Vulaway terms

Dispatch advice

Optional Port status guidance for SA ports once a fleet has selected that service and has a real base, trucks, and usable road data; until then, setup guidance instead of a strong operational hold/go command; corridor and approach risk; weather and marine context where available; weekly busy/quiet patterns.

Live inputs

Blended road authority, camera, connected-truck, and driver-report signals; camera image assist that may reinforce an existing warning but does not invent one alone. Fused delays are not summed across sources. Public SANRAL map-index pins and East Coast Radio bulletins are collected on a shared schedule without a customer page view. National TomTom corridor samples, when paid routing is enabled, use a truck profile and a rotating hourly slice inside the existing routing budget. Bulk corridor times are a shared operational service: saved templates, a short shared cache, and live routing only on allowed refresh triggers — not a client polling loop. When a provider is limited or down the desk keeps the last usable route or template and labels it as cached, template, stale or degraded rather than live. National WhatsApp groups and national route comparison remain off unless we enable those flags.

Navis / TPT windows

Optional NAVIS booking slot advice selected per fleet and port: ranked booking-window suggestions from history and trip context. Slot booking itself remains on TPT/NAVIS systems you already use. Public TPT stack lists are parsed for Pier 1, Pier 2, Durban RoRo / Car Terminal, Point MPT, Cape Town, Ngqura and Gqeberha when TPT posts a compatible file; import-storage clocks cover Pier 1 (including storage-block detail when the layout allows), Point, Cape Town, Ngqura and Gqeberha container lists. Durban Car Terminal has stacks but no separate public import-storage feed; Maydon Wharf / Agri-bulk and Richards Bay have no compatible public stack or import-storage publication — missing is labelled, not empty. A central job collects those PDFs twice an hour into one shared cache. Last-published or collector-stale rows are not current clearance. Today's dispatches may show a last-free-day on an import job when TPT published an end date; we do not invent dates.

Multi-drop sequencing

Plan delivery recommends an order for a job's outstanding stops and shows what it saves against the order entered, priced on the truck's own running cost per kilometre, tolls, and a risk weighting on published hijacking hotspots. At twelve stops or fewer the result is the cheapest order for that cost function and is labelled as proven; above that it is a local-search result and is labelled as such. Where a fleet has signed a driver-hours limit set and the job names a driver, only orders the driver can legally finish — reaching a stop on the fleet's own approved register before a break falls due — are considered, and where none exists the desk says so instead of recommending one. Where a load placement has been recorded, orders that take the steering axle below the share needed to steer and brake between drops are excluded. Both checks are re-derived server-side before a new order is saved. They constrain the stop ORDER only: they do not hold a dispatch, assign a driver, or replace a weighbridge. Route climb on the N3, N1 and N4 is reported beside the cost as advisory context and is not added to it; legs off those corridors are counted as unknown, not flat. Packing plans for a recorded drop sequence are advisory guidance for a loader, not a load-securing certificate.

Road-vs-rail heads-up

Advisory nudge when road conditions into Durban support considering rail. No live Transnet freight booking inside Vulaway.

Fleet operations

Truck, trailer, and driver registers; confidential per-driver wage defaults (hourly, per trip, per kilometre, or per tonne) for owner/manager entry, snapshotted onto newly assigned work and never sent to the driver app; opening odometer on a truck so later trip kilometres can be added; optional vehicle class (half-tonne utility through 56 t superlink) and optional body type (tautliner, flat deck, dropside, tipper, tanker and similar) on a truck — class drives diesel planning rates, axle limits and licence cover, body does not; skipped class leaves diesel plans blank rather than treating the truck as a 56 t interlink; assignment of a load whose mass clearly exceeds that truck's recorded or class payload is refused; workshop log on each truck or trailer (service, tyres, brakes, COF work, defects, and similar items with optional cost); yard addresses; emergency / breakdown alerts; and hazmat and PrDP-D assignment checks. Port status, Vessel information, and NAVIS booking slot advice are independent optional services and may all remain off for inland fleets.

