How to: get started for managers

As a manager, your role in Driversnote is to review and approve mileage reports submitted by your team. This guide walks you through everything you need to get set up and start reviewing.

Step 1: Accept your team invitation

You should have received an email invitation from your team's administrator. To join:

1. Open the invitation email and click the link
2. Already have a Driversnote account? Sign in and your team will be linked automatically
3. New to Driversnote? Sign up using your work email to create an account and join the team

💡 Can't find the invitation? Check your spam folder, or ask your admin to resend it.

Step 2: Find your way around

Once you're logged in, you'll see a menu where you can switch between two views:

• Team view: where you'll spend most of your time as a manager. This is where you see and manage your team's reports.
• Personal logbook: your own mileage tracking, if you also log trips yourself.

On desktop, your main focus is the Team Reports tab.

📱 If you plan to log your own trips, download the Driversnote app and follow the driver onboarding guide to get set up.

Step 3: Navigate the Team Reports page

The Team Reports page is your central hub. Use the filters to find exactly what you need:

• Team member: view reports from one driver or your whole team
• Date range: filter by reporting period
• Submitted to: filter by which manager reports were sent to
• Status: see reports that are pending, approved, rejected, or processed

💡 By default, the page shows reports submitted to you - so you'll see your own queue straight away.

A note on how drivers submit reports: Drivers can submit to a specific manager or to all managers at once. How your team organises this is up to you and your admin.

Step 4: Review a report

Click on any submitted report to open it. Every report includes:

• Total distances: a summary of business and/or personal miles/kilometres for the period
• Rate & reimbursement: shown if your company has enabled reimbursement rates
• Individual trips: a full list of every trip logged during the period

Depending on your team's settings, you may also see start and end times for each trip, and a route map for business trips (click to view the exact path driven).

Yellow alerts ⚠️

Yellow alerts flag trips that may need a closer look before you approve. These can include:

• Trips that look like a commute to or from home
• Trips that were added manually rather than tracked automatically
• Unusually long trips

💡 Alerts are configured by your admin and are there to help you review with confidence, not to block approval. Use your judgement on whether a flagged trip needs following up with the driver.

Step 5: Approve or reject a report

Once you've reviewed a report, you'll need to make a decision.

Approving: Click Approve to confirm the report. The driver will automatically receive an email notification - no extra steps needed from you.

Rejecting: If something needs to be fixed, click Reject. You'll be prompted to add a note explaining what needs to be addressed. Be as specific as possible so the driver can make the right changes quickly.

⚠️ Once a driver has made changes, they'll need to create and submit a new report for you to review. The original rejected report cannot be resubmitted.

Step 6: Mark a report as Processed (optional)

After approving a report, you have the option to mark it as Processed.

What does Processed mean? It signals that the report has been fully actioned - for example, sent to payroll, reimbursed, or signed off by a second reviewer. What it means for your team is up to you.

Do I have to use it? No. Processed is entirely optional. If Approve is the last step in your workflow, you don't need to do anything further.

Who can mark a report as Processed? Any manager or team admin can do this. If someone outside your usual approval flow needs to action this step (such as a payroll or finance team member), they'll need to be added to Driversnote as a manager or admin first.

💡 Processed is most useful when there's a clear handoff between approving a report and closing it out - for example, when payroll is handled by a separate person or team.

Step 7: Export reports

Once reports are approved, you can export them for payroll, processing, or your own records.

Download an individual report Open any report and download it directly as a PDF or Excel file.

Export an overview of all reports For a summary across your whole team:

1. Go to the Team Reports page and click Export reports & trips
2. Click Export report overview
3. Set your filters (e.g. all team members, last reporting period, approved reports only)
4. Download your file

You'll get an Excel file with each driver's report on a separate line - easy to send straight to payroll or pass on for next steps.