available outcomes.