Accounting for the cost of the car in the logbook Drivernotes.net
Hi, Habrasoobschestvo.
I want to tell you about our online service logbook for cars - DriverNotes.net. I hope that the description of our resource will turn out not just in the style of "I am promoting", but also bring people who are just about to create something of their own to the thoughts. In any case, I will be glad to answer all your questions.
')
The project began its work in 2010, with a minimal set of functionality, mainly to test the "usefulness" of the resource for users. Since then, no special marketing campaigns have been conducted. All mentions in the network are only reviews (not customized) on several major resources, but links to forums that (links) are published by our users. Previously, they did not consciously write to Habr - I wanted to finish, fix, finish, etc. as much as possible. But after the appearance of the post from a similar project , which is even more in its infancy than DriverNotes in the 2010th, they decided that there was nothing more to be ashamed of. So let's go ...
When you have a “second-hand” foreign car that breaks down much more often than we would like (the question always arises: am I so lucky?), Then because of the savings, I have to buy non-original spare parts (I think many people do this way). How to find out - how reliable is this part? It takes hours to shovel forums, topic by topic, and ultimately the information usefulness tends to 0. How to make people write down their repairs in one place and in a single format so that you can always quickly find a spare part of a particular manufacturer and ask opinion about this product from a person who has already installed it?
Stop ... And why only repairs? After all, someone insured, refueled, "washed", perhaps in the same places as you? It would also be nice to read about it, and if necessary ask a question. And since we will record our gas stations, then why not immediately calculate the fuel consumption, and not compare it with similar cars - who knows what the expense should be on your used car? Again, look at hundreds of forums the same topics about consumption? After all, you can collect the entire user experience and show in a condensed, abbreviated version, in the form of statistics of ownership of a particular car model .
And then a lot of ideas - and the service station catalog, and the store in which the product is sold only when a person really needs it. For example, if a reminder about the next MOT has worked, during which you need to change the oil and filter. Here you are - a list of original and non-original filters and oils, as well as a list of stations with prices for this type of work - choose, read reviews, sign up at a station remotely, and waste your free time on ... {there may be your option} .
Well, we already got into the functionality, let's get everything in order.
There are many of them, they are constantly replenished, expanded and improved. Just give a short list of what is already there:
You can keep a history of your car. All events are divided into three types: repair, refueling, other. Each event can be made public or hidden for viewing by other users. Well, really - who needs to know that some inexperienced deer drove into the rear bumper and had to be straightened (in the sense of a bumper, not a deer, although some of it even straighten out right in the place of an accident).
Events can be set reminders not only by date, but also by mileage. Moreover, the setting for mileage is unique: the reminder comes not just by the fixed average monthly mileage that you entered during registration, but by the constantly calculated mileage, depending on the actual user data. Thus, if you set a reminder to change the oil after 15,000 km, then for each new event added we will recalculate the average mileage, and shift the reminder to the day on which we predict this mileage. In fact, it is very convenient.
Of all the events we collect cost statistics . Monthly, by event type, even by type of fuel - if the user has gas / petrol, we will show cost and fuel cost graphs.
For example, I understood how it is necessary to consider the economic effect of the installation of HBO (gas equipment, gas in a simple way). You can not just assume the difference between the cost of gasoline and gas, and take into account the difference in consumption, which is usually on propane-butane 5% -10%. It is necessary to take into account the gasoline on which the car is heated (which is clearly seen from the graph), and also to take into account in saving the average mileage per month, since we drive less = more often we warm up = more gasoline goes = savings from HBO is less.
Well, of course, we can calculate the cost of 1 km for all costs, or for individual types and a certain period. This will help to understand whether it is worth driving a car or it is simpler and cheaper to take a taxi)) Although it is a moot point, of course.
For the convenience of users from different countries, all prices of the cost can be displayed in different currencies, or in the original, in which the data were entered.
Fuel consumption. This topic is so discussed, and the same topic is blurred in conversations on forums, comparisons with on-board computers (which, by the way, most often show fuel consumption incorrectly), that we decided to calculate consumption not only by dividing the distance traveled by the number of liters, but added several parameters: "Full tank" and "Forgot to write the previous refueling." Although for those who do not refuel to a full tank, we decided to leave the calculation of the approximate flow rate - with 2–3 filling stations, the data is, of course, incorrect, but the farther, the data become more accurate. Fuel consumption is visible both in gas stations and on the chart . This data can be compared with other cars of the same brand in the Cars section (which will be discussed later).
