Running head: CAR RENTAL SYSTEM PROJECT 1

Car Rental System Process

By (Name)

(Institution Affiliation)

Date
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Car Rental System Project

Car rental businesses provide vehicles and other automobiles for hire at a fee, normally

charged either on an hourly or a daily basis. Because of the convenience of moving around with

a car, car rental business is booming because there is increased demand for vehicles for hire. For

those individuals that own a car may use car rental services when their cars broke or waiting for

insurance clearance whereas for those that do not own a car may need to use a hired car to get to

their destinations rather than using public transport. For this reasons, car hire business is

growing, most car rental businesses now have multiple outlets in various cities, and hence the

need to have a well-designed and intuitive system that car-hire companies can use to manage

staff, vehicles, drivers, and customers (Osman et al., 2017). This projects entails a car hire

system that can be used by small, medium, or large car hire organizations.

Problem definition

The car rental service entails providing a vehicle for temporal use over a specified period.

Individuals may need this service to help them get around even though they no longer have

access to their car or they do not own a car at all. Whoever needs this service, has to be in touch

with a car rental company and contract out for the vehicle of their interest. The car rental system

will increase customer retention and make it easy to manage staff and vehicles (Lee, & Lee,

2015)

Issues

According to Lee & Lee (2015), technology has advanced and now internet penetration is

more than ever. Currently, individuals are able to access almost everything in the comfort of their

homes. Online retail giants like Alibaba.com, Amazon.com, etc. now have customer across the
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globe. Customers place an order from anywhere and they have delivered to the customers’

doorstep. Banks now use e-banking and m-banking that enable their customers to access almost

every service of the bank from anywhere (Nicholas & Steyn, 2017). Car rental business also

should follow suit and take advantage of the current technology and serve more customer, hence

increasing their sales. The car rental system is designed and developed to offer the services listed

below:

1. Boost car rental business process: The car rental system will allow business to

expand their reach to a global market rather than limiting themselves to their local

market.
2. Online car reservations: This will allow the customer to select available vehicles

and book prior to their expected pick-up time.

3. Registration of customers: This is a portal where customers key input their details

and also allows the car hire management to monitor customer transactions and use

them to deliver customized service and offers

4. Group booking: This section will allow customers to make reservations for cars to

be used by a group in the case of corporate meetings, weddings or any other

event.

Objectives

 To develop a car rental system that will allow customers to register, and hire cars online

by the start of 2019/2020 business year.

 To develop a car hire system that will simplify staff and vehicle management for a car

rental company by the start of 2019/2020 business year.

 To develop a car hire system that will make it easy for customers to rent a car and track

their pick-up and return dates by the start of 2019/2020 business year.

Requirements
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When the car hire system is complete, a requirement analysis will be undertaken using a

software engineering technique involving tasks that will determine the conditions and needs that

will have to be met for the system to work. This assessment must consider all the possibly

inconsistent requirements of entities with diverse dimensions.

Functional Requirements

Functional requirements are those used to exhibit how the internal system architecture

works to meet the overall systems objectives. This also demonstrates subsystems with the main

car rental system as well as the descriptions of each step. This entails what tasks the systems

have to execute, which data the system should hold, processes involved, and the relevant user

interface. The functional car rental system requirements are:

1. Registration of customers: The system will allow new customers to register online

as users and automatically create a membership card.

2. Reservation of vehicles online: Customers should easily create a car reservation

from a remote location.

3. Automated database updating based on real-time vehicle reservations: The system

will automatically update the database regarding cars hired, cars booked, available

cars, etc. whenever a customer reserves a vehicle or whenever a customer returns

it.
4. Customer feedbacks: The system should send relevant SMS notifications

regarding their reservations as well as allowing customers to leave feedback about

the service.

Non-Functional System Requirements

Non-functional requirements provide a demonstration of how the system delivers its

functional requirements.
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1. Security: The car rental system should guarantee the highest level of integrity and

security of the data stored by the system. The system should only allow authorized

persons to access the data through a secured page through which administration users or

customers themselves access and enter their password and username to login and view

users’ page
2. System response time and performance: The car hire system is expected to have a high-

performance rate when executing users’ inputs. For complicated tasks, the system should

respond within 50 minutes and respond within 20 seconds for light tasks.
3. Handling of errors: Errors should be at their very minimal and whenever an error

transpires, a user should be notified by the system through displaying the error message

that will help the user to continue with normal process. Also, the system ought to validate

the users’ inputs before moving to the next steps or updating the database.
4. System availability: the car rental system should be available 24 hours, 7days of every

week in 12 months of the year. In a case of unavoidable circumstances that lead to system

malfunctioning, it should be restored within 48 hours. System restore should be done as

soon as possible to ensure that business resumes as usual and business processes are not

severely affected.
5. Easy to use: with the level of knowledge of the target market users, the system interface

should be simple but quality to make it easy to comprehend and hence require less

training and learning efforts.