Location

Optional phone location from drivers: web/PWA only while the screen stays open; native Android pilot may continue during an active outbound trip via a visible foreground service while the OS permits it. After POD, native tracking stops unless the driver taps Start trip back to base. With a manager-configured FleetYard it can end within 2 km of that yard; without a yard the driver taps Arrived back at base. It also stops on End shift or after 16 hours (force-stop / denied permissions / battery restrictions stop updates — stated honestly in-app). Optional telematics connectors (e.g. Cartrack, Geotab, Ctrack) remain authoritative when configured; phone GPS is fallback only. The fleet Overview glance map may show assigned trucks as dots with registration while a recent driver-app GPS or telematics ping exists — we do not invent a position from the job address. Public customer tracking links may show destination coordinates and an anonymous truck position on a map while the load is still in transit and a recent driver-app GPS ping exists — the pin drops once the load is delivered; never driver name, phone, or truck registration. Raw driver-app pings expire after 90 days; last-known coordinates with no ping for 90 days are nulled by the same daily job. A fleet owner can erase a driver's name, contact, login and location traces on request; POD photos, tickets, invoices and the name saved on a job card at plan time stay as the fleet's operational records.

Driver app

Standalone Driver App (web + native Android pilot APK for fleet-created drivers only): fleet owner or manager creates the driver's globally unique username, password and mobile number; per-driver login uses the username + password (password hashed at rest, rate-limited, revocable) and resolves the fleet on the server; dedicated driver device sessions (not the fleet access code or FREE identity); assigned trucks and jobs only; server-derived job status steps with POD required before completion, then an optional return-to-base tap (a later assigned load on that truck takes the screen over an unfinished return); web Driver App bulk-cycle steps (site check-in/out and weighbridge ticket) with an on-device offline queue; native APK bulk steps use the same desk cycle (offline queue, site clocks, cancel, and operational close of a tonnes cycle from the weighbridge pair — a ticket photo is still required before manager verify / invoice-ready; litres and cubic metres still close from the desk ticket form); shift/trip location with consent; emergency/breakdown alerts; POD capture (photo plus on-screen signature, including per-stop on a multi-stop job; the native app resizes camera photos so an 8–12 MB handset file can upload under the 8 MB ceiling); in-app language choice (English, isiZulu, isiXhosa, Afrikaans, Sesotho) stored on the device and in a cookie so the first paint matches the last choice — non-English copy is a disclosed machine draft until a named first-language speaker reviews it. First install and recovery use a short-lived, IP-rate-limited private-storage link from /downloads (old /driver-app URLs redirect there); once installed, the native APK checks for a newer signed build, downloads it, and asks Android to install over the existing app so the session stays — there is no Update button to tap, and uninstalling first wipes sign-in. The signed APK contains no fleet data and can be obtained before sign-in. There is no Play listing in this phase. A driver who asks to be forgotten is actioned by the fleet owner on the Drivers desk (typed-name confirm): name, contact, login and location traces are removed or replaced with a stable pseudonym; there is no driver self-serve delete in this release.

