Rental cars: which costs belong where?

At the end of the month, the rental company’s invoice arrives: one car, 16 days, €784 net, perhaps with a fee for returning it to a different branch. Over those 16 days, two customers had the car, and for two days it stood in the yard. Which repair job carries which part of the invoice? And who pays for the two days in between?

Without software support, this is manual work: lay the invoice next to the calendar, count the days, divide the amounts. Or the whole invoice goes into overheads. Then nobody knows whether a job that came with a rental car was still profitable, or whether a location keeps too many cars.

Car Repair Flow is the software body and paint shops use to run their repair jobs. For the shop’s rental cars, we built a workflow into it that runs from the car’s delivery to the rental company’s invoice. At the end, every cost is allocated to where it arose.

The car is on record before it arrives

When the shop orders a rental car, it enters it in Car Repair Flow: rental company, reference number, vehicle class ordered, order date and expected delivery. Several cars can be entered in one go. Until delivery, the timeline shows the car’s days in grey, so the team knows in advance from when it can be booked.

When the car arrives from the rental company, the team adds the delivery date, the class actually delivered, mileage, fuel level and any existing damage. It photographs the car’s condition with the camera and saves the photos to the car’s record. If someone later asks whether a scratch was already there on delivery, the answer is right there.

A free day, one click

When a customer needs a rental car during a repair, the team books it from within the job. The job’s Rental Cars tab lists every car with its bookings. Clicking a free day opens a new rental booking, and Car Repair Flow fits the times to the neighbouring bookings. The system does not allow two overlapping bookings on the same car.

Cars that should not go out for a while, for an inspection, say, can be blocked. The shop defines its own types of block and their colours.

Every contract comes from the booking and is signed electronically

When the customer collects the car, Car Repair Flow creates the rental contract automatically from the booking data. The team adds the driving licence, mileage, fuel level, any existing damage and, if needed, additional drivers. The customer signs electronically on screen, and the signed contract is stored with the booking straight away.

The return protocol works the same way when the car comes back. The handover values sit next to the input fields, and the form will not accept a mileage below the one recorded at handover. Once the customer signs the return protocol, the booking is complete and its bar on the timeline turns green.

It mattered to us that nobody at the counter prints a form, fills it in by hand and scans it back in. Whatever is in the booking is also in the contract and the protocol. That saves time at the counter, and no detail is missing from the contract.

The AI reads the whole invoice, not just the total

The rental company’s invoice reaches Car Repair Flow by email or as an upload, and the AI reads all of it. That includes the vehicle class, the start and end of the rental with the number of rental days, and the day rate, or the weekly or monthly rate on longer rentals. On partial and final invoices, it recognises which billing period the invoice covers.

It also reads the pickup and return branches, the mileage, the excess-mileage charge, the fuel level and the extra charges, such as one-way and airport fees, insurance, additional drivers, refuelling, late return or damage. If the invoice carries a claim number, the shop’s reference or details of the customer’s own car, the AI reads those too.

Fixed rules then match the invoice to the car and link it to every booking within its billing period.

Costs are spread over the billed days

Car Repair Flow calculates the split. The invoice’s net amount, extra charges included, is spread evenly over the days it bills. The costs then go to the jobs that had the car on those days.

For days that no invoice covers yet, Car Repair Flow estimates the cost from past figures. Every estimate is labelled “Estimated”, and the real amount replaces it when the invoice arrives. So a job’s cost overview shows roughly what its rental car costs while the repair is still under way.

The location carries the idle days

We do not charge idle days to any job. Car Repair Flow lists them as “Idle day” and books them as fleet costs to the location the car belongs to.

That makes the cost allocation transparent. A job’s margin shows only the days its customer was driving the car. The location overview shows what a location’s fleet costs when it stands unused. Whether a location keeps too many cars or utilisation is right can be read there.

The planning view shows where cars are free

On the timeline, each car has its own row and each booking is a bar. The colour shows its state: active, completed, overdue or blocked. Above each day is the number of cars still free. Empty cells are the open gaps, and clicking one books the car.

With this view, the team plans utilisation across several locations too. The statistics add utilisation per car and per location. Overdue returns have a list of their own, where each one can be extended in a single step.

For now, the team decides which gap to fill. The data an AI needs for such suggestions is already in Car Repair Flow, though: the bookings, the idle days and the cost of each day.

What a shop sets up first

Before the first rental cars run through Car Repair Flow, a shop needs to:

• add its rental companies as business partners, so their invoices can be matched;
• store templates for the rental contract and the return protocol;
• set up the email inbox for incoming invoices;
• define its types of block, such as inspection or the shop’s own use.