Charge Out Rates - Calculating Charges For Vehicle Usage

Calculating Charges For Vehicle Usage

Some clients need to charge fees for vehicle bookings. This could be a vehicle hire scenario, or internal charging from one cost center to another.

PoolCar has the ability to create your own custom charge out rules.

To create a new rule, click Sysadmin Main Menu > System Data > Charge out Rates > Add New

Once you create a new charge out rule, every booking that satisfies the rule parameters will calculate a cost for the vehicle usage.

Important Note: Charge out rates are reported based on the values that are set when the report is run. Historical reporting is not available.

Charge Out Rates - Explanations

Sort/Execution Order - Charge out rates are processed in the order in which they are sorted, so careful consideration is required when setting this up.

Time Duration Bracket (Hours) - This is the range of hours that a booking duration must fall into for the charge out rate to apply for the booking. This is represented in business hours.

e.g. If the time bracket is set to 8-16 for my hourly rate of $8 that means if any bookings with a duration between 8 and 16 business hours will be charged at the hourly rate of $8.

Flag Fall Charge ($) - This is the fixed base cost of the charge out rate. This will always be added on top of the cost calculated.

e.g. If the flag fall was $20 and booking costs $100 based on the hourly rate. We still would add the fixed base cost on top of that making it $120 total.

KMs/Miles Included - This is a number of KMs/Miles included in the flag fall charge.

Excess Distance Rate ($ per KM/Mile) - This is the rate of charge per distance traveled, it will charge the excess distance after subtracting included KMs/Miles. It’s used in conjunction with KMs/Miles Included and Max Daily Charge includes Distance.

e.g. If a booking was recorded at $1 per KM/Mile and there were 20KM/Miles included. In the case of 100KM/Miles for a booking, $80 dollars would be charged.

Overnight Rate ($) - This is the rate of charge for an overnight booking.

e.g. If set to $20, the cost centre will be charged $20 if a booking is overnight.

Weekend Rate ($) - This is the rate of charge should for a weekend booking.

e.g. If set to $20, the cost centre will be charged $20 if over a weekend period.

Hourly Rate ($) - This is the hourly rate you wish to charge for each booking.

e.g. If set to $10, the cost centre will be charged for every hour of the booking at $10 per hour.

Max Daily Charge ($) - This is the max daily charge to be incurred for a booking.

Max Daily Charge Includes Distance - This determines if the cost generated by the excess KMs/Miles is included in the total cost being used to check if the booking has exceeded the max daily charge.

e.g. If this setting is set to YES and a booking cost $230 for the hourly rate and the max daily total is also $240. If the generated cost from the excess distance is $60 the total booking cost will be $290. But since that is now more than the max daily total it will opt for using the $240.

e.g. If this setting is set to NO in the same scenario, we would not factor the distance cost in the comparison. So since $230 < $240 we would still go with the $230 THEN add on the extra $60 from excess distance making the total cost $290.

Example 1

If your rule is:

• 0 to 2 hours duration, $20 with 10 kilometers included, excess kilometers charged at $0.35 per km.

To create this in PoolCar, enter:

1. Time duration field = "0" and "2"

2. Flag fall charge = "20"

3. KMs included = "10"

4. Excess distance rate = "0.35"

5. Click "Save"

Assuming the booking was 1 hour and 15 minutes (75 minutes) and the distance travelled as recorded with the Keymaster check-in/out was 27 kms, the charge would be:  ($20 x 75/120) + ((27 - 10) * 0.35).

Notice the first bit, 75/120 meaning that the booking duration is calculated on a pro-rata basis for 75 minutes. What if you wanted to round up any booking to the upper bracket? i.e. not charge for 75 minutes usage but for the full 2 hours (120 mins)? Simply enter "2" for the field 'Actual Booking Duration Round Up To'. The number 2 being the upper boundary of the 0 to 2 hour bracket.

Example 2

If your rule was $30 per hour, no limit on kilometers travelled, just enter time bracket "0 to 9999" hours & leave everything blank except for hourly rate in which you enter "30".

Example 3

If you want the rate to entirely be based on kilometres travelled then you would set the hourly rate to $0, and the kilometres included to 0, then set the Excess distance rate to a $value per kilometre (e.g. $0.98). Then the booking charge will be #kilometres x $0.98.

Example 4 : Computation

Working day start time is set to 0600

Working day end time is set to 1800

Hourly Rate = $14.75

Max daily charge = $120

No weekend or overnight fee

Cost is based on the (# of hours * 14.75) OR (# of days * 120), whichever is lower

Open

Booking 1 Rego ABC 21/02/2022 1:52pm to 22/02/2022 6:19pm

max daily charge = $240 (2 days * $120)

While the amount of time within business hours that the booking was for 16.13 hours (248 minutes on the 21st and 720 on the 22nd), 16.13 * 14.75 = $237.96.

Cost for this booking is $237.96 as this is lower than the daily charge

Booking 2 Rego DEF 24/02/2022 7:33am to 1/3/2022 8am

max daily charge = $480 (4 days * $120)

The amount of time within business hours was 38 hours (ie nearly 12 hours on each of the business days, except for the 4th where it was only 1 hour). 38 * 14.75 = $560

Cost for this booking is limited to $480 - which is the lower of the charges

Advanced Filters

You can setup different rules for different vehicles, in different locations.

For instance you may have one set of rules for passenger vehicles and another for vans or buses.

Refer to the screen shot included to the right for the available advanced filters.

Odometer Readings Required

If your charge out rates include a distance charge, then you will need to be diligent in capturing odo values for each trip.

Refer to the Check In/Out page for more information on capturing start and end odometer values for each trip.