Fleet management: Excel or software?

The honest answer: sometimes Excel is enough. If you have five cars and do everything yourself, a well-built spreadsheet, a notebook and a WhatsApp group will do the job. The problem is that as the fleet grows it is not the spreadsheet that breaks but the person keeping it. This article explains where Excel is enough, where it breaks, the cost difference on a 20-car example, and how the move from Excel to software is made.

Last updated: 19 September 2026

When is Excel enough?

• Up to 5 cars and one person does the job: the owner keeps both the schedule and the reckoning, knows the drivers, has the policy dates in their head.
• A single set of terms: all drivers on a percentage, or all on weekly rent; the formula is one line.
• One branch, one cash desk: the person taking the money and the person writing it down are the same.
• Handovers are rare: a car stays with the same driver for months, a damage argument once a year.

In that case software saves you time but is not essential. Our advice: stay in Excel, but build the spreadsheet well — schedule, driver list, fines list and policy dates on separate tabs, a date and the person entering on every row. That discipline makes your data portable when you do move later.

Where does Excel break?

The breaking point comes less from the number of cars than from the number of people and of terms. The day a second person touches the spreadsheet, the version problem starts («which file is current?»); the day a second set of terms arrives, the formula problem («is this row a percentage or rent?»); the day a second cash desk opens, the reconciliation problem. If two of the symptoms below apply, the spreadsheet is no longer carrying you:

• The Monday reckoning takes more than three hours, and «what is this figure based on?» questions come in during the week.
• A fine was written to the wrong driver — and the driver noticed.
• A policy, a TÜVTÜRK inspection (the mandatory periodic inspection) or an MTV instalment (the motor vehicle tax) was missed; a car was off the road for a day, or late interest was paid.
• You look for the answer to «who has this car right now, and where is it?» in WhatsApp.
• A scratch argument broke out at a handover and the photo from that day could not be found.
• When the person keeping the spreadsheet goes on leave, nobody dares open the file.
• The accountant asked for a month-end summary and it took a day.

None of this is Excel's fault; Excel is a spreadsheet, not a fleet record. A spreadsheet does not show who changed a cell and when, two people cannot write at once, a deleted row does not come back, a date cell warns nobody. We know fleets that try to close these gaps with macros and shared files; at some point keeping the spreadsheet takes more time than running the business.

Comparison table

A 20-car example: the real cost

The figures are examples; for your own fleet we work them out together during the demo. Assumptions: 20 cars, 26 drivers, mixed terms (percentage and weekly rent), one branch, 6–8 handovers a week.

About 7 hours a week of difference adds up to nearly 30 hours a month. Whose hours matters: in most fleets this is done by the owner or the most trusted employee — that is, the fleet's most expensive hours. Multiply by your own hourly cost; in most 20-car fleets this line alone exceeds the monthly fee of the plan for up to 50 cars. See the pricing page for the current figure.

The real difference is not in the hours but in the invisible items: a fine written to the wrong driver and never collected, a day's lost takings from a missed inspection, a damage argument left without evidence. These do not appear on Excel's cost line; but they happen a few times a year, and each one costs more than the monthly subscription.

Moving from Excel to software: how it is done

1. 1You send us your spreadsheets. Car list (plate, model, year, km, and if you have them the chassis and registration numbers, tank size and fuel type), driver list (name, phone, licence / SRC expiry), terms and policy, inspection and MTV dates if you have them. Messy is fine — we sort it out.
2. 2Your workspace is set up. Your company gets its own address (yourcompany.plakapro.com) and its own database; the type is chosen from the start — taxi fleet or rent-a-car — and the screens simplify accordingly.
3. 3We load them together. On the first day of setup the cars, drivers and users go into the system; whatever is in your Excel is taken from there, you do not type it from scratch. If you have trackers, the unit IDs go on the car cards and the map works the same day.
4. 4You run in parallel for a week. In the first week you keep both Excel and PlakaPro; you do the week closing in both places and compare the figures. If there is a difference we find the cause together — usually an advance forgotten in Excel or a fine with the wrong date.
5. 5You close Excel. From the second week the record lives in one place. The old files stay in the archive; they are looked at if needed, nobody updates them.

The whole move fits inside the free 30 days. If you decide not to continue, we export your data, there is no charge; going back to Excel is possible too — the data we hand over is your data.

Decision table