Jobs & proof

Delivery planner with port/vessel jobs and independent direct customer deliveries (pickup → customer, no vessel required); clone-last harbour job (copies truck, destination, registered driver, and vessel if still in the live list — new container; not a slot booking); searchable vessel field on Plan delivery and Port tools against this port's TPT/AIS board (partial and close names), plus an owner/manager watch on a typed name that is not on that list yet (desk exception when an exact full name or IMO first appears on this port's TPT/AIS board; a browser push is attempted and may fail or retry, and is not guaranteed; a name match only, not a TPT booking and not a world vessel directory); draft or planned save, including a draft port job when the live vessel list is empty (road ETA only, not a TPT booking); planned jobs require a registered driver (drafts may wait); half-finished planner drafts may be kept on this device only (for load shedding or a killed browser tab) and are not a server record; confirmation with next actions and customer tracking link; lifecycle-controlled corrections by an owner or logistics manager (truck/driver assignment locks once the driver is notified, a live destination can still be rerouted, and POD-complete records cannot be rewritten); physical deletion only for an un-dispatched draft, with Cancel or Failed preserving operational history — a job that already has an invoice cannot be deleted; fleet-registry truck/driver assignment with manual add escape; timelines with selectable or custom leave-time options and leave reminders; driver job journey (acknowledge → en route → arrive → POD → optional return to base); multi-stop deliveries with per-stop photo and signature; manual driver-left marking by owner/manager when you have no live tracking or driver smartphone; stack/import windows bucketed as current / expiring / historical, with last-published rows labelled and not treated as current clearance; last-free-day on Today's import rows when TPT published an end date; heavy-vehicle trip ETAs; return-to-base empty or laden when a fleet yard is set; proof of delivery capture; verified POD evidence is frozen (a correction record is required, not an overwrite); Overview glance map of today's assigned trucks with a recent GPS or telematics ping; live fleet map for connected assets. Owner or logistics manager may photograph a fuel slip so we can suggest litres, the printed Rand-per-litre and the paid total from that station (South African pump prices vary by site — we do not apply a national rate); they must check those figures before save, and may type them if the photo is unreadable. Tolls, misc, wages, trip distance and an optional customer charge remain typed. Slip photos are stored privately like PODs. A vision reading is not a tax-invoice OCR product and is not proof the tank received those litres. A departure snapshot may include planned litres from per-leg kilometres, vehicle class, empty vs laden, and queue idle. Fuel variance on the exception feed is a review prompt against this truck's usual fills — not a theft finding and not siphon proof. Reminders and manual depart marks are operational aids only — they do not dispatch a truck.

Bulk operations

Daily/shift bulk allocations on saved fleet yards or addresses (or a saved corridor template); repeated compact cycles against accepted tonnes, litres or cubic metres — not a long harbour job form per load; derived legal payload from recorded GVM and operating tare; site check-in/out clocks from the desk, web Driver App, or native APK (the APK is the same desk cycle, not a second ledger); private weighbridge ticket photo with net-mass check before manager verify / invoice-ready; optional advisory OCR on that photo (desk/web via server vision after upload; native APK on-device text recognition offline) to pre-fill ticket number and masses — every value remains editable and must be human-confirmed before save or operational close, mismatched net is flagged not auto-accepted, and manager verify still requires the stored photo; the native APK may close a tonnes cycle operationally from the confirmed tare/gross pair and ticket numbers, leaving ticket-photo verify to the manager; litres and cubic metres still close from the desk ticket form; litres from the fuel slip at cycle close (photo read or typed) recorded as a purchase, not as cycle consumption. Bulk tickets do not create invoices in this release. Public customer tracking is not offered for bulk cycles. Road times on a bulk allocation use the saved template or a shared cached/live snapshot; GPS pings do not recalculate routing; starting, closing or verifying a cycle does not require a routing provider. Provider failure keeps the last usable figure with a degraded-mode label. Operational outcome cards report measured ticket, tonne, site-clock and blocked-truck figures, and fuel purchases when a slip is logged. Litres per tonne-kilometre are not inferred from a purchase slip. Empty kilometres and invoice disputes stay not measured. Prediction scores are not used to accuse a driver of theft. Vulaway does not claim RTMS or dangerous-goods compliance on bulk work.

Reverse logistics

Reverse tab: fleet ledger for CHEP/Loscam returnable equipment (deliveries, exchanges, shortfalls, typed ETV voucher and receiver account references — not myCHEP or Loscam API reconciliation and not a pooling-provider statement); NEM:WA-style waste transport manifest records with integer kilogram mass, SANS 10234 hazard fields, transporter permit and licensed-facility references, plus a SHA-256 digest (not a DFFE submission and not a producer EPR return); CPA Section 56-style retail uplift workflow (collection, driver signature, DC receipt, condition grade — not warranty adjudication); and empty ISO 6346 container turn-in with free-time countdown and estimated detention from a fleet-entered daily rate (not a shipping-line invoice). Manifest and uplift reference numbers are fleet-unique random identifiers, not a gapless statutory series. Owner, manager and driver sessions may write these records. Figures are operational bookkeeping aids from data you enter.

