How do I block a vehicle from being rented during a period?

Sometimes a vehicle is unavailable without having a contract on it: scheduled maintenance, a periodic inspection, or an internal reservation. Blackout periods are the right place for that.

Steps

1. Open Vehicle Rental → Vehicles, and from the actions menu on the vehicle choose Blackout periods — Figure 1.
2. Press Add blackout period.
3. Set from and to, and write a reason clear enough for a colleague to understand a week later.
4. Save. From that moment the days show as unavailable on the vehicle calendar of the public website, and any booking attempt on them is refused.
5. To lift the block: press Delete beside the period in the table.

When to use which of the three

• Blackout period — the vehicle exists but is committed on specific dates known in advance.
• Setting the status to maintenance — the vehicle is out of service with no fixed end date.
• Hold period after a contract — a short automatic gap in hours between one contract and the next, set once in the vehicle record.

Notes

• A blackout blocks booking both on the website and inside the system, so you do not need to remind staff.
• Write the reason as a useful sentence such as “periodic inspection and tyre change” rather than the single word “maintenance”.
• Delete the period as soon as the vehicle is back; a forgotten blackout is lost revenue nobody notices.