Taxi Booking Joomla component online documentation:

Installation

After you download the Archive package, please log in to your Joomla backend panel and click on Extensions -> Install/Uninstall (Extensions -> Extension Manager for Joomla 2.5) to go to Joomla's installation interface.

Click on the Browse button and locate pkg_taxibooking.zip archive on your hard drive. Click on Upload File & Install. 

Many servers are set to allow upload of files up to 2MB and Taxi Booking is a bit over that. You can overcome this server limitation by logging in to http://kanev.com and going to User options (top right menu) > My Downloads > Taxi Booking section > View files and instead of clicking on Download now button copy the Direct Link. Then go to your Joomla backend > Extensions > Extension manager > Install from URL section and paste the whole URL (Direct link) that you copied previously. Click on install and Taxi Booking will be installed on your website.

After the installation is complete you will be able to see Taxi Booking component in the Components Joomla menu.

Click on Taxi Booking to visit back end Taxi Booking interface.

Taxi Booking installation video

 

If you find Joomla, it's installation process and set up through the back end too difficult you may take a look at our Cloud Taxi Booking Software solution at https://booking.drivenot.com - Free 30 day Trial, no credit card required. 

Management

Don't forget that you will have to create and publish a Menu link to "Booking form" front-end interface to show the booking form on your website (log in to your Joomla backend > Menus > Main Menu (or different menu where you want that link published) > Add New Menu Item > Menu Item Type - Select button > Booking form - here you can set up Menu Title, Alias, Browser Page Title, Meta Description and Meta Keywords for better Search Engine Optimization - SEO).

We have added Driver management functionality. You will have to register your Drivers to your website and select User is Driver at Taxi Booking > Users > Edit user profile by clicking on user's name. Automatic emails will be sent to Drivers when you assign new Order to them. All Order details will be sent to the driver and the customer will receive an email with Driver's name, Photo and Phone number if you have set those options. Date and time in the email are in a format that Gmail allows quick adding to the Calendar - driver's diary. 

  • Go to Taxi Booking > Users > Choose your driver > User is Driver: Yes > Set Driver options > Save & Close.
  • Repeat if you have more than one driver.

Special Routes give you the option to use Flat rate/ Fixed Price (special) offers or you can use this Flat rate/ Fixed Price options if you run a Limousine, mini cab, private hire vehicle company or Shuttle service and you don't need to charge per mile/kilometre. You will also be able to specify prices in your Special routes for each Car that you have in your Cars management, all cars will be pulled to the Special Route section and you will be able to assign different prices to different cars for each Special Route that you create.

Read more about Points of Interest here. 

Translate Taxi Booking

Taxi Booking will work in any language possible and will also work great in multi-lingual websites. Since Joomla 2.5 and Joomla 3 support multi-language by default, you don't need any 3rd party extension.

Taxi Booking is translatable via the back end Taxi Booking > Translations section and via Language assignments for items handled by the database.

It is easy to translate Taxi Booking into different languages and run multi-lingual websites. 

Read more information and tutorial on translations here.

Silent user registration

A user account is created silently every time a new email address is used to book an order. User details are emailed to the customer and he/she can now log in to your website. If they make a booking without logging in and use the same email, Taxi Booking's smart system will still recognize their email address and stack up against the orders to the same user ID so when they decide to log in they can view all their orders in "My Orders" tab of the booking form.

Settings

Taxi Booking's Settings panel is divided into sections:

General settings - Set up distance units miles or kilometres and what tabs to show at the front end: Address search, Special offers, Hourly hire, Shuttle booking.

General price settings - Set up a currency, Minimum charge and various price calculation settings if fares are the same for all Cars in your fleet.

Map settings - Show or hide the map with route calculation, allow or disallow Stops along the way and other various settings.

Base settings - Draw your area of operation and set up default Country and City, add your Base coordinates and decide if you need to charge for "Dead mileage" from Base to Pick up and Drop off to Base.

Google calendar settings - Google calendar integration. Detailed tutorial available here.

Order email settings - Additional information to include in Order notification emails to the customer - header, footer and your company's logo.