Preferences

Appearance (day/night); access-code rotate for self-registered fleets (not email/password); lost-code recovery via support@vulaway.co.za with ownership verification; browser push enablement; fleet default Simple/Technical desk density (individuals may override on their device — density is not a permission); optional main-work setting (general, port, bulk or mixed); three independent, owner/manager-controlled choices per port — Port status, Vessel information, and NAVIS booking slot advice — all off by default for a new general fleet; optional implementation level (starter / connected / managed) describing operational setup needs — paper and calls, existing tracking or accounting, or multiple depots and approval rules — not skill or competence; guided setup wizard that persists trucks, trailers and drivers to the fleet register, saves VAT and main-work preference from step 1, links to Compliance rather than storing papers itself, and does not create a geocoded yard or operator card from that form.

Workspace layout

Desktop sidebar labelled Control centre, grouped into Operations, Intelligence and Management. Desk names in the product: Today, Plan delivery, Deliveries, Returns & recovery, Bulk cycles (while open allocations exist), Port tools (only when at least one optional port service is selected), Roads & cameras and Weather (only with Port status), Fleet (with areas for Vehicles & bases, Drivers, Documents & PODs, Compliance, Integrations and Commercial), and More. Tab order follows owner vs dispatcher role and the fleet's main-work setting. Simple vs Technical changes evidence shown, not permission. Roomy vs Tight only packs rows.

Commercial tools

Route/departure-advice value estimates keep untouched future opportunities, plans selected by dispatch, and advice followed within the recorded departure tolerance separate. Active truck time is shown separately from modelled idle-fuel and productive hourly wage-time value. Selected evidence freezes the route comparison, confirmed truck/class, class-model idle rate, customer fuel-price evidence and assignment-time wage basis so later edits do not rewrite it. These figures remain counterfactual planning estimates, not measured fuel burn, audited cash, or settled payroll savings; overlapping work, missing evidence and advice that was not followed are excluded and disclosed. Moving-road fuel is unavailable until distance, load state and measured consumption are modelled. Cost-per-trip and cost-per-km views; fleet rate card maintenance (customer/corridor/zone/vehicle/commodity lines, effective dates, banded km rates, ambiguity warnings, and close-by-end-date without rewriting history); invoicing from job data (owner/manager POD verify rates the trip against the fleet rate card — or opens a billing exception — and does not invent a R0 invoice; a contracted customer booked under a near-miss name is blocked rather than rated at the generic line; a job with no customer name and no account code is also blocked); manual re-rate with override reason blocked until a different manager approves and refused once the charge is on an invoice; tax invoice issuance from rated charges that claims each charge once in the same transaction (distinct from the legacy invoice builder, which may copy a charge without claiming it). The owner builds or issues the customer invoice under Commercial from the rated charge — still editable before send where the path allows. You can print or save a PDF, download an invoice CSV, and hand the invoice to a customer from your own mail app — Vulaway does not send email on your behalf. The owner-only accounting panel exports an issued tax-invoice and credit-note book to spreadsheet CSV; Sage Pastel Partner is a file-based pilot that requires the fleet to confirm its own import template, account codes and VAT codes. Xero, QuickBooks Online and Sage Business Cloud are displayed as not connected and are not posted to by Vulaway in this release. An invoice that still totals nothing cannot be marked sent. A VAT-registered fleet issues a Tax Invoice with 15% VAT only after the seller address and customer billing identity needed by the document have been completed; a customer VAT number is captured when the customer is a registered vendor. Otherwise the document remains blocked from send rather than presenting an incomplete Tax Invoice. A non-VAT-registered fleet issues a plain Invoice with no VAT. Owner-only subcontractor settlement under Commercial: deductions need an evidence reference; issuing a voucher recovers those deductions in the same write so an advance cannot be taken twice; a disputed deduction is held, not netted; self-billing only while a written agreement is in force with a supplier VAT number — the owner may record that agreement on the Subcontractors desk (already signed off-fleet; Vulaway does not draft it). Vulaway does not pay the subcontractor or hold funds. Owner-only Executive Owner Desk: measured invoiced revenue, costed trip costs, outstanding invoices, unbilled POD count and RTI pallet liability; lifetime margin withheld while any trip lacks distance, fuel or a wage basis; diesel and credential exports are CSV/text snapshots for your records, not SARS filing or certification. Owner view of trip profit, truck profit, and harbour driver efficiency over time from entered bills, customer charge or invoice, and confirmed slip litres recorded as purchases (drive time vs plan only — litres bought do not change that score; review only, not a disciplinary finding or fuel-theft verdict); tamper-evident verified-trip certificates; emissions estimates labelled as estimates unless a measured consumption source exists; utilisation checks. Figures and exports are operational bookkeeping aids from data you enter — not accounting or tax advice, a guarantee of payment, or a finding of fuel theft.

