How GuestLot works, from the counter to the receipt.

STEP 01

Check in the car

An advisor opens PorterKey — the staff counter app, on the shop iPad or any browser — and enters four things: the VIN, the owner’s mobile number, the job type, and the pickup time. Last six of the VIN is enough; PorterKey fills in year and model. The job type is not paperwork, it is what sets the policy: a tint job alerts on more than 3 miles of movement, a collision job allows 25 and adds a road test geofence.

There is a second door. If your counter is busy, the owner scans the printed QR sign and starts the check-in from their own phone. The iPad never leaves the counter and the advisor never types a stranger’s phone number wrong. That is the printable check-in kit.

• ✓Two minutes per car once the location is set up.
• ✓Pickup time defaults to your closing time today. Change it with two taps.
• ✓Job type sets the odometer alert, the geofences, and the Supercharger rule.

STEP 02

The owner authorizes

The owner taps the link and lands on Tesla’s own authorization screen, where GuestLot appears as a third-party app. They approve, and the window opens: it starts now and ends at the pickup time on the ticket. They do not create a GuestLot account, install anything, or hand over a password. They can revoke it themselves at any moment from their Tesla account under Security, Third-Party Apps — or by deleting the key at the car.

Some owners will hand you the NFC key card instead. Take it — but know what you are taking. The card is full drive access with no audit trail and it cannot be remote-wiped. GuestLot writes telemetry: not recorded on that visit rather than printing zeros that look like data. The details are in the Tesla key card at the shop.

A window, not a switch. It has a start, an end, and an owner who can close it early. What each scope grants is broken down in give a shop access to your Tesla.

STEP 03

Watch the lot

While the window is open, GuestLot streams Tesla Fleet Telemetry and keeps a short list of things worth a human’s attention: the car left the lot after hours, a Supercharger session got billed to the owner’s account, the battery is low enough that the owner will notice at pickup, the odometer moved further than this job should require. Those become a text to the GM. Everything else is just a line in the log.

What you will not get is a live map. No dot moving across a screen, no staff tracking, no route history for a technician’s lunch run. That is a deliberate limit, and it is the reason owners say yes. The rest of what we refuse to build is listed on security and Tesla limits.

STEP 04

Hand the car back

An advisor taps hand back. Three things happen in the same second: shop access is revoked with Tesla, the snapshot closes, and the receipt generates. A closed snapshot is immutable — you cannot go back and tidy it up, which is precisely why it is worth anything to an insurer.

If the shop gets slammed and nobody taps anything, the window still ends at the pickup time. Access expiring on schedule is the default behavior, not the exception. If the owner takes the car home before you close it out, the record shows exactly that.

STEP 05

Send the AccessReceipt

The AccessReceipt is a tokenized link the owner opens from a text. Shop name first, then the facts: when your access started and ended, miles this visit, after-hours exits, Supercharger sessions, and anything the car reported that they should know about. No login, no app, no marketing.

This is the artifact that ends the phone call before it starts. It is also the document you want on hand if a claim ever comes back at you — see garage keepers liability for what carriers actually ask for. Receipts stay readable after you cancel; they belong to the visit, not to your subscription.