Terms and Conditions settings - Terms and Conditions of the booking and interaction with your company that the customer has to agree to before finishing the booking.

Design settings - Change various aspects of the Booking form appearance, background and font colours. Blend it with your website and branding.

SMS settings - Set up Clickatell text message notifications for New orders sent to the customer.

Details and tutorials for Taxi Booking.   

Payment methods

Taxi Booking comes with PayPal and Cash payment plugins in the installation package. These plugins will be installed automatically when Taxi Booking package is installed.

Make sure that you use a verified PayPal business or premier account to receive online bookings

Read more about how to set up Payment plugins here.

We currently supply Taxi Booking with the 2 most popular payment gateways: PayPal and Cash, but more can be created on demand check out these payment gateways or contact us to discuss new ones. 

Points of Interest

Although Points of Interest categories and Points of Interest are 2 separate sections a brief description of both can be seen below.

You can also check out this Video tutorial

Point of Interest categories: Here you create categories to assign your Points of Interest to. The main importance of this section is that later you can assign Custom Fields to POI categories and when your users select a POI at the front end assigned Custom fields will automatically show (this action is automatic based on user selection and is very useful if you need to collect extra Data eg. Terminal number for Airport Points of Interest).

Points of Interest section: - a list of all your Points of Interest is visible when you enter this section of Taxi Booking.

If you click on New you will see the following fields:

Title: - this is what your users will see at front end drop down. When you start typing a POI name the system will show you Google Address Auto-suggest drop down. You can select a Point of interest from the list and the Coordinates below will be auto-populated. Note: Suggested addresses can be quite long, you can delete part of Title but don't remove the Coordinates below as without Coordinates Taxi Booking will not work.

POI Category: - assign the POI to a POI category. It is useful to do that as Custom fields can be assigned to POI categories and all Points of Interest in that category will trigger Custom fields pop up on the booking form.

Language: - assign a Language to the POI if you run a multi-lingual website and want to show the POI Title in the native language your customers view your website in. Note: If you assign a POI to a specific language it will not be visible for any other language. Leave selection here to All so this POI is available for all your languages.

Additional Charge label: - in some cases, there is an additional charge for certain points of interest (eg. Parking at Airports) and here you can name that Charge. This label will be shown in customer's confirmation emails and PDF receipts. Without a label, the price you specified below will not be added.

Price: - this is the price of the above Additional Charge.

Show on Pick up: Yes/No - selection here will show or hide the POI in the drop-down list for Pick up destinations.

Show on Drop off: Yes/No - selection here will show or hide the POI in the drop-down list for Drop off destinations.

Description:  here you can describe in more details the POI. This description will become visible if a user selects this POI at the front end. It is useful if your POI title is too long or if you need to provide specific information about this Point of Interest. >

You can use Points of Interest to create Fixed Price special routes for flat rate fares between 2 destinations.

Cars management

In Cars management besides the additional flat rate/ Fixed Price that you can add for your different types of vehicles, you can also override the price per mile/kilometre. You can also take advantage of the complex price formation based on the distance of the journey via Distance sectors eg. 1-5 miles/kilometres separate price, 6-20 miles/kilometres separate price per unit distance and that's for each individual type of vehicle or separate car that you employ in your company. To manage your cars go to Joomla backend > Taxi Booking > Cars.

You can quickly create Cars of the same type with the same characteristics by clicking on a Car's checkbox and then clicking on the "Duplicate" button in the top right corner (Joomla 2.5).

In version 2.8 we added Car availability. You can set up work days and hours for each of your cars at the back end Car management. You can also add Block off dates to completely block off car/vehicle availability when on vacation or in repair/maintenance.
On each booking, the system will record the date and time of the booking and will automatically make that car unavailable for the same period to avoid "double booking" of the vehicles in your fleet.

Available settings are:

Car type - the name of your vehicle.

Published: Yes/No - is the car in operation or not.

Minimum passengers: - minimum number of passengers to show this car in Search results.

Maximum passengers: - number of passengers that the car can hold (exclude the driver).

Suitcase No: - number of maximum suitcases that can be fit in the car.

Maximum booster seats: - number of Booster seats that can be fitted in the car. This will be subtracted from Maximum passengers automatically.