Load exchange

Posting and browsing loads between fleets. Vulaway is not a party to those deals, does not hold funds or pay drivers, and does not collect a platform fee on the board. A posting fleet's customer rate is visible only to that fleet and on accepted work — not to other fleets browsing open posts.

Insurance & risk register

Owner-only goods-in-transit policy and approved overnight-stop register under Fleet. Fields are what the fleet types from its own schedule (insurer, policy number, liability limit in cents, escort threshold, parking warranty, subrogation waiver parties, transshipment rule including an explicit unrecorded state). A Plan delivery advisory compares the typed load against that register and does not block dispatch. Vulaway is not the insurer, broker, or party to the policy and does not verify cover. Liability amounts are redacted for non-owner viewers.

Operations registers

Fleet terminal booking accounts (typed account references; optional TAS/Navis/other login sealed with the telematics encryption key and never returned to a client — Vulaway does not book on the fleet's behalf); rail customer/siding registers; recovery-operator and spill-retainer emergency contacts. Owner writes terminal and rail rows; owner or manager maintains recovery and spill rows; any fleet session may read emergency contacts.

Compliance records

Fleet → Compliance: a named owner or manager may sign off National Road Traffic Regulations mass figures for the fleet, store driver and vehicle papers (PrDP, medical, licence, COF, operator card, vehicle licence, dangerous-goods training) against the fleet register, and run an exception board (acknowledge / resolve with root cause). Platform NRTR reference limit sets are seeded for adoption (migration 109); adoption copies unsigned reference data and a fleet officer must still sign before certifying loads. Owner/manager desks on the same tab: workshop bay job cards (an open vehicle-off-road card blocks assigning that truck on Plan delivery until closed; parts and labour lines are not on that desk yet); goods declarations (NRTR 330A–330D issue record with advisory mass assessment — not a regulator filing; void is stamped, not erased); load-profile capture and load-placement records — each item, its mass, its position and the stop it comes off at, kept against the profile version it was planned on; axle projections on a calibrated weighbridge profile only; twistlock surveys so a 20 ft or 40 ft container's position is derived from the frame rather than typed, using the verified gross mass already recorded; and packing plans for a recorded drop sequence (all advisory; none releases a load or certifies load securing); cross-border document pouches against owner-configured corridor checklists (typed references are not verified scans and are not a border clearance); driver-hours limit sets and duty-segment records; pre-trip checklist adoption and daily inspections; structured maintenance and credential expiry registers feeding the RTMS audit pack; diesel rebate logbook (Schedule 6 contemporaneous records and claim builder — no SARS filing); and an RTMS audit-pack CSV assembler for a period (evidence, not SANS 1395 certification). Driver panic and breakdown alerts appear under Fleet → Drivers and do not auto-raise a case on that board. Signing limits is not a legal opinion from Vulaway. Mass and paper records still do not lock the delivery planner by themselves — only the vehicle-off-road workshop gate does in this release. Driver hours and, where a load placement exists, steering-axle share are the exception and only for stop order: an order the assigned driver cannot legally finish, or that takes the steer light between drops, is neither recommended nor saved. That constrains the order, not the dispatch. A current PrDP with category D stored here (or PrDP-D under Documents & PODs) is checked when assigning a job that already has a hazard class or UN number — including the named driver on first save, not only a co-driver on the same truck; Hazchem / Tremcard still has to sit under Documents & PODs. That check is an expiry-and-label gate, not SANS 10231 certification. The dispatch desk URL is /fleet/[port]; /port/[port] still redirects there.

