Best Car Rental Software

What is Car Rental Software?

Why Use Car Rental Software?

Who Uses Car Rental Software?

Kinds of Car Rental Software

Car rental software often provides fleet management tools beyond managing car rentals. These solutions might also include solutions that streamline the process of car sharing, motorcycle rental, RV rental, peer-to-peer (P2P) car sharing, and more.

Car Rental Software Features

Streamlined booking — Car rental software lets vehicle rental businesses provide customers with the option to book car rentals directly from the website.

Fleet management — Managing your fleet is a key aspect of car rental software, providing users with accurate inventory records. This helps ensure that the entire fleet is accounted for, regardless of the number of locations and vehicles.

GPS tracking — Many car rental systems offer GPS tracking to locate current vehicle inventory, maintain vehicle records, and organize information on all inventory. This allows car rental businesses to maintain vehicle records and provide real-time information on all in-use cars, including incoming and outgoing vehicles.

Online payments — Many car rental systems provide customers with an online portal to complete payments for seamless online payments that integrate into accounting software and can provide e-signature features.

Rate management — Car rental software often provides up-to-date rental rate information such as normal rates, promotions, and other special offers.

Rental agreements — Car rental software provide digitized rental agreements that help eliminate the need for unnecessary paperwork and centralizes all customer records.

Reservation system — Car rental software allows customers to reserve vehicles based on make, model, and other personal preferences. Customers are able to browse all available inventory to find a car that fits their specific needs. This feature helps car rental companies ensure that customers are only able to select what is in stock, as well as provide accurate pricing.

Maintenance notifications — Managing a fleet of vehicles inevitably leads to plenty of maintenance requests, from routine tuneups to more major repairs. Car rental software can help track how many vehicles are in the shop, as well as current status and possible setbacks. This assists in the management and accuracy of inventory.

Managing traffic fines — Bad drivers are everywhere, and for car rental companies, dealing with customer traffic violations can be exhausting. Car rental software helps mitigate this by tracking and ensuring all fines are properly accounted for and routed.

Revenue management — Car rental software provides car rental businesses with revenue management features that record all transactions for accurate accounting.

Mobile optimization — Car rental solutions provide mobile applications, allowing customers to access car rental websites from their mobile phones.

Reporting — Real-time reports provide users with details regarding bills, duty registers, vendor information, and more.

Additional Car Rental Features

SEO optimization — Many car rental solutions provide vehicle rental businesses with SEO optimization tools to boost the visibility of a business website and increase website traffic.

Website analytics — Car rental solutions often provide customer tracking information, including where customers are coming from, what they are looking at, how they found your website, and more.

Language options — Many car rental solutions offer multiple language options to provide customer service to multilingual customers.

Trends Related to Car Rental Software

Omni-channel rental — Car rental solutions are meeting customers’ expectations of realizing full car rental lifecycles on their mobile devices. This process includes all pertinent steps from car shopping through payment. Some car rental software helps businesses provide pickup through drop-off without any customer interaction.

Green vehicles — Car rental companies are focusing on green vehicles as a more economical and environmentally sound alternative to doing business as usual. Increasing oil prices and emission standards are pushing car rental companies toward investing in green vehicles.

Short-term rentals — With the increase in car-sharing pools and hourly rentals, car rental agencies will increasingly provide short- and medium-term vehicle rental solutions. Car rental software will allow vehicle rental businesses to provide customers with solutions for amending, extending, or canceling bookings on the go. Flexible, cost-effective solutions will help vehicle rental agencies compete with car sharing providers.

Potential Issues with Car Rental Software

Car sharing — Car sharing is an ever-expanding aspect of the transportation industry that is here to stay. Some car rental companies have responded to the competition by selling off extra cars, others are marketing their excess fleet directly to car sharing drivers. Some car rental businesses are even outsourcing their fleet management expertise to car sharing companies.

Software and Services Related to Car Rental Software

Payment gateway software — Car rental software often integrates with payment gateway solutions to help vehicle rental agencies securely transmit and authorize customer transaction information to banks. These solutions let businesses accept payments from credit cards, checks, and more.

Accounting software — Car rental solutions often integrate with accounting solutions that provide features such as invoice management, accounts receivable, document emailing tools, and more.

Billing software — Car rental solutions often integrate with billing software to manage all invoicing processes, including the ability to create and send invoices in different formats and provide payment alert notifications.