1.1 Introduction
Car Leasing System (CLS) is a web based application for a company that rents out cars. This system enables the company to make their services available to the public through the internet and also keep records about their services. The world has become a place where there is a lot of technological development; where every single thing done physically has been transformed into computerized form. Nowadays, people’s activities have been transformed into work done by computerized systems. One of which is the main target of this project which is about Car Leasing System. The system of renting cars exist back in the previous years, were people rent cars for their personal reasons. Car Leasing is essential to many peoples’ plan to travel or move from one place to another for business purposes, tour, and visit or holidays, for these reasons Car Leasing is very helpful.
As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.
1.2 Background of Study
The history of resources (car) leasing in Nigeria is a short one but the trend is growing as more organizations get into the provision of this services and strive to be ahead of completions. This car leasing is gaming ground in Nigeria due to the fact that a lot of people cannot afford to buy their own cars. The fall of Naira has resulted in up shoot of prices of vehicles as can be seen in 1993, when the cost a luxury bus was 3million Naira but in 1995 it came to 17million Naira. Owing to the price increase, people prefer to lease cars rather save for ages before buying one. Moreover there exist a wide range of cars people can lease for different purpose. There are cars for inter city and business travels, research students and holiday makers. There are trucks for conveying heavy-duty machinery and long vehicles for goods.
Car Leasing became more popular as years pass by. Today Car Leasing services are found all over the world, especially in the developed and developing countries. To make this service more popular and accessible to the public it has been transform into a web base system and connected to the internet were everyone can be able to have access to it.
The vehicle rental and tracking systems are designed to assist corporations with large number of automobiles and several usage purposes. A Fleet management system can minimize the cost and effort of employees to finish road assignments within a minimal time. Besides, assignments can be scheduled in advanced based on current automobiles location. Therefore, central fleet management is essential to large enterprises to meet the varying requirements of customers and to improve the productivity (Krishna et al., 2010). So taking in action all these things we are going to design and develop a machine, which will track the real time location of the vehicle using blue tooth technology with the help of an android base mobile phones.
The ability to accurately detect a vehicle's location and its status is the main goal of automobile trajectory monitoring systems. These systems are implemented using several hybrid techniques that include: wireless communication, geographical positioning and embedded applications. The vehicle tracking systems are designed to assist corporations with large number of automobiles and several usage purposes. This system can minimize the cost and effort of employees to finish road assignments within a minimal time. So taking in action all these things we are going to design and develop a machine, which will track the real time location of the vehicle using blue tooth technology with the help of an android base mobile phones. The main goals of this project is to design and develop an economical model, which requires less power with less complex in structure, easy to implement. An additional setting could be implemented to interface the system to the car's alarm to alert the owner on his cell phone if the alarm is set off.
1.3 Statement of the Problem
Investigation revealed that car leasing companies still use desktop application for their Car Leasing services and thus making it to be limited to so many important feature that are not available unlike in the web based application where there are so many feature available. Also some upcoming companies do not only make use of these desktop applications, but also make use of phone call reservation, which is still lacking so many features that are needed for this type of system. Therefore, going by this method a lot of problems are encountered which includes:
- Conflicting multiple registrations; caused by assigning a unique identification number to more than one vehicle.
- Difficulty in information retrieval; because of the bulk of registration papers consuming a large space.
- Loss of vehicle due to wrong information provide during Car Leasing form fill up.
- Waste of time caused by manually verifying the validity of a rented vehicle.
1.4 Aim and Objectives of Study
The aim of the study is to design and implement a Computerized Car Leasing Information System. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows to design and develop a software that will:
- Allow for the generation and assignment of an infinite unique identification number to rental vehicles for tracking purpose;
- Give customers all models and brand of cars available for lease and their cost of leasing it for a period of one month;
- Keep track of all leased cars and the time due for return;
- Provide a better, easier and more efficient method of vehicle rental and tracking; and
- Help in advertising the Car Leasing services of a company, through the availability of the system online.
1.5 Significance of Study
The following are the relevance of the study:
- The Car Leasing system to keep detail records of both the cars and the customers, the duration they rent car as well as the type of car they rent.
- The system will be mainly design for small a company that renders it Car Leasing services to customers.
- The system will have the ability to generate and print invoice for each successful transaction.
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.
1.6 Scope of the Study
The scope of this research is focused on the Design and Implementation of a Computerized Car Leasing Information System using Marlum Construction Company as a case study. The system will be designed using MYSQL and PHP programming languages.
This research work covers specifically only leasing of cars to companies, and all other leasing activities concerning machines and other heavy-duty equipment are not concerned.
1.7 Limitations of the Study
During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:
- Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
- Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
- Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
- Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet).
1.8 Definitions of Terms
Commercial vehicle: This is any vehicle used within the campus for commercial purposes.
De-registration: This is the process of cancelling all registration pertaining to a vehicle
Directorate of Transport: This is a department in every campus mostly controlled by the student’s union government that oversees the activities of commercial vehicles.
Drivers permit: This is the permission given to vehicle owners and drivers to do business with their vehicle on the campus