Constraints

 Each driver assigned to drive the rented car must have a valid driver’s license
 Every authorized driver of the rented car must be insured to the minimum level required

by the law of the state or country where he will be driving.

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 All vehicles available for hire must meet the minimum local requirements for emissions,

and mechanical conditions for each respective jurisdiction.

 All due taxes must be collected during rental charge collection at the drop-off outlet.
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Description of the proposed system

This system will allow a car rental company to accept rentals by advance reservation; the

company will also accept customers who walk in to hire a car if it is available. At the end of each

day, returned cars are assigned to the reservations for the following day. If more cars are

requested than available cars at any of the outlets, the branch manager may ask for extra cars

from other outlets.

Cars rented from of the organization’s outlet may be returned to any other outlet. The

renting outlet must ensure that cars are returned as per the pick-up and return dates indicated as

per the car rental contract. Whenever a car is returned to a different outlet other than the renting

outlet, the new outlet is assigned ownership.

Only one booking is allowed per day but the customer may make reservations of different

cars for future use. There is an exception when a customer is reserving for an event. During this

case, the customer must provide details of at least one person who will be responsible for each

car. Customers are allowed to give feedback about their experiences. On the other hand, the

organization keeps a record of all rental and bad experiences such late return, damaged cars, or

payment problems. This information informs the decision of renting a car to customers in the

future.
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Data flow diagram illustrates that customer set their usernames, passwords, and create car

rental history whenever they hire a car. Customers are able to view their rental history. The

operational manager receives customer data, car rental history for the outlet, car data, and credit

card data. On the other hand, operational managers can input the input their username and

password. They can also Create, Read, Update, and Delete customer data and their own data. The

owners and operations manager have similar information sent to the system as well the

information they can get from the system except for owners have access to reports across all

outlets.
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The car rental system context diagram illustrates when customers and admin &staff send

and receive information from the system. The customer makes inquiries of the available car types

and prices, the system returns suitably available cars, the customers then make a booking and the

system provides the booking number then the customers confirm the reservation by paying. On

the other hand, admin and staff update the details of available cars based on cars returned or new

cars added to the business. The admin and staff also get notifications about new car reservations.
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The use case diagram illustrates the cases when various users can use the system. For

example, the customer uses the system when registering to be a member, when making a

reservation, when returning a car, when extending the rental period, and when giving feedback

about their experience. Organization staff can add a new car, edit cars details, process rentals,

and reply to customers’ feedback.

Descriptions of outputs/inputs/performance/security or controls

This section describes system inputs and outputs as objects interact with the car rental system.
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Member Registration: The customer enters the username and password, which give a chance

for the system to confirm whether there is an existing user with merging credential. If yes the

user is logged into their account and if not the user is asked to check the username and password

or request for a new password. The user is also given a chance to create an account if they are not

registered. The system checks username, email password, and phone numbers as mandatory

fields.

Car Reservation: Users must be logged in to access this page. On this interface, customers

select a pick-up location, pick-up date, select a return location, return dates, select a vehicle, and

enter payment details. Upon returning the vehicle users get an email confirming that they have

returned their rented car. This email encourages them to leave a review about their experience. If

the customer has a mobile app, they get instant notification about this on their phone and can

leave a review instantly. The customer picks the car from the specified outlet on the set pick-

update.

Customer Feedback: Customers log in to their accounts and select their rentals history with a

pending review. They will be prompted to leave feedback which is stored along with the car

rental history. On the other hand, the staff will get a notification about the customer’s feedback,

when any one of the staff replies to the customer’s feedback.

Rental Car Return: Customer returns a car to the designated outlet, the official checks whether

the car is I good condition, and confirms that the customer has returned the car. The system

checks if the return date is overdue and updates the database. This makes the car available for

another customer to request.

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Report Viewing: The admin user logs in the system and specifies the report he wants to view,

the system retrieves the report and outputs the report. The user will have the option of saving it

as a pdf or printing.

User Interface

This is the interface through which customer’s and the staff access and interact with the

system. The following are the designs proposed for the home page.

Home page UI
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User sign up and Login user interface

All customers looking to user the service will have to sign up and enter their personal details that will be

used to determine whether they are eligible to hire a car from the system. All the fields will be set as

required. ID must a valid ID number of the government issued ID matching with the full names and date

of birth. The email provided must be valid. To minimize errors in the date field, it is set to be a date

picker such that users select date rather than keying in manually. The user must also create password not

less than 6 digits.

