A few months ago, car-rent.es was already a solid management software for car rental companies. Today we'll say it straight: it's the most complete platform on the Spanish market. Here are the new features we've launched, now live for all Pro and Business plans.
If you're evaluating software for your rental business, or you're a current customer who wants to know what to activate, this post is for you.
1. Online bookings 24/7 with your own URL
Each company using the SaaS now has its own public booking URL:
https://car-rent.es/r.php?c=tuempresa
That page shows your logo, your vehicle categories, your rates and your pick-up points. The end customer enters, chooses dates and a vehicle (or category), enters their details and confirms. The booking lands in your dashboard with a "Web" badge, and an automatic email goes to the customer with a printable PDF receipt and a magic link to the portal.
And note this: the deposit is calculated automatically based on the vehicle or category booked. If you set a €150 deposit for compact cars and €800 for luxury cars, you don't need to do anything else. The customer sees it when they book. No more arguments at the counter.
Bonus: on the Business plan, private mode for bookings with an access code only. Perfect if you work with corporate fleets or B2B leasing.
See details of Online bookings
2. Multilingual customer portal (ES/EN/DE) and PWA
Your customer logs in with their ID/Passport + contract number. No passwords. They see their contracts, download their invoices as PDFs, upload photos of their ID and driving licence from their phone camera, and pay the deposit online by card.
And the best part: the portal is available in Spanish, English and German, with automatic detection based on the browser language. If your market is international tourism (Canary Islands, Balearic Islands, Costa del Sol), this saves you from German or British customers arriving without understanding what they're signing.
It's also a PWA (Progressive Web App): customers install it on their phone with one tap, it appears as an app with your icon, and it works offline.
The real impact? 60% of counter work is asking for ID, licence and payment method. If the customer has already uploaded everything from the portal before arriving, check-out takes 5 minutes instead of 15.
See details of Customer portal
3. OCR for ID cards, NIE, passports and driving licences
At the counter, you take a photo of the ID with a phone, tablet or webcam, and the fields first name, surname, number, date of birth and expiry date fill in automatically. In 4 seconds. No typing.
It works with:
- Spanish DNI (version 3.0 and later)
- NIE
- Passport (universal MRZ reading — supports most countries)
- Spanish and European driving licences
Accounts: each account uses its own Mindee API key (free plans up to 250 documents/month). If OCR fails because of a poor photo, the counter agent fills it in by hand as usual. Nothing gets blocked.
For a fleet handling 60 contracts a day in summer: you recover almost one working day per week. And your database stays free of typos.
4. WhatsApp Business and SMS
Email has an open rate of 18%. WhatsApp, 98%. SMS, 95%. That's why we've integrated:
- WhatsApp Business API (Meta) with your verified account and your brand.
- SMS via Twilio as an automatic fallback if the WhatsApp message isn't delivered.
Included triggers:
- 24h before pick-up: reminder with time, office, vehicle and documents.
- 24h before return: time, location, fuel and expected mileage.
- Web booking confirmation.
- Invoice issued notification with a link to the portal.
Results in pilot fleets: 30% to 50% fewer late returns and a drastic drop in calls to the counter.
5. Automatic tax advisory (the day your accountant loves you)
Every quarter, the same story: your accountant calls you, asks for Excel files, you export by hand, you send a ZIP. A whole morning, four times a year.
With automatic advisory enabled, on January 5, April 5, July 5 and October 5, your accountant receives by email:
facturas_T2_2026.csv— all invoices with taxable base, IGIC/IVA per line, total and customer.contratos_T2_2026.csv— with vehicle, driver, dates, amount, office.recibos_T2_2026.csv— consecutive series of receipts for the quarter.caja_T2_2026.csv— transactions with daily closing and discrepancies flagged.igic_T2_2026.csv— base and tax amount by rate, ready for modelo 420.iva_T2_2026.csv— base and tax amount by rate, ready for modelo 303.comisiones_T2_2026.csv— quarterly settlements for agents.
UTF-8 with BOM and ; separator: Excel opens them with a double click, with no conversion needed. You can also request a manual send of "last month", "last quarter", "year to date" or a custom range, in two clicks.
6. Counter PWA (the app without an app store)
car-rent.es is now a Progressive Web App: open the website in Chrome, Edge, Safari or Firefox, an "Install app" prompt appears, tap it, and it shows up on your desktop, your iOS home screen or your Android app drawer like any other native app.
- Its own icon.
- No URL bar (your staff won't wander off browsing by mistake).
- Works offline with the last screen cached.
- Updates itself in the background.
- Virtually no storage compared with native apps.
Especially useful if your counter works on a tablet. Goodbye to "where's the browser?".
7. SES.Hospedajes compliance from day one
The SES.Hospedajes regulation requires you to record the ID card support number (DNI) of individuals who rent or drive a rental vehicle. We've built it in as standard:
- Document type selector (DNI / NIE / Passport / Other) for customer and driver.
- SUPPORT NO. field required for Spanish DNI, optional for NIE, not required for passports and others.
- Validation on both the frontend (JS) and the backend (PHP), because JS alone isn't security.
- Database index so that SES.Hospedajes reports are instant.
If your business also offers accommodation (combining rent a car with a country house or apartments is common in the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands), this fits straight into the rest of your obligations.
8. And there's more…
- Pickup point map with Leaflet + OpenStreetMap and automatic geocoding.
- Stripe and Redsys payment gateways, multi-tenant: each SaaS customer uses their own keys, and the money goes straight to their bank account.
- Deposit by vehicle or category: set the deposit once per category and it is applied automatically when you create a contract or booking.
- Booking calendar with drag & drop: drag a booking to another vehicle to reassign it.
- Quarterly Modelo 420 IGIC and Modelo 303/390 IVA with automatic calculation.
- Verifactu: SHA-256 chained hash of every invoicing record, verification QR on the printed invoice and submission to the AEAT.
- Audit with a log of who did what and when.
- Granular roles: admin, manager, counter, read-only.
How much does all this cost?
The core (contracts, invoicing with IGIC/IVA, cash register, fleet, Verifactu, check-in/out, deposit by category, pickup points, SES.Hospedajes) is included in the Starter plan (€39/month).
The growth features (online bookings, customer portal, OCR, PWA, payment gateways, multi-office, map, tax forms, drag & drop calendar, audit) are in the Pro plan (€79/month).
The premium ones (multi-language customer portal, automatic tax advisory, WhatsApp/SMS, private bookings) are in the Business plan (€149/month).
14 days free with everything included, no card required. If you decide it's not for you, no hard feelings.
What's coming
We are working on direct integration with SES.Hospedajes and the AEAT for Verifactu, chauffeur-driven rental (transfer / VTC), and a commission agent portal so agents can see their sales and settlements from their phone.
If you have an idea of what we should launch next, write to us at info@car-rent.es. We read everything and we reply.