Shipper workspace

Multi-carrier visibility; batch / consignment tracking; custody and claims flagging with evidence; carrier invite flows. Agri export desks record the shipping-line booking, SARS entry and CUSRES time, VGM, seals, cut-off ladder and empty-box detention the exporter typed — they are not a TPT slot booking, a SARS filing, or a PPECB/plant-health clearance. Shipper-configured market protocols and harvest seasons (each requirement sourced and dated) drive agri document assessment — not a universal checklist and not PPECB/DALRRD verification. Contracted-carrier hazmat readiness uses the same assignment papers as the fleet hazmat gate (not SANS 10231). Queue idle watch is a 45-minute house figure for precinct queue or inside terminal — not the SLA on your carrier contract, and not a detention invoice.

Terminal / operator workspace

Anonymised port-wide activity aggregates only — not another fleet's identifiable private data.

Messaging & alerts

In-product alerts and, where enabled on your plan, push and WhatsApp-related channels you configure. Optional Share-to-Vulaway and a separate sideload dispatcher companion parse WhatsApp traffic posts on the phone and upload road, category, delay and a fingerprint — not message text, sender names or numbers. The companion APK is first installed from /downloads when a signed build is published, then updater-enabled builds update themselves in-app the same way as the driver app; an early pilot copy without the updater needs one final manual reinstall, and there is no Play listing in this phase. An HTTP ingest token still accepts message text for a technical bridge and stores a redacted copy. Muted groups and an open chat often produce no notification. Outbound signed HTTPS webhooks (dispatch suggestion, feed circuit, trip verified) are enterprise-plan only; entitlement is checked again when a delivery is queued and sent, and the three-month fleet trial does not include creating or testing an endpoint. A floating Get help control on the fleet desk opens WhatsApp to VULAWAY_WHATSAPP_DISPLAY_NUMBER when that deployment variable is set to a real number — not the .env.example placeholder — and pre-fills fleet, port and screen context the operator can read before sending; when unset or still the example number, no chat is offered and the same details can be copied for email.

Invoice receipts

Owner or manager records of money already received against an issued delivery invoice or a grouped tax invoice. Each receipt is append-only with an amount in cents, a payment date, a reference and the session that recorded it. Vulaway does not collect the money, send a customer receipt, hold funds, or reverse a saved payment in this release.

Fuel-card import

Owner or manager preview then commit of a fuel-card CSV under the diesel logbook. Columns are matched by heading, never guessed. Petrol, shop and AdBlue lines are flagged and not posted as diesel purchases. Re-uploading an overlapping statement does not double-count litres.

Vula assistant

An optional read-only report assistant for the fleet owner or manager. It is off unless we enable it for the fleet. It answers from records already stored on Vulaway and does not write jobs, invoices or payments. Most-profitable and similar reports run from stored rows without paid AI. A language model classifies a free-text question only when that separate flag is on; fleet rows are not sent to that model.

Arrival geofences and behaviour

Optional stop-arrival marks from a position you already collect, and a behaviour board of events from those positions when they exist. Neither invents a pin from a planned address, and neither is a disciplinary finding or a telematics accusation.

Appearance

Night and day display modes you can switch in the product header; preference stored in your browser.