Taxi software

For a taxi company paying a monthly subscription for an external dispatch system and wanting its own: a one-off payment, no commission per ride, no per-car licence and no limit on the number of vehicles. The two enquiries that led us to build the platform were exactly like this: a company from Burgas with city and airport operations that wanted apps under its brand in the App Store and Google Play, and a company from Haskovo with around 70 vehicles, growing to 100, which asked us ten questions before requesting a quote: the final price for 100 cars, whether there was a monthly fee, who owned the software and data, whether there was a vehicle limit, how long it would take and how the switch could happen without interruption. The answers below are the answers we gave them.

If your company has five cars and the dispatcher is the owner with one phone, a subscription to an off-the-shelf system is cheaper, and we will tell you so. An in-house platform starts to make sense from a few dozen cars upwards, when the monthly subscription to the external system is already expensive, as the company from Haskovo told us, or when you have an airport, transfers and corporate clients that the off-the-shelf system does not cover.

The dispatcher sees a live map of all cars by status and a queue of bookings. When a call comes in, the system opens the customer and their recent addresses; the booking takes one tap, and a ride can also be entered without a destination. City zones are drawn on the map, each with its own rule: nearest car or queue by order of entry. Ranks are queues ordered by arrival. If a driver declines, the booking goes to the next car in the zone, then to the neighbouring zone. Dispatch is automatic, with the dispatcher able to intervene manually at any time. A declined request can trigger an automatic penalty, and the setting applies both to the dispatcher’s queue and to bookings from the app.

For an airport, there is a separate zone with a queue of cars and a board showing the day’s transfers by flight, with fixed prices by destination, flight number, number of passengers and child seats. The city operation goes live first, followed by the airport operation, because there are no flights in winter.

The driver app runs on Android and works on existing phones and tablets, with no special hardware: on-shift and off-shift status, an incoming booking with a countdown to accept it, navigation to the customer and destination, “Arrived”, “Pick up” and “Complete” statuses, rank position, today’s rides and turnover. Real-time GPS comes from the driver’s phone every few seconds, with no GPS devices in the cars and no fee for them.

The passenger app for iOS and Android is optional, as a second offer option. Passengers book in a few taps from the map, their history or favourites, see an estimated price based on your tariff, and are charged by the in-car fiscal taximeter. They see the car on the map, the driver’s name, the make and registration number, receive a notification at around 300 metres and a “Your car is outside” message. They pay the driver in cash or, optionally, by card in the app, with the money paid into the company’s account. Bookings without the app are also possible: by phone through the console and via a link page that you place on your website or send through Viber.

The phone is in the dispatch console: the company's number is connected via SIP, the call is answered through the available dispatcher's headset after a short greeting, the caller's number opens the customer record and their latest addresses, the recording stays attached to the booking, and missed calls remain on a list until someone calls back. At Eco Taxi, the line is from A1 and was connected to the dispatch console in the first week; we transfer the telephony once everything is ready and approved, not on the first day. We have not connected a taxi meter so far: the fare is charged on the car's taximeter, while the passenger sees an estimated price in the app. We have connected MyPOS card payments in the taxi solution and Stripe in other systems; corporate clients with rides charged to an account and a monthly invoice are a separate module.

This is the question every company already using an external system asks: how do we switch without interruption? To get started, we do not need data from or access to the current system. The platform is built and tested with a dispatcher and two or three drivers; addresses and history are transferred at the end, and the old system is shut down once the new one has been accepted. Training is usually online, or on-site when needed. You add and remove cars and drivers yourself, in a minute, from your administrator account, without our involvement.

We show a working platform ready for review 6 weeks after the first meeting; review in the App Store and Google Play comes after acceptance and takes from a few days to two weeks, with the accounts there in your company’s name. The city operation is accepted first, followed by the airport and corporate operations.

The taxi platforms we have quoted fall in the mid-to-upper range of 3 000-29 300 €: dispatch console, driver app, zones, reports and central dispatch as one option, with a passenger app as a second. A map of the area, corporate module and card payments are priced separately. Payment is made in instalments, with a deposit on signing and the balance on acceptance of the working platform. Hosting and support cost 100-350 € per month, if you choose them, or you can use your own server with no monthly fee payable to us. The code, data and brand are yours: no commission per ride, no per-car licence and no limit on the number of vehicles.