CHAPTER ONE 

INTRODUCTION 

A car rental or car hire agency is a company that rents automobiles for short period of time for a fee whether in a few hours or a few days or week. It is an elaborate form of a rental shop, often organized with numerous local branches (which allow a user to return a vehicle to a different location), and primarily 'located near airports or busy city areas and often complemented by a website allowing online reservations.   

Car rental agencies primarily serve people who have a car that is temporarily out Of reach or out of service, for example travelers who are out of town or owners of damaged or destroyed vehicles who are awaiting repair or insurance compensation. Because of the variety of sizes of their vehicles, car rental agencies may also serve the self-moving industry needs, by renting vans or trucks, and in certain markets other types of vehicles such as motorcycles or scooters may also be offered (Mohd, 2012).   

Car rental companies operate by purchasing or leasing a number of fleet vehicles and renting them to their customers for a fee. Rental fleets can be structured in several ways – they can be owned outright (these are known as ‘risk vehicles’ because the car rental operator is taking a risk on how much the vehicle will be sold for when it is removed from service), they can be leased, or they can be owned under a guaranteed buy-back program arranged directly through a manufacturer or manufacturer’s financial arm (Walter, 2012).  

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 

In an organization running a car rental service, the Process on searching the client details is slow if the company is using manual system and there are thousands of clients. Besides that, staffs have to record the booking manually and it is difficult to produce a monthly report or an annual report. Manual system does not allow client to booking online and hard to keep track on the record of rental cars.       

1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY 

The main objective of the study is to design and implementation a car rental system for an organization. Specific objectives of the study are: 

1.     To develop a simple and secure system that protects clients information and confidential information of the organization. 

2.     To design a user friendly system that enables client check for availability of vehicle and book or reserve a vehicle online. 

3.     To design a system that enables clients pay their car rent online. 

4.     To develop a system that stores bookings and reservation information as well as payment history to help the organization keep track of transactions. 

1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 

The research project will help solve the numerous problems associated with the manual way of doing things. Errors, waste of precious time will be eliminated with the system. This will in turn enhance productivity and efficiency in the organization.   

1.5 SCOPE OF THE STUDY 

The system will be designed using MYSQL and PHP programming languages.   

1.6 DEFINITION OF TERMS 

Car: A car is a wheeled, self-powered motor vehicle used for transportation and a product of the automotive industry. 

Car Rental: A car rental, hire car, or car hire agency is a company that rents automobiles for short periods of time, generally ranging from a few hours to a few weeks. 

Management Information System: A management information system (MIS) focuses on the management of information systems to provide efficiency and effectiveness of strategic decision making. 

(CRMS): Car Rental Management System is a web-based vehicle reservation system.