Inspections - Plugixa Car Rental

Inspections PRO replace the paper check-out sheet. At pickup and again at return, staff walk round the car with a tablet or laptop and record its condition: damage on a map of the car, photos, the fuel level and the odometer. The customer then signs on the same screen. Signing freezes the record and produces a PDF: the rental agreement at pickup, the vehicle return record at return.

Inspections are an app. If you do not see the Inspections panel on a booking, switch on Inspections in the App manager.

The Inspections panel on a booking

Open a booking under Bookings. The Inspections panel shows two rows, Pickup inspection and Return inspection, each with its state:

State	Meaning	Button
Not started	Nothing recorded yet.	Start
Draft	Saved, not yet signed. A summary shows the odometer, fuel and “x damage entries”.	Continue
Signed	Final.	View, and PDF to download the signed document

When each one can be made:

Inspection	Booking status
Pickup	Confirmed or Picked up
Return	Picked up or Returned

Outside those, saving is refused with “A pickup inspection is made when a confirmed booking’s car is handed over.” or “A return inspection is made when the car comes back from a rental.”

Recording the car

The page is headed Pickup inspection or Return inspection, with the model, plate and customer’s name underneath.

Odometer and fuel

Field	Notes
Odometer	A whole number. On the return inspection, the pickup reading is shown underneath (“At pickup: 15400”), and a lower reading is refused: “The odometer cannot read less than it did at pickup (15,400).”
Fuel	Ten buttons in eighths of a tank: E, 1 to 7, F. Shown as Empty, 1/8 … 7/8, Full (4/8 reads Half). On the return inspection the pickup level is shown beside it.

Both must be filled in before the customer can sign.

Damage

The Damage card is a top-down drawing of a car, with the front at the top. Click a part of it to record damage there. These are the parts you can choose:

Body	Sides	Wheels
Front bumper	Front left side	Front left wheel
Bonnet	Rear left side	Front right wheel
Windscreen	Front right side	Rear left wheel
Roof	Rear right side	Rear right wheel
Rear window
Boot
Rear bumper

The Interior button under the drawing covers the inside of the car.

A small window opens, named after the part. Choose What (Scratch, Dent, Chip, Crack, Missing part, Stain or Other), add an optional Note and photos, and press Add. Parts with damage are coloured on the map, and the entry appears under Damage recorded with Where, What and Note. The bin icon removes an entry. Before any is added, the list says “None. Choose a part of the car on the map to add some.”

On the return inspection, damage that was not on the pickup inspection (the same part with the same kind of damage) is marked New in red, and “(new)” in the PDF. That is where a conversation about a repair starts.

An inspection holds up to 100 damage entries.

Photos and notes

Photos of the car opens the WordPress media library, where you upload or pick photos; Add these photos attaches them. Each damage entry can have photos of its own too. Up to 30 photos per inspection or per entry, images only.

Notes is free text for anything else, up to 5,000 characters. It is printed on the PDF.

Press Save inspection. “Saved.” confirms it. A draft can be changed and saved as often as needed until it is signed.

Signing

The Customer’s signature card at the bottom reads: “Save the inspection first, then hand the screen to the customer. Signing makes it final and produces the PDF.”

1. Name of the person signing: filled in with the customer’s name; change it if somebody else signs.
2. The customer ticks the agreement:
   • at pickup: “I agree to the rental terms, and that this record shows the vehicle as I received it.”
   • at return: “I agree that this record shows the vehicle as I returned it.”
3. The customer signs in the box with a finger, a stylus or the mouse. Clear and sign again starts over.
4. Press Sign and hand over the car (pickup) or Sign and close the rental (return).

If there are unsaved changes, the screen warns: “Save your changes before the customer signs: the document is made from the saved inspection.” The PDF is always made from the saved inspection, never from what is on screen.

Signing is refused, and nothing changes, if:

Message	Why
“Save the inspection before it is signed.”	Nothing has been saved yet.
“Record the odometer and the fuel level before the customer signs.”	One of them is empty.
“Enter the name of the person signing.”	The name is empty.
“The customer must agree before signing.”	The box is not ticked.
“Ask the customer to sign in the box.”	No signature.
“The signed document could not be stored. Check that the uploads folder can be written to.”	The PDF or signature could not be saved. Nothing half-signed is kept; the draft stays as it was.

What signing does

At the moment of signing:

1. The record is frozen. The page shows “Signed by Marco Rossi on 29/10/2026 13:07. It can no longer be changed.” Every field is read-only, and any attempt to save is refused: “This inspection has been signed and can no longer be changed.”
2. The PDF is made and stored, with a fingerprint (SHA-256) of its exact contents. Open signed PDF on the page and PDF in the booking’s panel download it.
3. The booking moves on. Signing the pickup inspection marks a Confirmed booking Picked up. Signing the return inspection marks a Picked up booking Returned.
4. The car’s odometer is updated to the reading, if it is higher than the car’s own. A lower reading never winds the car’s odometer back. The odometer is what the plugin uses to hand out the lowest-mileage car.

A booking with a signed inspection is a legal record. It can be moved to the trash but never deleted permanently.

If the stored PDF is ever changed or damaged, its fingerprint no longer matches and the plugin refuses to hand it out (“That document does not exist.”), rather than present an altered file as the signed one.

The PDF

Part	Pickup: rental agreement	Return: vehicle return record
Title and booking reference	Rental agreement	Vehicle return record
Rental company	Your company name and address from the invoice settings, or the site name	same
Customer	Name, email, phone	same
Vehicle	Model and plate	same
Pickup and Return	Date, time and location	same
Charges	Every line of the booking, the total, and the security deposit held	not shown
Condition	Odometer and fuel	Odometer, fuel, Distance driven and Fuel at pickup
Damage	Every entry, or “No damage recorded.”	Every entry, new ones marked “(new)”
Notes	When there are any	same
Terms	Your rental terms, when set	not shown
Signature	The agreement sentence, the signature, the name, and the date and time	same

The files are named rental-agreement-ADR-2026-0010.pdf and return-record-ADR-2026-0010.pdf. Photos are not embedded in the PDF; they stay in the media library.

Rental terms

Under Plugixa Car Rental -> Settings -> Rental agreement:

Field	Notes
Rental terms	“Printed on the agreement the customer signs at pickup, above their signature. Leave empty to have them confirm the car’s condition only.” Up to 20,000 characters, plain text; line breaks are kept.

With terms set, the agreement sentence on the PDF reads “I agree to the terms above, and that this record shows the vehicle as I received it.” Without them, “I agree that this record shows the vehicle as I received it.”

The terms are copied into each PDF when it is signed. Changing them later does not change agreements already signed.

What the customer gets

In the customer portal, a booking with a signed inspection lists Your signed rental agreement (PDF) and, after the return, Your signed return record (PDF). The links work only through the customer’s own booking link.

Where the files are kept

Signatures and signed PDFs are personal data, so they are not put in the media library. They are stored in a private folder inside your uploads folder, plugixa-car-rental-private, protected by an .htaccess that refuses every request, an empty index.php, and random 32-character file names. On a server that ignores .htaccess (nginx), the random names are what keeps them from being found; you can also block the folder in your server configuration.

Photos you add go to the WordPress media library like any other upload.

The PDFs need the PDF engine that ships with Pro. If it is missing, signing is refused with “The PDF engine is missing, so the signed document cannot be made. Reinstall the premium plugin.”