Epyx has unveiled a major upgrade to its 1link Service Network, introducing Automatic Vehicle Authorisation (AVA), a tool designed to dramatically speed up service, maintenance and repair (SMR) approvals for fleets.
AVA uses more than 40 million datapoints and five years of historic SMR transactions to decide whether a job should be approved instantly or flagged for review. For fleets, that means fewer manual checks, faster garage turnaround times and more consistent decision-making.
Charlie Brooks, Epyx’s VP of strategy, growth and data, called it “the biggest single advance for 1link Service Network in its 21-year history,” adding that it “brings SMR into a new era.”
The system scores each job across four areas, price fairness, likelihood of approval, supplier behaviour and expected wear rate, displaying results on a 0–100 scale. Fleets can tailor tolerances so the system aligns with their own SMR policies.
Epyx says AVA could enable out-of-hours auto-authorisation, reduce bottlenecks for junior staff, and allow senior teams to focus solely on higher-value or complex jobs. Early adopters already using 1link’s rules engine report high levels of safe auto-approval, with AVA adding “several new layers of sophistication.”
AVA went live to 1link users in November and will be built into the next-generation version of the platform now rolling out across fleets.