Future Notes

[TVdoorknob]

Love the site! Just joined and added imported all my data from Excel. Feature request ... saw an old request asking for a reminder feature for oil changes, tire rotations, etc. I think the end result was the capability to add a note to the log.

Can this note be scheduled to pop up when I hit a certain mileage. I.E. - I would like to add a note that says OIL CHANGE DUE and set a future mileage. As soon as I log a fuel-up that is over that mileage the note pops into the log sheet (a message to Fuelly mail would be even better). Once I change the oil I add a maintenance note to say I changed it and a "future note" to remind me next time. This would keep it simple and let each user put in as many maintenance reminders as they see fit. One user might just do oil changes and someone else might put in several notes for the entire recommend maintainance schedule. From a Fuelly perspective it is just a note that pops up at a certain mileage. Each user can use it however he or she wants.

I used a free Palm program called AutoBase that was beautiful in its simplicity. Now that I'm on BlackBerry all the mileage apps are too complex. All I'm looking for is that reminder feature that AutoBase has and I think it would complement what Fuelly already does nicely. Thanks!

[pb]

Thanks, glad you like the site. Thanks for the suggestion, we've talked about having reminders before and it's something we're considering. It's tempting to try to cover all aspects of vehicle ownership, but for the time being we're focusing on helping people track fuel economy and that's it. We might branch out a bit at some point, but probably not in the near term.

[TVdoorknob]

PB - Thanks for the quick reply. I explored the notes feature a little more and it is really quite handy. I found that I can put a due date and odometer reading out in the future and it looks like it will stay at the front of the fuel log list until the date passes. The one small tweak that I think would be a big help for folks like me is to allow the user to sort the fuel log list based on odometer reading instead of date (user selectable). Is that possible? With that sort key flexibility, folks who put in the full odometer reading at each fill-up would have the reminder(s) stay at the top until the mileage was reached. As soon as a "due date note" drops down below the last fuel-up that is the memory trigger that you have reached the point of oil change, tire rotation, etc. What do you think?

[pb]

That's a clever use of the system, but it's an outlier. So I'm not sure it's worth complicating the interface by adding sorting controls for a feature that's a bit of a hack. I think if we're going to add reminders, we should do it right and make it work. But I'm not fond of tweaking the site for a single unusual use like this. If sorting by odometer vs. date made sense in some other context it might be worth the trade-off, but I don't think it is in this case.

[TVdoorknob]

Roger that ... but I'm sure I would not be the only user to take advantage!

[BioBob]

Get a Diesel !

The oil change interval is 10K miles, and I do the tire rotation at the same time.

Very easy to remember.