So I was sitting at the dealer today, getting the oil changed and the tires rotated on my car. Nothing to do, and I came up with the idea that this too could be automated. All of our cars have maintenance which should be done at various intervals. I set up a group on Launch Center Pro for my cars for all the different maintenance items (oil, filter, rotate tires, balancing, etc.) Each action ask for the current odometer reading then passes to a shortcut the action requested, the current odometer and the milage between actions (i.e. every 6000 miles for oil). The shortcut then appends an action to a note in NotePlan with that car’s name (i.e. Subaru Impreza, Subaru Forester) in the format “* Change oil at 12123 miles”. When I’m doing my reviews, I can glance at it and see if I’ve hit any of the milage thresholds yet and if so, schedule that task to a calendar day.
Just goes to show, you can automate anything if you’re bored enough. This was an easy one, but I for one never remember the last time I had maintenance done, so I’m always digging back through records.
I had a similar experience where I was questioning replacing the car battery, but turned to a spreadsheet instead.
I now have one with a table for the car and a table for other appliances that I can store a minimal service record in, along with warranty info and life expectancies.
It will evolve with use I’m sure.
Anyone have a shortcut to keep track of there miles and tolls? My accountant told me to start doing that and I thought of a shortcut right away but maybe an app or spreadsheet would be better.
I created an Airtable to track maintenance on my vehicles. I haven’t hooked it up to shortcuts. Adding the details via their mobile app has been easy enough for me for the number of times I need to add an event.
Here’s the table if anyone wants to duplicate it and use it with their automation tool of choice.
