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Insurance
Track your household's insurance the way the insurer writes it: one policy, with every vehicle it covers listed beneath it.
- How it works
- Adding a policy
- Premiums and per-vehicle shares
- Coverages
- Your own fields
- Renewing
- Switching insurers
- History
- Importing from a PDF
- Who can see and edit a policy
- Notifications and the calendar
- Upgrading from 3.5 or earlier
Since v3.6.0 a policy is a household record, not one vehicle's record. The policy holds what is shared (insurer, policy number, term dates, premium), and each covered vehicle sits beneath it with what is genuinely its own:
- coverage type (Full Coverage, Liability, and so on)
- its share of the premium
- deductible
- its coverages, and any fields you add yourself
You will find it in two places, showing the same data:
- Insurance in the main navigation lists every policy in the garage.
- A vehicle's Financial → Insurance tab shows the policies covering that vehicle, with that vehicle in full and the others only named ("Also covers: Mirage").
- Open Insurance and click Add Insurance Policy (or do it from a vehicle's Insurance tab, which starts with that vehicle attached).
- Enter the insurer, policy number, term dates and premium.
- Under Covered vehicles, pick a vehicle and click Add. Choose its coverage type; the share and deductible are optional. Tick the coverages it carries and fill in what the declarations page shows.
- Repeat for each vehicle on the policy, then save.
To put another vehicle on a policy you already have, open that vehicle's Insurance tab and use Add to existing policy.
The policy premium is the amount for the whole policy per billing period (monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or annual).
Each vehicle's share works like this:
- Leave it empty and the vehicle takes an even split of whatever the other vehicles leave. The empty box shows the amount it will resolve to.
- Type an amount to fix that vehicle's share.
- If every vehicle has a fixed share, they must add up to the premium. The form tells you before you save when they do not.
Shares are what Garage Analytics uses, so insurance cost is reported per vehicle and per month, counted by billing frequency: a $150 monthly premium is $1,800 a year, not $150.
If a vehicle leaves the policy mid-term (sold, or dropped), edit the policy and set Left the policy on for that vehicle. Its cost history is kept up to that date.
Every vehicle gets the same checklist, in the same order, on every policy:
| Coverage | Limits | Deductible | Premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bodily injury liability | each person / each accident | Y | |
| Property damage liability | each accident | Y | |
| Uninsured motorist - bodily injury | each person / each accident | Y | |
| Uninsured motorist - property damage | each accident | Y | Y |
| Personal injury protection | each person | Y | Y |
| Medical payments | each person | Y | |
| Comprehensive | actual cash value | Y | Y |
| Collision | actual cash value | Y | Y |
| Glass | Y | Y | |
| Rental reimbursement | each day / maximum days | Y | |
| Roadside assistance | Y | ||
| Loan/lease gap | Y | ||
| Custom parts and equipment | limit | Y | Y |
Ticking the box is what says the coverage is on the policy. Every amount is optional, so roadside assistance with nothing typed is a complete answer: the card reads it as "Included". Untick a coverage to say it is not carried.
The premium column is that coverage's own share of the bill, which is what a declarations page prints beside it. Fill it in if you want it; the policy premium is what analytics uses either way.
Only the coverages you tick appear on the card, in the order above, whichever vehicle they belong to.
For anything the checklist does not carry, add your own label/value fields, either on the policy (Agent Phone, Claims Phone) or on one vehicle (Lienholder, Garaging Address). Common labels are one tap; Custom field takes anything else. Use the arrows beside a field to move it: they appear on the card in the order you put them in.
When the renewal notice arrives, click Renew on the policy. Enter the new premium and confirm the dates. That is all: the vehicles, their coverages and every named field carry over, and each vehicle's share is scaled to the new premium.
You do not have to wait for the current term to end, though the next term itself cannot start before the current one finishes. The next term shows as Upcoming until it starts, and the current term stops sending expiry notifications once its renewal is entered.
Click Switch insurer to move vehicles to a policy from a different company. The vehicles carry over; the old insurer's coverages do not, because the new insurer writes its own, so tick them in the same form.
- Switching at renewal: leave the dates as they are. The new policy starts the day the old one ends.
- Switching mid-term: set End the old policy on. The new policy starts that day; it cannot overlap the old one, or both premiums would be counted.
- Moving only some vehicles: remove the ones that are staying from the form. The old policy carries on for them and can still be renewed; the vehicles that moved simply leave it on the switch date.
Renewals and replacements are chained together. View history on a policy shows every prior term and insurer with the premium change from one to the next (for example "+$84 +14% vs the prior term"). Use Show past policies to see expired terms in the list.
In the add-policy form, Import from PDF reads a declarations page and fills in the policy. It also lists every vehicle on the document: those that are in your garage are attached automatically, with their own premium, deductible and coverages where the document shows them. A declarations page is not always read perfectly, so check the ticked coverages and their amounts before saving; nothing is stored until you do.
Access follows the vehicles a policy covers:
- You can see a policy if you can see at least one vehicle on it. Vehicles you do not have access to appear only as a count.
- You can edit a policy, or change how the premium is divided, if you have write access to every vehicle it covers (or you created it, or you are an admin). Dividing the premium affects every vehicle on the policy, which is why write access to one of them is not enough.
- With write access to one vehicle you can still edit that vehicle's own details, such as its deductible.
When a vehicle is transferred to another user, it is removed from the previous owner's policies.
You get one expiry notification per policy, naming the vehicles it covers, the number of days ahead an admin sets in Settings → Notifications. Policies that cover only archived vehicles are skipped. The calendar shows one renewal event per policy; clicking it opens the Insurance page.
Back up first (Settings → Backup & Restore): this upgrade restructures insurance data and cannot be reversed.
Your existing policies are merged automatically. Entries with the same owner, insurer, policy number, dates and billing frequency become one policy, and each vehicle keeps exactly the numbers it had. Consecutive terms of the same policy are chained into a history.
Each vehicle's coverage text is converted at the same time, line by line: a line naming a coverage on the list above becomes that coverage, with the amounts it carried; a leftover line with an amount becomes one of your own fields; anything else stays in that vehicle's notes. A line that says a coverage is not carried, or that names two coverages at once, is kept as text rather than guessed at.
Free text was never precise, so open each policy once and check what landed where. A condition written alongside an amount ("$500 deductible, waived for hit-and-run") keeps the amount, not the condition.
One thing to check afterwards: the policy premium is the sum of what each vehicle showed. If you had typed the whole policy premium on every vehicle, that total is now too high. Open the policy, correct the premium once, and clear the per-vehicle shares to split it evenly.