Maximum child seats: - number of Child seats that can be fitted in the car. This will be subtracted from Maximum passengers automatically.

Maximum infant seats: - number of Infant seats that can be fitted in the car. This will be subtracted from Maximum passengers automatically.

Image - thumbnail image of the car shown at front end Cars table.

Additional Car type charge: - Additional flat rate price added to the vehicle. Useful for different vehicle types eg. Luxury cars.

Add on return: Yes/No - if Yes is selected then the additional car type charge will be added to the return trip if the customer selects return.

Use as Taxi: Yes/No - if Yes is selected this car will be used for booking type Address to Address (price per mile/kilometre). 

Price per Unit override: Yes/No - if set to Yes the next entered price will be considered as the price per mile/kilometre ignoring what you have set up in the Settings > Price Settings tab.

If Price per Unit override is set to Yes:

Use tariff: Yes/No - if you have different tariffs for different cars or Day/Night tariffs set this option to Yes. Tariffs assigned to this Car in tariff management will then be applied in price calculation.

If Use tariff is set to Yes:

Charge per minute: - option to add a charge per minute for the total duration of the journey returned by Google Maps API. Useful for price calculation in Netherlands, Turkey and some parts of India.

If Use tariff is set to No:

Price per Unit: - price per mile/kilometre you wish to charge for this particular Car.

Charge per minute: - option to add a charge per minute for the total duration of the journey returned by Google Maps API. Useful for price calculation in Netherlands, Turkey and some parts of India.

Distance sectors price set up: - Cumulative or Non-cumulative price settings. See full description above at "Price settings" tab in the main Settings section.

Use as limo: Yes/No - if Yes is selected the car will be used for Special routes. It will be shown in the Special route edit screen where a price for that car can be set.

Use as Private tour: Yes/No - if Yes is selected then this car will be used for Private tours and it will be visible in the Private tour edit screen where its price can be set.

Use as Hourly hire: Yes/No - if Yes is selected the car will be available for Hourly hire. If at least one car has an hourly hire rate the Hourly Hire dropdown will be visible at the front end.

Minimum Hours to hire: - the vehicle with the lowest Minimum Hours to hire will determine what is the first available option to Hire vehicles at the front end.

Maximum Hours to hire: - determines the longest period for which a vehicle from your fleet can be hired.

Price per Hour: self-explanatory, what you charge per Hour?

At the front end drop down of Hours to hire will be shown with values between Minimum hours to hire and Maximum hours to hire, also Minutes option for 15, 30 and 45 minute intervals and if you need to create Custom fields eg. to collect Pick up information or to upsell other products you can do so at the Custom fields management screen.

Daily hire?: Yes/No - if Yes is selected the car will be used for Daily hire.

Weekday price: - the price for daily hire during the weekdays

Weekend price: - the price for daily hire during the weekend.  

Special date price > Add new button

Select a Date by clicking on the calendar button. 

Price - set a price for that date.

You can add as many dates as you like, the system will automatically calculate the Total price based on the date range your customer has selected.

Discount for longer periods: Yes/No - if Yes selected then you can set a discounted per day price for longer periods.

Over number of days: - number of days over which the price will be discounted.

Price - the discounted price per day.

Assign Driver to car: - if you have Taxi Booking Drivers then you can assign a driver to this car. 

Use own base: Yes/No - if No is selected then all Base settings will be available for this specific car. 

Availability

Track availability: Yes/No - this feature tells Taxi Booking whether you would like to block off times for Accepted Orders of this car when booked. If set to Yes and a search at the front end at the same time is executed, this car will not be on the list of available vehicles.

In the section with all days of the week, checkboxes select only the days that this car is available. Opposite each day of the week, there is Available from and Available to time pickers to set up at what time shift of the car starts and what time it ends.

Blocked dates: - certain dates to Block off car availability like holidays or vacations. You can add multiple dates here and remove them later if things change.

Description: - description of the vehicle that will be shown at the front end Cars table on car Thumbnail hover. 

Tariffs

In tariffs management, you can create different tariffs for Day/Night days of the week and special dates like Christmas and New Year.

