What to ask a supplier before you sign
Custody software is usually chosen on the strength of its reports. The reports are the part you'll
look at least. Four questions decide whether it will still be serving you in five years,
and none of them is about the dashboard:
- Can I get the original files back out, in bulk, in their original format? If the
answer is qualified in any way, you don't have an archive — you have a subscription.
- Does it show me what's missing, or only what's there? A system that can't display
a gap is showing you a comforting half of the picture.
- Can it reconstruct one named driver's unbroken period in minutes? That's the
question an investigation actually asks.
- Who can see whose data, and is that logged? These are personal data about named
individuals.
The first is the one to press hardest on. Data you cannot export is data you don't
control, and the moment you discover that is always the moment you're changing supplier.
What separates an archive from a folder of files
Almost every operation has the files somewhere. Far fewer have an archive. The difference isn't the
volume stored — it's whether you can retrieve what's asked for when it's asked for.
Four capabilities mark the boundary:
- Reconstructing a specific period for a specific driver, unbroken and in minutes.
- Showing what's missing. A useful archive displays gaps; a folder displays only
what's in it.
- Keeping originals intact alongside reports, without confusing the two.
- Knowing who accessed whose data.
Software that does those four earns its cost. Software that merely stores things tidily has swapped a
filing problem for a licensing one — and on inspection day it still takes the same person the
same time to find the same thing by hand.
Start with a sheet, not a subscription
Before choosing anything, list every vehicle and every driver with the date of their last
download. Done by hand once, that single sheet routinely exposes more than the first month of
any tool — because it shows what isn't in the system at all. If a product answers it faster, it's worth
the money.
More than one retention clock is running
This is where filing policies come apart. Internally people speak of "the retention period" as though
there were one. Several rules bear on the same records, and the longest determines how long the
archive really has to stand.
Tachograph data carries its own minimum. Working time records run on an employment-law clock. Anything
with a tax or accounting dimension runs on a third, usually the longest of them. Deleting at the
first deadline you happen to meet destroys evidence for the ones still running.
And the minimum is a floor, not advice on when to delete: a question can arrive well after the events,
and at that point the only thing that settles it is the file. Storage is the cheapest part of
this entire subject.
The software doesn't change who answers
Worth stating without hedging, because this is where false comfort gets manufactured: the duty
to download and retain sits with the operator — whatever software is in use, whoever was
engaged to run the IT, wherever the servers happen to be.
A supplier contract governs the relationship between two businesses. It does not move the
regulatory duty. The authority asks the operator and expects the files from the operator; that a
third party failed is settled afterwards and by another route.
The conclusion isn't to avoid the tool but to use it knowing what it does: delegate the task,
keep the oversight. Checking the list of completed downloads once a month — vehicle by vehicle,
driver by driver — is the difference between finding a gap before the inspection or during it.
We exceed the legal minimum of one year, offering custody plans of up to 5 years to cover the statute of limitations for infringements before Tax and Social Security authorities, providing total peace of mind for management.