💡 This guide covers inspections in Spare Enterprise Asset Management (EAM). If your organization still uses the older Vehicle Inspections under Shift Scheduling, see Pre & Post Duty Vehicle Inspections instead.
An inspection is a checklist someone works through against a vehicle or a piece of equipment. You build the checklist once, your team runs it on a phone or in the browser, and anything that fails becomes an Issue — a recorded fault for maintenance to pick up.
The reason this matters: nothing gets written down twice. When a driver finds a problem, their note and their photo travel with it — from the checklist, to the maintenance list, to the repair.
The four words you will see everywhere
Word | What it means |
Inspection form | The checklist. You build it once and reuse it. |
Linked asset | A vehicle or item a form applies to. Controls what people see on their phone. |
Inspection | One completed run of a checklist against one vehicle, with who did it and when. |
Issue | A recorded fault on a vehicle. Created for you when a check fails. |
💡 Issue and work order are not the same thing. An Issue is the fault someone found. A work order is the scheduled repair that fixes it. Inspections create Issues; your maintenance team decides which Issues become work orders.
Who does what
Three groups of people touch inspections, and each one works somewhere different.
If you are a… | You work in… | And you… |
Administrator | EAM in a web browser | Build the checklists, decide which vehicles they apply to, and review what comes back. |
Mechanic | The EAM mobile app | Inspect any vehicle or item, whenever you need to. |
Driver | The Spare Driver app | Run the checks tied to your shift, and report faults you spot. |
Pick your guide
Setting inspections up
Create an Inspection Form — build the checklist and choose what happens when something fails.
Link Inspection Forms to Assets — decide which vehicles each checklist applies to.
Running an inspection
Run an Inspection as an Admin (Web) — record one in the browser and review the results.
Run an Inspection as a Mechanic (EAM Mobile App) — the EAM mobile app.
Run an Inspection as a Driver (Spare Driver App) — every way an inspection reaches a driver.
What happens when a check fails
This part works the same no matter which app the inspection was done in. When you build a checklist, each item gets a Fail Mode. That setting decides what happens next.
Fail Mode | What happens when someone fails that check |
No Action | It is written on the inspection record. Nothing else happens. |
Create Issue | An Issue is opened against that vehicle automatically, at the severity you chose. |
Urgent Action Required | The same Issue is opened, and the person inspecting sees your warning message straight away. |
Whatever the app, the failure ends up in the same place: the Issues list in EAM, marked as having come from an inspection.
⚠️ Odometer and hour readings taken during an inspection are what your service reminders count from. A reading typed in wrong will move a vehicle’s next service date, so it is worth getting right.