Set up vehicle classes and rate cards

A class is what the client buys

Clients book a kind of car, not a registration plate. Build your classes around what you sell, such as a business saloon, a luxury saloon or a minibus, and give each one an honest capacity: Min pax, Max pax and Luggage. Capacity is part of pricing. When the passengers on an enquiry are more than the priced vehicle or class seats, the quote is marked Needs Details until you choose a bigger one.

Set Covered by to show whether a class comes from your own fleet, partners or both. Switch a class off with Active instead of deleting it when you stop selling it; classes in use are protected anyway.

What a rate card holds

Each class has one rate card. Open it with Rates on the class row in Settings > Services & pricing > Service setup: Base rate, Hourly rate, a rate per kilometer or mile, and Minimum charge. The same card is also listed under Vehicle class rate cards in Settings > Services & pricing > Rate cards, where it also takes a Daily rate (full day) and a Waiting time rate (per hour). Both screens edit one card.

The distance field is labeled Per km or Per mile after your workspace's distance unit. A card of all zeros counts as no rate at all.

How a transfer price is built

A point-to-point job is priced as the base fee plus the distance times your distance rate. Extras, any client discount and date rules are applied after that, and the minimum charge is checked near the end: if the total would come out below it, the minimum is charged instead.

So the base fee is what every job pays before the first kilometer or mile, and the minimum charge is the floor for the whole job.

Set a minimum that makes short jobs pay

Take the shortest job you do often, for example a hotel to the station, and work it out with your base fee and distance rate. If the result is less than you would accept for sending a car and a driver, the minimum charge should catch it. Set the minimum to the least you are willing to take for any job in that class, then check one short and one long test quote.

If you came through the setup wizard, the base fee and the minimum charge both hold your minimum fare and the distance rate is zero. Set the distance rate, then decide whether the base fee should stay that high.