TowingBossPro Blog — Towing Software

Choosing Towing Software: Pricing, Per-User Fees and Questions to Ask

If you've read this far in the series, you have a good sense of what towing software should do. The last question is how to pick one. Software demos all look good. The real test is what happens on a Saturday night when the phones are ringing, two trucks are out on recoveries and a new driver is asking where the drop-off is.

In Drivers, Trucks and the Time Clock: Adding Capacity Without Losing Track, we covered adding drivers and trucks. This article closes the series with the questions to ask before you commit to any system — ours included.

Is It Built for Towing?

A lot of field service software is built for trades that go to one address and fix something. Towing isn't that. Ask a few pointed questions:

• Does every call have a pickup and a drop-off, both on the map and in the driver app?
• Does it store year, make, model, color, plate and VIN on each call?
• Can it track vehicles in storage with a start date and a daily rate, and add storage days to the invoice?
• Can commercial accounts keep their calls and invoices under the account?
• Does it handle roadside calls as their own kind of work?

If the answer to most of those is a workaround, it wasn't built for you.

What Does the Driver Actually See?

Ask to see the driver app, not just the office screens. Calls in order? One-tap navigation to both ends? Vehicle details and notes? Photos? One-tap texts to the customer? If the driver app is clumsy, drivers won't use it, and the whole system falls back to phone calls.

Also ask what the customer sees. A live map of the driver on the way, invoices and online payment make a real difference to the people who call you.

Then look at dispatch with a busy day in mind. Can you see open calls on a map? Can you assign several calls to a driver and truck at once? Is there a board by truck and day with route order? A system that feels fine with three calls can feel painful with thirty, so imagine your worst Saturday while you click around.

How Does Pricing Really Add Up?

Software pricing is easy to misread. A low base price with a per-user fee looks cheap for the owner alone and expensive once every driver, dispatcher and office helper has a login. Do the math for your company in a year, not just today.

TowingBossPro plans are Start at $59 a month, Pro at $89 and Crew at $199, and you are never billed per user. Whatever you look at, ask about per-user fees, setup fees and whether the features you saw in the demo are on the plan you'd actually buy.

Be Clear About What It Doesn't Do

Every system has limits, and it's better to know them up front. Ask directly about the integrations you depend on. For example, TowingBossPro does not connect to motor club dispatch platforms or police rotation systems, and it doesn't handle lien, title or auction processing — those calls and processes are handled the way you handle them now, with the calls themselves entered and tracked in TowingBossPro.

A vendor who is straight about limits is usually straight about everything else. Be wary of anyone who says yes to every question.

Run a Real Trial

A trial is only useful if you use it with real work. Import your customers by CSV, add your trucks, drivers, repeat locations and a couple of accounts, and run a few real days of calls through it: the Waiting List, the dispatch board, the driver app, invoicing. Get at least one driver to use the app for a full shift and ask what they think.

TowingBossPro's 14-day trial doesn't require a credit card, so there's no pressure to decide before you've seen it work.

Pick your trial window with some thought. Starting the week of a holiday rush or the first big freeze means you'll be learning a new system while the phones are at their worst. A normal week gives you a fair read on how it handles your everyday calls, and you can lean on it harder once everyone knows their way around.

Decide on the Basis of a Normal Week

At the end of the trial, ask simple questions. Did dispatch take fewer status calls? Did drivers call the office less? Did invoices go out faster? Do you know what's in your yard? If the answers are yes, the software is earning its keep. If not, keep looking.

Whatever you choose, choose something that runs the whole company — call, dispatch, drivers, accounts, storage and invoicing — in one place. That's the point of this whole series. Start from the towing software overview to see how TowingBossPro puts it together.