Building A Car Rental Booking Software: a comprehensive guide

The road trip is becoming extremely common as Millennials want more autonomy. The car rental system was born to catch up with the trend, promising huge profit for each car rental business.

What is a car rental booking software?

From the business context, a car rental company traditionally conduct their jobs through call center and person-to-person booking. Customers need to keep in contact with the service desk to book a car or let their travel agent do the job. However, as the Internet booming with convenience and time-saving benefits, customers are more likely to make car rental bookings online. It poses both challenges as well as opportunities for car rental business to grow.

Likely travel agents, which are racing to advance their travel management software, car rental companies can gain exceptional benefits from the innovation of travel tech. A car rental booking software is an online platform designed specifically for vehicles (cars, motorbikes, boats, etc.). It provides a platform where the vehicle provider and the customers can interact securely and smoothly. Furthermore, the company also can manage online car reservations and quotations effortlessly with a system.

The frontend can be a web-based car reservation system or a car rental mobile app where customers can easily access and manage their bookings. The backend is a system with the interface of a dashboard to provide insightful management tools for car rental companies. This software development solution offers a seamless experience for both sides, from order placement to billing and invoicing.

The example overview of a car rental software project

Features

To further illustrate a typical software development process, here we will provide you with an example of a client — a car rental company wanting to build custom software for its system. The client requirements are quite straightforward: they want to build a car rental management software that consists of the following features:

• Real-time availability updates
• Three renting options (by hours, by days, by months)
• Drag and drop quotations
• No limitation for the number of pick-up and drop-off locations
• Payment gateways integration

Users

With an online car rental platform with multiple users, there is a need to classify them into three main groups:

• Users (customers): who are granted permission to browse among available car options, customize their choices (car type, child seat, driver…etc.), obtain quotations, and make payments within the platform.
• Moderators: who can coordinate the car booking processes (answer questions, approve requests, cancel requests), organize related documents.
• Administrators: manages all activities within the platform and have the permission to add/remove moderators.

A car rental system that matches these requirements

An answer to this request can be described as follows:

The rental software basics

Two parts need building for this type of online rental software: the database and the system. The database handles the data that needs to be stored that the web application can function normally. In which, the rental system includes all the tasks performance, designed to match all the requirements.

The basic modules structure of this software can be divided into several groups:

Databases:

• For users and related data
• For reporting and statistics

APIs:

• Browser/Mobile
• Payment
• Google Maps

Background process

• Real-time notices
• Document generator
• Automatic mailing system
• Insights generator
• Auto-backup

For the client’s concerns, the functions can be explained in details based on the primary requests:

1. Real-time availability updates and Three renting options (by hours, by days, by months)

Real-time update functions can be catered with two main features: online car reservation system and Vehicle management.

• Reservation management: It is the central place where reservations go in and proceed according to the customers’ requests. The user will need to fill in a form that contains:

· Name

· Mobile number

· Pick-up date

· Drop-off date

· Car type

· Number of cars

· Hour/Day/Month rent

The reservation system will suggest moderators with available options, along with the most suitable quotes. The approval only occurs when the moderator actively hits the button. The chosen car will be labeled reserved (which will change to rented when the customer picks it up). Otherwise, the order will remain standby in the system.

• Vehicles management: This feature allows moderators to see which car is available for renting, reserved, rented, under maintenance, or dirty/needs repairing. By simultaneously using these two features, the first two requirements are solved.

2. Drag and drop quotations

The Cost estimation feature can tackle this. It allows users to see how much their orders cost before reserving cars on the system by showing cost adds up whenever the user drags another vehicle. Even from the best enterprise travel management, drag and drop quotations are highly appreciated not only by the direct users but also by the providers because of its friendliness and flexibility.

3. No limitation for the number of pick-up and drop-off locations

Some car rental service providers may allow only once or twice for pick-up and drop-off. On the other hand, in this case, they allow unlimited locations, tracked by the Google Maps API plugged into the system without any further doings.

4. Payment gateways integration

Integration can be solved by payment APIs from trusted partners, especially ones that are commonly used by tour booking platforms such as Paypal. The payment function is directly plugged into the whole system to proceed from the time the user presses the placement button to the sales record.

Summary

A car rental management software definitely helps car rental companies to function with a high level of efficiency. Based on your company’s specific requests, you can discuss with developers from companies that provide custom software outsourcing solutions. We hope that this article can give you an overview of what a car rental might look like and how you can manage your outsourcing vendor.