We are pleased to report that we have now completed a major update to Coach Manager, our private hire and contract booking system, that takes care of all the statutory record keeping and reporting requirements imposed on operators by the new Road Transport (Working Time) Regulations.

The Coach Manager Driver Duties facility, which already allows accurately defined duty periods to be created, has been enhanced to allow Periods of Availability to be recorded against each.

In accordance with the new requirements, the Coach Manager work ticket has been modified so that it can be used to automatically inform a driver that his time at a destination is a Period of Availability as defined by the regulations. The work ticket also has an area for the driver to record his actual duty and availability times. In accordance with the requirements of the regulations, these can be used to update the computer system on his return.

The update also includes reporting facilities to show the average weekly working time for each driver over the 17 or 26 week reference period.

‘A lot of our existing Coach Manager users have been asking us about a possible update’, said Distinctive Systems MD Mike Whitehead, ‘so this is going to be extremely popular. Operators have no alternative but to comply with this additional record keeping burden, and whilst nobody is especially happy about it, we have at least made it as quick and painless as possible for our clients to ensure their compliance’.

‘We’ve not only decided to make the enhancement a standard part of Coach Manager’, said Mike Whitehead, ‘but we’ve also decided to build it into our Coach Manager Express product. Combined with our recent decision to incorporate both our Quotation and Pricing System and our Community Transport System into the entry level product, Coach Manager Express now represents absolutely incredible value for money. Nothing else on the market now comes anywhere near it.’

For further details please call our sales team on 01904 692269.