Beeline offers schools flexibility in how they choose to assign kids to drivers, so that each school can choose how to configure carpool and decide how much limitation they want to place on which drivers are expected or assigned to pick up any one kid.
Regardless of how you choose to set things up, you always have the option to change the driver at any time up to the end time of a carpool if an unexpected or last minute change is made, and
One driver account for each driver. Using this method, each driver is given their own individual account and must be scheduled individually. Setting up drivers this way allows you the most granular control, but requires more work for any changes that come up.
One driver account for each family. An alternate some schools use is to allow parents or families to share a single account, so that any driver on the account can show up on any given day, allowing moms and dads to switch carpool without any need for anyone at the school to change the schedule.
The Beeline for Drivers app automatically supports either configuration, and all users that are signed in will still enable geofence detection for the account they are signed in with so they can automatically announce arrivals at the carpool.
Creating a single driver account
Setting up a driver with their own individual account is covered in the Administrator App Quickstart guide if you need assistance with that process.
Creating a family account
If you want to set up shared family account for any of your drivers, you'll use the same driver creation process as used for a single driver, but you'll need to keep the following in mind:
Each family account must share the same email and phone number.
You'll need to add both names to the account. (We'll suggest a couple options below)
All drivers must be included in the driver profile photo.
Inform the family that all drivers on the account will sign in with the shared account information
If you do choose to allow parents to share a single account, you'll also need to choose how to format the names used on the account. Each name field is limited to 20 characters, so you may need to use abbreviations if both parents have long names. Here is what we've found works well:
If a family shares the same last name, just combine the first names together in the first name field.
If a family doesn't share the same last name, enter the first person's full name into the first name field and the second person's name into the last name field.
If you have more than two drivers, You'll certainly need abbreviated names.
Hopefully this helps you determine how to set up drivers in your carpool, but if you are having difficulty determining how to categorize or configure this, or any other part of Beeline, don't hesitate to give us a shout. We're here to help you come up with the best implementation for your specific needs.