Custom fleet management software

As long as a fleet has around ten vehicles, a spreadsheet is often enough. Beyond that, or when the fleet mixes vans, company cars, heavy equipment and tools, deadlines get missed, costs get lost across several suppliers and nobody has the full picture. Off-the-shelf solutions handle part of the need well. Here is when a custom tool does better, and when it is pointless.

What a fleet tool should cover

Needs are similar from one company to the next, but their weight varies. A complete tool covers:

• the fleet register: vehicles, equipment, trailers, tools, with documents (registration, lease contract, insurance);
• assignments: who uses which vehicle, when, for which job site or route;
• deadlines: servicing, roadworthiness inspections, lease end dates, insurance renewals, with alerts;
• incidents and damage: reporting with photos, tracking repairs and deductibles;
• costs: fuel, tolls, maintenance, lease payments, allocated per vehicle and per distance driven;
• traffic fines: identifying who was driving on a given date, to meet driver designation obligations.

On that last point, for companies operating in France, the official French government portal states that a company’s legal representative must designate the driver within 45 days of the notice being sent, or the company faces a fixed fine of €675 for a minor offense (checked in October 2026). A reliable assignment history makes this a matter of seconds. If the tool uses location data, the CNIL’s rules on tracking employee vehicles (in French) apply from the design stage.

Off-the-shelf or custom

Fleet software pricing varies by vendor and fleet size. Compare offers on the vendors’ official pages, checking the billing unit (per vehicle, per user, monthly or annually).

Where custom software makes the difference

Custom software really pays off when the fleet is not a standalone topic but part of your day-to-day operations:

• the fleet feeds the schedule: assigning a vehicle suited to the job site, the equipment carried or the driver’s license;
• the fleet is billed back: equipment rental with driver, vehicles provided to subsidiaries or customers;
• the fleet is mixed: vehicles, construction equipment, generators and valuable tools tracked in one place;
• the tool has to integrate with your ERP, payroll software or route planning app.

If your vehicles are mainly used for delivery or service routes, see also the route planning app page.

Budget and timelines

These ranges exclude VAT and cover a first version running in production. They are built from the estimator’s building blocks: user accounts and roles, dashboard, notifications and offline mode, maps and routes, connections to other tools, data migration.

The estimator gives you a first range based on the features you select. The driver app is built as a PWA, installable on a phone without going through the app stores.

When to keep your current solution

I recommend staying with off-the-shelf software if:

• your fleet is uniform (cars or light vans) and your needs are standard;
• the tool already covers deadlines, costs and assignments without workarounds;
• your telematics provider offers a management module that is enough for you;
• the fleet does not need to connect to your scheduling or invoicing.

If only one piece is missing, such as a driver app or a consolidated dashboard, it is better to extend your existing software than to replace everything.

Where to start

1. List your assets by type, and the information tracked for each.
2. Count the missed deadlines and poorly tracked costs over the past year.
3. Check your telematics contracts: data access, API, commitment period.
4. Spend 30 minutes with me to qualify the need and choose between an off-the-shelf solution, an add-on or custom software.

The project then follows my usual approach to business app development: scoping with a fixed quote, mockups, development in batches, migration of your existing spreadsheets, training and three months of support.