Employee transport glossary.

Employee transport management system (ETS)

ETS · employee transportation management system · employee commute platform

An employee transport management system is software that plans, allocates, tracks and bills an organisation’s employee commute. It takes shift rosters as input, generates vehicle routes, assigns them across transport vendors, tracks trips live, enforces safety rules and reconciles vendor invoices against the agreed rate card.

Nodal pickup

nodal point · node pickup · common pickup point

Nodal pickup is where employees walk to a designated common point — a landmark, junction or apartment gate — instead of being collected from their doorstep. One stop serves several employees, shortening the pickup chain and reducing the distance and time a vehicle spends collecting a full load.

No-first-no-last-drop

NFNL · no first pickup no last drop

No-first-no-last-drop is the rule that a woman employee should not be the first person picked up or the last person dropped on a night-shift route — the two points at which she would otherwise be alone in the vehicle with the driver. Where it cannot be avoided, a security escort travels with her.

Night-shift escort

marshal · security escort · guard

A night-shift escort is a trained security person who travels in the vehicle on night-shift routes, most often where a woman employee would otherwise be alone with the driver. The escort is separate from the driver and is present for the legs where the risk arises rather than the whole journey.

Transport roster

cab roster · shift roster · transport requisition

A transport roster is the list of which employees need transport, for which shift, on which date, and in which direction. It is the input to route generation: routes cannot be planned from headcount alone, because the vehicles needed depend on who is actually travelling on that particular day.

ETS vs shuttle management

Shuttle management runs fixed routes to a published timetable between fixed points, like a bus service. An employee transport management system plans routes from a roster each day, so pickup points, sequence and vehicle counts change with who is travelling. Most Indian programmes run both.

Empty running

dead mileage · dead kilometres · deadhead

Empty running is distance a vehicle travels with no passengers aboard — positioning from the yard to the first pickup, returning after the last drop, or moving between routes. It is paid for and carries nobody, and in most programmes it is a material share of total distance.

Three-way match

3-way match · invoice reconciliation

In transport billing, a three-way match reconciles three records before an invoice is paid: the trip that actually ran, the contracted rate card, and the vendor’s invoice line. A line that disagrees with either of the other two is flagged rather than paid.