Compliance_and_Legal_Dates

📋 Compliance and Legal Dates

Overview

MOT, insurance, road tax, breakdown cover — the four legal pillars of keeping your van on the road. Miss any of them and you’re either unprotected, illegal, or both. The Compliance section tracks their renewal dates, shows you exactly how many days remain, and sends reminders before they expire. It’s the part of the app that stops you driving blissfully into an insurance renewal that’s already lapsed.

The Compliance Card

The Compliance & Docs card lives on the Van tab home screen, below the Vehicle Health card. It shows four cells — MOT/Inspection, Insurance, Road Tax, and Breakdown — each with a date, a countdown bar, and a days-remaining label.

Colour coding:

Grey: date not set
Blue/Purple/Teal/Orange: date set and well in advance
Orange: within 14 days
Red: overdue (date has passed)

Each cell shows the renewal date and how many days remain (or how many days overdue). A red warning triangle appears on any cell where the date has already passed.

The countdown bar fills down as the date approaches, emptying completely when overdue. The 90-day window is used as the scale — anything more than 90 days away shows a full bar.

Setting Compliance Dates

Tap Edit in the Compliance & Docs card header to open the Compliance editor.

The editor is a form with two sections:

Legal Dates

First Registered — The date the vehicle was first registered. Optionally track this if it affects your road tax banding or vintage vehicle status.

MOT / Inspection Due — Toggle on and set the date your current MOT certificate expires. In the UK, MOTs are annual for vehicles over 3 years old. In other countries this may be called a roadworthiness inspection, ITV, TÜV, CT, etc. The label is generalised for international use.

Road Tax Due — Toggle on and set when your Vehicle Excise Duty (or equivalent) expires.

Insurance Renewal — Toggle on and set when your current insurance policy expires. This is the date the existing policy ends — usually the day before the renewal date.

Breakdown Cover

Policy Expiry — Toggle on and set when your breakdown membership or policy expires.

Once the toggle is on, additional fields appear:

Provider — E.g. “AA”, “RAC”, “Green Flag”, “ADAC”, “Touring”. Free text.

Policy Number — Your membership or policy number. Having this here means you can find it in seconds when you’re broken down, without needing to dig through emails.

Emergency Phone — The number to call. The app formats this as a dial-able link. When you’re stationary in a lay-by with smoke coming from the engine, this is exactly where you want the number to be.

Notes — Any additional details about the policy: what it covers, exclusions, maximum tow distance, or the login for the provider’s app.

Notifications

The app sends push notifications before each compliance date expires. The notification schedule for compliance dates is:

90 days before: early warning
30 days before: action recommended
14 days before: urgent reminder
On the expiry date: overdue alert

Notifications are scheduled automatically when you set a date. They update if you edit the date. They cancel if you remove the date by toggling the field off.

Notifications require iOS Notification permission. If you haven’t granted this, go to Settings → Notifications and enable notifications for Vanlife Assistant.

Clearing a Date

Toggle the field off to clear the date and cancel the associated notifications. The cell returns to grey “Not Set” state.

Common Questions

I renewed my MOT — how do I update it? Open the Compliance editor, toggle off the old date, then toggle on again to set the new expiry date. Or simply change the date — the notifications reschedule automatically on save.

The date is set but the cell shows red. The date has already passed. Update it to the next renewal date.

Can I set reminders for things other than these four? Not within the Compliance card — it covers the four legally mandated categories. For custom reminders (servicing, stickers, permits) use the Whiteboard with a due date trigger.