Alpine Taxi/Limo, Inc.
Alpine Taxi is a taxicab and van service, located in the ski resort of Steamboat
Springs, Colorado (Website here). They looked for an off-the-shelf package, but while
there are many taxicab applications, none of them handle airport vans or charter trips.
Being a small company, they didn't have a huge budget, but they needed a custom solution.
They also needed a solution that would run quickly in a multi-user environment, because,
during the busy season, reservations flow in as fast as the operators can type.
What they did have was an old DOS Magic system. It as pretty basic, and didn't do a lot
of things they needed. However, since it was written in Magic, it was an easy job to
convert it to Windows and add the necessary functionality -- while incidentally changing
much of the basic system. Heidi flew out to Steamboat Springs for a few days of intense
design meetings. Over the next months, she coded the changes while the Alpine Taxi folks
tested the results.
The resulting system not only tracks reservations, but also tracks employee work hours,
maintenance on vehicles, and keeps customer data for future use. It has a link to a credit
card system for automatically verifying cards from the PC. It prints out a nice
reservation sheet that can be faxed or mailed to the customer.
This system is also available for people who need a similar system. Because it is in
Magic, it can be customized to meet your needs exactly!
