Lytham
Van Hire
A self-drive van-hire booking platform — live availability, Stripe deposits, secure document uploads and a staff back office with printable condition reports. The business takes bookings while it’s closed.
A rental business,
run end to end.
This is far more than a website — it’s the operating system for a van-hire company. Customers check live availability, book and pay a deposit online, and send their documents before pickup; staff manage every booking, review the paperwork and print condition reports from one login. Work that would otherwise mean a phone call is handled by the platform.
Online Booking Flow
A four-step booking with a live availability calendar and a Stripe deposit taken up front.
Find a Van by Date
Enter a pickup and return time and see which vans are free, the full price and the deposit, before choosing one.
Out-of-Hours Bookings
Early pickups and late returns bookable online, priced automatically at £10 an hour.
One Price List
Rates live in the database, so the pricing page and the checkout always agree, and a change needs no developer.
Secure Document Uploads
A tokenised link for each booking, where the customer uploads their licence and proof of address before pickup.
Staff Back Office
A password-protected dashboard for bookings, document review, a calendar of every van and printable vehicle condition reports.
Customer Emails
Branded emails at every stage of a hire, from confirmation to the document link, built with React Email.
Xero-Ready Invoicing
Invoicing from the booking, built on Xero’s API and ready to connect when the business switches it on.
Book a van
in four steps.
The booking flow is the commercial engine of the platform. A customer can start from the dates: the “Find a van” search on the homepage shows which vans are free for that window, with the full price and the deposit. Or they pick a van first and choose dates on a calendar that shows live availability for each day. Either way a card deposit secures it — at midnight on a Sunday if that suits them.
The rules a person would otherwise apply on the phone are built in: online bookings need 24 hours’ notice, pickups and returns outside opening hours are priced at £10 an hour, and anything over seven days goes to a “call for a quote” step instead of an automatic price.
Find a van — what is free for the dates, and what it costs
Step 1 — live availability for each day
Browse by vehicle size
Clear prices,
one source of truth.
The pricing page sets out every hire period from a half day to a week, with 150 miles a day and standard insurance included in the price. There is no “call us for a price” wall between a customer and a booking.
Those rates live in one place, the database. The pricing page and the checkout both read the same list and pick up a change within the hour, so a price can’t be right on one page and wrong at the till, and updating it doesn’t need a developer.
Hire rates, from a half day to a week
The fleet
Paperwork sorted
before pickup.
Van hire depends on checking who is driving. After booking, each customer gets a secure, tokenised link to upload their driving licence and proof of address — never over email, never lost — or to tick that they’ll bring them in person.
The insurance page explains exactly what’s needed, including the DVLA licence check code, and the FAQ answers the rest. If an upload fails, the form now says which field needs fixing, so customers finish it rather than abandon it.
What drivers need, set out in advance
Every answer open, no accordions
The whole hire,
behind one login.
Away from the public site sits a password-protected back office where the day-to-day happens: staff view and manage every booking, add out-of-hours bookings taken over the phone, and review the documents customers have uploaded. A month calendar gives each vehicle its own row and each hire a bar, and the fleet screen keeps MOT and service dates in view.
They can print a vehicle condition report for each hire — the record that protects the business in a damage dispute — and React Email templates keep the customer informed at every stage. Invoicing from the booking is built on Xero’s API, ready for the day the business connects its Xero account.
The back office holds customers’ details, so it isn’t shown here.
Every booking in one list
View, change, complete or cancel any hire, and add bookings taken over the phone.
Document review
Check the licence and proof of address each customer uploaded before handover.
Condition reports
A printable report for every hire, the record that settles a damage dispute.
A calendar of every van
A month view with a row for each vehicle and a bar for each hire; an overdue return shows in red.
MOT and service dates
They turn amber within 30 days and red once past. Taking a van off the road removes those dates from the public calendar straight away.
Xero-ready invoicing
Built on Xero’s API and ready to connect; until then invoices are raised by hand.
Tech Stack
A full-stack Next.js platform: live availability and payments on the front, a staff back office behind auth.
Frontend
Next.js 16 · React 19 · Tailwind CSS v4 · TypeScript
Database
Supabase — bookings, availability, price list
Documents
Supabase Storage — private, tokenised uploads
Payments
Stripe — card deposits
Invoicing
Xero API (xero-node) — built, ready to connect
Resend + React Email
Validation
Zod — bookings, availability and admin actions
Hosting
Vercel · Speed Insights
Need a system like this?
Bookings, payments, documents, invoicing — if your business runs on manual steps and spreadsheets, a custom platform can run them for you. Get in touch and let’s scope it.
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