Title - a descriptive name of the tariff eg. Day tariff.

Alias - you can leave empty and the system will auto-populate it on Save.

Initial charge - flat rate charge or administrative fee.

Unit price - charge per kilometre/mile for this tariff.

Assigned cars - select the cars that this tariff will apply to. Hold Ctrl key and click on car titles to select multiple cars.

Published: Yes/No - only published tariffs will be taken into consideration for price formation.

Day assignment - select the days of the week that this Tariff will be applied to. Useful if you have different tariffs for weekdays and weekends for example.

Start time/End time - for each day of the week you have selected set up a Start time and End time of the tariff.

Special Tariff: Yes/No - this option will tell the system of special tariff overrides. If set to Yes then this tariff will override other tariffs for the same Day/Time period. If set to Yes you will be able to add multiple dates where this tariff will be applied to.

Step by step Tariff set up tutorial available here: http://kanev.com/blog/33-set-tariffs-for-taxi-booking

Special routes

Special routes give you the possibility to create Fixed fare trips between 2 pre-set destinations.

In the Special routes section of Taxi Booking, you will see all Special routes that have been previously created and you can create new ones.

If you click on the New button you will see the following options:

Title: - friendly name for your Special route to identify it in the list of Special routes at the back end. The title is not used at the front end.

Alias: - system generated link to this special route. Leave it blank.

From: - Pick up destination. You can select this destination from the list of your previously created Points of Interest or you can click on Create new POI and create a Point of Interest to use here. Tip: After you create a Point of Interest here it will be available on the list of POIs in the Points of Interest section where you can edit it at a later time. All fields that can be used in POI creation are also shown here when you click on Create new POI button.

To: - Drop off destination. You can select from the drop-down list of previously created Points of interest or create a new Point of interest via the Create new POI button.

Price: - Flat fee that you charge for the journey between these 2 destinations. Use this field if you have the same price for all cars in your fleet.

Published: Yes/No - if set to No then this Special route will not be available for booking in the Special offers tab at the front end.

Separate price for each car: Yes/No - if you have different fares for different cars and car types in your fleet set this to Yes. You will be able to add a separate price for each car in the table of available cars below. Cars are automatically pulled by the system. Tip: If you wish to exclude a Car from this Special route set its price to 0 and it won't be shown at the front end.

After you finish editing the form don't forget to click Save & Close button.

More information about Flat rate fares available here.

Custom fields

Custom fields section's purpose is to help you not only collect additional information but also up-sell products and services.

Custom fields can be 4 different types: Extras, Input boxes and Option lists and Text areas.

You will be able to select which type of Custom field you create when you click on the New button. Different options to configure will be available after you select a Custom field type.

Extras Custom field type is to up-sell products or services that will add value to the total of the booking (or can be configured to 0 for free Extras). Here you are able to add Extra's Title (name to appear at the front end), Extra available on Pick up: Yes/No, Drop off: Yes/No, Hourly hire: Yes/No, select one or more Point of interest categories this Extra is available on, Price and Quantity (a quantity drop down will be presented at the front end). The number that you enter in the Extra field Quantity input box means the range up to that number eg. if you enter 10 this means 1-10 and a drop down 1 to 10 will be created at the front end for your users to choose. Tip: Allow 0: Yes will add a 0 to the select list.

Input boxes are designed to collect additional information from your passengers like Terminal and Flight numbers or Address of general areas when used in Special routes. Here you can configure Title, show on Pick up or Drop off or both, Point of interest category the input box will be showed on and whether the input box is Mandatory or not.

Text area is similar to Input boxes but instead of one line, the input box will allow multiple lines and more text added by the customer. This Custom field type is used for Messages or Additional information you may require.

Option lists are special fields that you can create as a drop down of choices for your customers to pick from. If you select this field type you will see a "Field Options" appear above the Description. In this area, you will be able to create your Options by clicking on "Add new" button which will show a new box for the option text and you can delete options using the "Remove" button next to each created option.

Each custom field can be assigned to multiple Points of Interest Categories as you hold down Ctrl key on your keyboard and click on the categories you would like to assign this custom field to.

