Host Check-In: How To
Check-in is a shared photo record of your car's condition before a trip starts — your half of it takes two minutes and protects you if a dispute ever comes up.
When it happens
Your guest can open the trip and start check-in at the scheduled start time, or up to 1 hour early if you're both ready sooner. You'll get a notification the moment they begin.
Step 1: Guest goes first
The guest opens the trip in-app and runs the photo wizard: four exterior angles (front, back, driver's side, passenger's side), interior front and back seats, the odometer, and the fuel or charge gauge. Every photo is timestamped, geotagged, and locked the moment it uploads — nobody can edit or delete it later, including Carvia. They also confirm their ID matches what they verified at signup and review your trip rules one more time.
Step 2: Your side — in-person pickup
If you're meeting the guest for handoff, you run the same photo wizard from your end while you're both standing there:
1. Four exterior angles — front, back, driver's side, passenger's side.
2. Interior — front and back seats.
3. Odometer reading.
4. Fuel or charge gauge level.
Take your time here. Get close on any existing scratch, dent, curb rash, or interior wear — even small stuff. These photos are the baseline the whole trip gets measured against, so a rushed set now can cost you leverage in a dispute later.
Once your photos are in, confirm handoff in-app.
Step 3: Your side — lockbox or remote pickup
If your guest is picking up without you present, you don't run a live wizard at handoff. Instead, you need pre-trip photos already on file for that vehicle, dated within the last 7 days. As long as those are current, the guest's check-in photos plus your on-file photos together document the car's starting condition. Keep a fresh set on file for every lockbox listing — if your on-file photos are older than 7 days when a trip starts, get new ones uploaded before your next guest checks in.
Step 4: Trip goes Active
Once both sides have confirmed — your live wizard and the guest's for in-person pickup, or the guest's wizard plus your on-file photos for lockbox — the trip status flips to Active. The odometer and fuel/charge readings captured at check-in become the official starting baseline for the trip: that's what checkout gets compared against, and what any mileage overage or refueling charge gets calculated from.
Why this matters for you
Your check-in photos are your strongest protection as a host. If you file a damage claim after the trip, Carvia checks the guest's own pickup photos first — if the damage you're reporting is already visible in them, the claim gets rejected automatically, no matter how solid your checkout photos look. That's the evidence rule at the center of our claims process: new evidence has to actually be new. The only way to make sure a pre-existing scratch doesn't get pinned on a guest by mistake, and the only way to make sure real new damage sticks, is a thorough, current photo record on both ends of every trip.
If something's off before handoff
If the guest's photos reveal something you didn't expect, or the vehicle isn't ready to match what you documented, message the guest in-app before confirming handoff. Don't confirm if you're not comfortable with the state of the trip — you can always reach Carvia support to help sort it out first.
What's next
Once the trip is Active, your earnings for it become payable 24 hours after checkout, per the payout schedule — assuming everything closes out clean. When the trip ends, the same process runs in reverse: see Host Check-Out: How To.