Document wallet
The document wallet is a per-vehicle slot for the two paper-shaped documents that you actually need to retrieve on the roadside: your insurance certificate and your breakdown cover document.
We deliberately kept the scope narrow. The wallet is not a general document store. If you need somewhere for service receipts, V5C scans, MOT certificates, or warranty paperwork, attach those to a service-history or expense entry instead, where they live alongside the event they relate to.
Where it lives
Open any vehicle, then look on the Overview tab, below the Appointments card. The Document wallet card shows two rows:
- Insurance certificate
- Breakdown cover
Each row is independent. You don't have to fill both, and you can swap either at any time.
Uploading a document
- Click Upload on the row you want to populate. A file picker opens.
- Pick a file. We accept PDF, JPG, PNG, HEIC, and WEBP.
- The file uploads immediately, no separate "save" click.
Optionally, set an Expiry date in the row before uploading. We use it for two things:
- The card surfaces the expiry alongside the filename so you can see it at a glance.
- Once the per-vehicle reminder pipeline knows your document is about to expire, the existing email reminders pick it up alongside MOT, tax, and insurance.
Replacing a document
Uploading a new file to a row that already has one transparently replaces it, there's no "delete then re-upload" dance. Behind the scenes, the old document is removed and the new one stored under the same wallet slot.
This is deliberate: the wallet enforces one document per kind per vehicle, because the roadside-retrieval case never wants "which of these three insurance certs is the current one?" ambiguity.
Downloading
Click Download on a populated row. The file streams from our R2 storage with its original filename. On a phone, this typically opens the file directly in the appropriate viewer (PDF reader, image gallery).
If you're worried about roadside connectivity, screenshot the document the first time you upload it and keep it in your phone's photo library too. The wallet is the canonical store; an offline copy is belt-and-braces.
Removing a document
Click Remove on a populated row. We ask for confirmation. The file is deleted from storage and the row drops back to empty-state.
This is irreversible. If you need a copy first, download it before clicking Remove.
What you can't do
- Upload more than one document per kind per vehicle. A vehicle has at most one insurance certificate and one breakdown cover document. This is enforced at the database layer; even the API refuses a second upload of the same kind. See Replacing a document above for the right pattern.
- Store other document kinds. The wallet currently has two kinds, insurance and breakdown. We don't plan to expand it into a general document store, that's what service-history attachments and expense receipts are for. If you have a strong case for another kind (hello@garagehq.uk), we're listening.
- Share documents to your customer / portal user. The wallet is operator-side only. The customer portal doesn't currently expose these documents. We'll revisit if there's demand.
File size and types
| Setting | Limit |
|---|---|
| Max size | 10 MB per document |
| Mime types | application/pdf, image/jpeg, image/png, image/heic, image/webp |
| Retention | Lives in storage until you remove it or delete the vehicle |
If your scanner produces a 30 MB high-DPI PDF, run it through a quick web compressor first, or photograph the document on your phone instead, which usually comes out at 2-3 MB.
Common questions
Does the expiry date push reminders into my email? Yes, once you set an expiry and have email reminders enabled for the vehicle, the wallet document joins the per-vehicle reminder fan-out alongside MOT, tax, and insurance. You'll get the digest at the same cadence you've configured.
What happens to wallet documents when I sell the vehicle? The buyer's seller-pack import does not copy wallet documents across. Those are personal-and-current data, not part of the vehicle's history. The new owner uploads their own.
Can multiple members of my org upload to the same vehicle? Yes, any member with edit access to the vehicle can upload, replace, or remove wallet documents. The audit trail (who uploaded what when) lives in the access logs.