You will also be able to translate your Custom fields if you are using different languages by selecting the Language you wish to assign the Custom field from the automatically populated Language drop-down - only installed languages will be visible in this drop down.

Show on Pick up: Yes/No - assign the custom field to Pick up points.

Show on Drop off: Yes/No - assign the custom field to Drop off points.

Show on Address: Yes/No - this option will assign the Custom field to Address selection when your customer is typing an address an uses it form the auto suggest drop down.

Show on Hourly hire: Yes/No - this option will assign the Custom field to the Hourly hire tab and will show each time your customers use Hourly hire. This is useful to add Address input boxes to Hourly hire if you are collecting your customers form their address instead of them visiting a specific location.

Show on Return: Yes/No - this option allows you to assign a Custom Field to Return Pick up and Drop off locations.

Description: The text you type in here will show as a Tooltip over the Custom field Title at the front end and will be visible when the customer hovers the label.

You can mix the above options according to your requirements to show Custom fields at the front end. 

Custom field description will be shown on Hover (mouse over) the title of the Custom field at the front end.

Coupon codes

Coupon codes are a powerful tool that will help your business acquire new customers and retain existing ones.

Here is a complete explanation of how to use Coupon codes in Taxi Booking.

Users

Taxi Booking is displaying your Joomla users in its own Users management section where you can enhance User configuration and assign different User roles.

The 2 most important User types in Taxi Booking are: Clients and Drivers

If you go to Taxi Booking > Users, you will see a list of all current users of your website. If you click on the user's name you will be able to configure the following options:

Name  - This is the Name that the user entered when registering to your website. Tip: for booking customers this Name will be pre-filled in the Booking form User details section if the customer is logged in.

Email - User's email supplied at registration.

Phone - Automatically added to User details on first booking when the user account has been created. If the phone is missing you can contact the user to update their phone number either in their profile at the front end or you can add it manually here. Tip: if there is a phone number it will be automatically filled in the Booking form > User details section so the customer does not have to type it in again.

User is Client: Yes/No - if No is selected here then the user is a regular booking customer. Clients are special users who will be added to Taxi Booking Corporate if you have it installed and can pay by Invoice later payment option. If Yes is selected additional filed for Clients can be filled in: Client Organization name, Client Organization address, Company Registration number, VAT number - these details will be printed on the monthly Invoices generated by Taxi Booking Corporate. Additional Users: Add users to the Client account who are authorized to make bookings via Invoice later payment method on Client's behalf. Here is more information on Clients and Taxi Booking Corporate.

User is Driver: Yes/No - if No is selected here then the user is a regular booking customer. If you select Yes additional Driver fields will appear: Driver badge number, Send badge in Driver assign email: Yes/No, Driver phone number, Send Phone in driver assign email: Yes/No, Full address of the driver, Date employment started, Date employment terminated, Insurance End date, Rent amount, Rent payable date, Photo upload. Tip: if you add a Phone number, Badge number and Driver Photo these will be sent in the Order details email to the customer when assigning a Driver to an Order.

Don't forget to Save after you have edited any options in the User form.

Search URLs

You can create Search URLs (deep linking) to your booking form and publish them as links on banners, text links and buttons both on your website and on external websites.

To read full Search URLs tutorial please click here.

Access Control List - ACL

Since version 3.12 of Taxi Booking, we have added Access Control List to the back end sections. You can limit different Joomla user groups to see different parts of Taxi Booking eg. just Orders for your dispatch staff.

To set up ACL go to your backend > Components > Taxi Booking > Options (button in the top right corner of the page above Taxi Booking's section icons) > Permissions tab (Options should open on Permissions by default).

Here you can select the user group that you want to edit access for and then change permission setting in the drop-down Allow/Denied. Don't forget to Save before you leave this page.

Set up Live update

How to set up a live update from Taxi Booking back end? - Before you update please take a back up of your website and download it to a safe location.