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The Login page requires user to enter their email and password. They must match with the one

stored in the system for a user to login. Otherwise, they are require to reset it by inputting their email.
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For users to reserve a car, they must be logged to their account. They directly click on on

any car to rent then some of the fields will be auto filled with the car’s details. Below is the

design of the car reservation page. All date fields will use a date picker to get accurate dates with

uniform format. Select a car will allow users to a select a car from a drop-down list. Pick-up and

drop-off outlet fields will a drop down containing all the company outlets.

Whenever a user has submitted the car reservation form, the manager and the

Database Design
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The database tables will be organized as indicated in the tables below:

Customer’s table

Table-Name Customers
Attributes Type of data Length Attribute type
Customer_ID Varchar 75 Primary-Key
F_name Varchar 75
M_name Varchar 75
L_name Varchar 75
Email Varchar 75
Phone Varchar 55
Address Varchar 75
ID_Number Integer 25

Employees’ Table

Table-Name Employees
Attributes Type of data Length Attribute Type
Employee_ID Varchar 75 Primary-Key
F_name Varchar 75
M_name Varchar 75
L_name Varchar 75
Email Varchar 50
Phone number Number 75
Salary float 75
HireDate Date
Title Varchar 75
MEMPID Varchar 50 Foreign-key

Vehicles’ Table
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Table Name Vehicles

Attribute Type of data Length Attribute type
Plate_Number Varchar 75 Primary-Key
Brand_name Varchar 75
Type_name Varchar 75
Model_type Varchar 50
Number_of_Seats int
Fuel_Type Varchar 10
Drive_Type Varchar 20
Daily_Price float
Hourly_Price
EMPID varchar 50 Foreign-Key

Reservation Table

Table Name Reservation

Attribute Type of data Length Attribute type
Reservation_ID Varchar 50 Primary-Key
Reservation_Date Date
Customer_ID varchar 50 Foreign-Key
P.N varchar 50 Foreign-Key
C.I.D Varchar 50 Foreign-Key
Pickup_Date Date
Return_Date Date

Billing Table

Table Name Reservation

Attribute Type of data Length Attribute type
Billing_ID Varchar 50 Primary-Key
Customer_ID varchar 50 Foreign-Key
Reservatio_ID varchar 50 Foreign-Key
Billing_Date Date
Due_Date Date
Billing_Amoun Float
CID Varchar 50 Foreign-Key

Entity Relationship Diagram

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Data files storage access for all the database tables will be only accessible by logged in

users only. Each user will have access to data tables that will allow them deliver their mandate.

For example, customers will not access to employee tables.

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System Architecture.

The system will be built on a web-based interface to allow for customer and employees to

access the system from remote locations.

Phase 3: Project Plan

List of all tasks that should be completed for the proposed car rental system to work.

a) Meeting with stakeholder: Meetings with the engineering team, company directors, current

employees, and customers to get a full picture of the features needed for the system to work

efficiently. This meetings can also be done from time to time when the project is in progress.

This is estimated to take 14 days with an estimated cost of $2,000.

b) Design mockups and models: this should be done to ensure all stakeholders have a feel of

how the system will look. This is estimated to take 21 days at a cost of $1,200.
c) Database creation: This is estimated to take 10 days at a cost of 2,000.
d) Creation of employee software: Estimated to take 33 days at a cost of 5,000.
e) Creation of the website: Estimated to take 21 days, at a cost of 2,500.
f) Testing the system: Estimated to take 5 days at a cost of $600.
g) Final reporting: Estimated to take 14 days at a cost of $400
h) Training: Estimated to take 10 days at a cost of $950.
i) Launching the system and going live: Estimated to cost $3,500 and will take 1 day.
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Project Schedule

The project is estimated to complete by March 14th, 2019 should it start immediately, a duration of 120 days.
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Running head: CAR RENTAL SYSTEM PROJECT 23

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Dillon, D. M. (2015). U.S. Patent No. 9,009,195. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark

Office.

Lee, I., & Lee, K. (2015). The Internet of Things (IoT): Applications, investments, and

challenges for enterprises. Business Horizons, 58(4), 431-440.

Nicholas, J. M., & Steyn, H. (2017). Project management for engineering, business and

technology. Routledge.

Osman, M. N., Zain, N. M., Paidi, Z., Sedek, K. A., NajmuddinYusoff, M., & Maghribi, M.

(2017). Online Car Rental System using Web-Based and SMS Technology. Computing

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