To set up Live update through the back end you will need to enter your Download Id at the back end Taxi Booking > Options window of your website. Go to Taxi Booking backend and click on "Options" in the top right corner of your browser ( the "switch" like icon in Joomla 2.5) then select "Component Settings" tab, enter your Download Id that you can obtain by logging in to http://kanev.com and clicking on User options > My Downloads (top right corner Register button becomes User options after you log in, Download ID will be across the top on every page in My Downloads section) and click on "Save & Close". Then click on the "Update found" message (Live update icon in Taxi Booking's back end view) and then click on "Refresh update information" button to reconnect to the live update server. Click on the "Update to the latest version" button. 

Alternatively when a new update is available you can log in to http://kanev.com and go to User options (top right menu) > My Downloads > Taxi Booking section > View files and instead of clicking on Download now button copy the Direct Link. Then go to your Joomla backend > Extensions > Extension manager > Install from URL section and paste the whole URL that you copied previously. Click on Install and the new version will be installed.

Note: After installation, it's very important to go to Taxi Booking > Settings - review and Save the Settings page so the installation is complete with flushing out old cache and sessions.

Module on other pages

When you install Taxi Booking for the first time 2 handy modules are installed with the package - vertical and horizontal quick booking modules.

To publish a module on any of the pages on your website go to your backend Extensions > Module manager and select module type Taxibooking. 

You will see both modules listed with Unpublished status. Click one of the modules link to see the properties.

Select the module position appropriate for your template and change the status to Published. Then in Menu assignment, module assignment section select "Only on the pages selected" option and in Menu selection check the pages you want this module assigned to (Default Joomla module manager, may be slightly different if you use extensions like Advanced module manager). Do not publish the module on the same page (menu item) where your Taxi Booking component is published as this will not look good and in some cases may break the layout.

Note: You don't need to publish different modules for different languages if you are running a multilingual website. Just download and install Module package translations from Taxi Booking > Translations section.

Taxi Booking module Detailed instructions

Frequently Asked Questions

  1. How to hide/show Child/Infant/Booster seats at the front end? - In Car management set Child/Infant/Booster seats to 0 and these drop-down selections will disappear from the front end.
  2. Why do I get a message "No route could be calculated between desired destinations. Please amend them and try again." when I use Address search option on front-end Taxi Booking form? - The reason for that is probably that "allow_url_fopen" is set to OFF from your hosting company and Taxi Booking cannot reach Google Maps API to calculate the route distance. The easiest solution is to contact your Hosting company and ask them to turn "allow_url_fopen" ON. You can verify the status of "allow_url_fopen" by logging in to your backend Site > System information > PHP information (tab) find: allow_url_fopen . If this is not the cause of your problem please contact us for help.
  3. How to change TAXIBOOKING text that shows as a title of my Taxi Booking MAIN menu? - As in every Joomla menu item you can define Page title, Keywords and Description of Taxi Booking's component MAIN page when you create your menu item at the back end: Log in to your backend > navigate to your Taxi Booking menu item and click on it to Edit > Page display option (right-hand side) > - "Set the title here"
  4. How to stop car availability to be blocked off when a car is booked? -Track availability is optional. At car management "Track availability" can be set for each car individually based on your preferences. You can Duplicate a car to create a clone of the same vehicle instantly. After you Duplicate a car at back end Cars list click on Car type to edit its options, you should keep "Car type" field to match exactly the one that you have Duplicated. Don't forget to click on "Published: Yes" radio button to publish the car.
  5. How to set up notifications on New Orders to additional emails? - Each Administrator and Super user who are set to receive System emails in user manager will receive notifications on New Orders/bookings.
  6. Can I use Taxi Booking as taxi fare calculator? - yes, you can. Essentially Taxi Booking is designed to offer a taxi fare calculation, however, keep in mind that Taxi Booking software cannot replace an in-car taxi meter if one is required by law. You can still use Taxi Booking to show approximate taxi fare calculations and collect deposits for the journey via PayPal or other payment methods but the full fare has to be paid after the journey is complete and according to the approved by local authorities and installed in-car taxi meter. 

Get Taxi Booking for Joomla 2.5/3.x

Looking for WordPress taxi plugin?: Taxi Booking for WordPress

KANEV Web Development limited is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Joomla Project or Open Source Matters.

KANEV Web Development limited is registered in England and Wales #8902407