Just keeping track of costs is good, but the same data can be useful to summarize all the information on a particular model. So, for example, now we can determine the average cost of 1 km, the number of repairs (depending on the mileage), the average fuel consumption (then there will be a division according to engine types and modifications). With the introduction of an updated list of standard repairs, we will be able to identify typical “sores” inherent in the same model, on different runs, the real cost of typical repairs depending on the region, etc. etc. Now everything depends only on the type of data compilation.
All these statistics will help to more objectively compare the models of interest to the user and determine the profitability of the purchase, not only by technical characteristics and / or reviews, but also by actual data. Indeed, for many people, choosing a car is a very difficult task. I myself have revised many tests, read many reviews and comparisons when choosing my car.
But even if you are not going to either buy or sell anything, we will simply compare your indicators with other users, so that you can determine the profitability / non-profitability of refueling / remot, etc. Already, after creating a new event, a mini-report is displayed showing the difference between your costs and the average for the same model.
Well, where do without them . At the moment there is a mobile client for Andoird, Samsung Bada and a mobile version of the site for quickly adding events from regular phones; The iPhone version is under development (already indeed, since we have been swaying for a long time and only promised, so wait soon).
All mobile clients work offline, that is, without an internet connection. Connection is required only at registration / first login, when creating a new machine (the list of brands and models is taken from the server) and during synchronization (which I personally recommend doing more often).
Many users choose our mobile applications because of the ability to store data in the cloud, so we try to keep this segment in a special account and constantly make various additions and buns.
The project began with its own money, and approximately to the level of 6-7 thousand registered users was financed from its own pocket. Now we have found angel investments (not at specialized events, since there we have more funds that invest starting at 200K, and often after the first round of angel investment has passed).
Regarding the business model - we do not plan to make paid accounts for ordinary users. Perhaps, a fee will be introduced for a business account (for enterprises) that want to maintain their fleet on our logbooks, but in this case, the functionality for them will significantly expand in terms of integration with financial and accounting software. I will tell about other types of monetization (except advertising, of course) in the following posts when the plan of work in this direction will be prepared and approved. I’ll just say to all interested potential partners that the service is in the “demand study” stage and we are ready to discuss any interesting options for cooperation.
I would like to say a special thank you to Denis Dovgopoly and the guys from the Growth Up incubator. In the spring and autumn of 2010 with their help they got on the crash test of the project, and also attended the IDCEE conference, as a result they were able to identify important areas in the development of the service, rethink their entrepreneurial abilities and learn a lot of useful information about the venture business. Perhaps this is one of the most active and professional people working with startups in Ukraine. Of course, maybe there is someone else whom we have not met and with whom we have not met, but in any case I advise everyone to talk with them to all people who are trying to raise their project.
The service is written from scratch in PHP, uses the MySQL DBMS as the Nginx web server. We have been hosting recently on Hetzner.de. Before that, they lived on Burst.net - at a cost on a VPS, the price is attractive, but sometimes the server hung up, you had to reload or write support, a year or a year and a half ago they had a fire, but the data was all preserved and after a day everything worked. Those who are at the very start, and money is running out - you can perekantovatsya the first time there. Although Hetzner is also considered inexpensive and affordable, it is still a bit more expensive.
Every day we collect feedback, suggestions and requests from our users, and are working on their implementation. We are trying to improve the quality of statistics issued by improving the algorithms for calculating averages for models and for individual users.
That seems to be all that I wanted to tell. I really hope that was interesting.
Be sure to wait for your comments, feedback and suggestions for improving the service. We welcome proposals for cooperation.
Respectfully,
DriverNotes team
I want to tell you about our online service logbook for cars - DriverNotes.net. I hope that the description of our resource will turn out not just in the style of "I am promoting", but also bring people who are just about to create something of their own to the thoughts. In any case, I will be glad to answer all your questions.
')
The project began its work in 2010, with a minimal set of functionality, mainly to test the "usefulness" of the resource for users. Since then, no special marketing campaigns have been conducted. All mentions in the network are only reviews (not customized) on several major resources, but links to forums that (links) are published by our users. Previously, they did not consciously write to Habr - I wanted to finish, fix, finish, etc. as much as possible. But after the appearance of the post from a similar project , which is even more in its infancy than DriverNotes in the 2010th, they decided that there was nothing more to be ashamed of. So let's go ...
Where did the idea come from?
When you have a “second-hand” foreign car that breaks down much more often than we would like (the question always arises: am I so lucky?), Then because of the savings, I have to buy non-original spare parts (I think many people do this way). How to find out - how reliable is this part? It takes hours to shovel forums, topic by topic, and ultimately the information usefulness tends to 0. How to make people write down their repairs in one place and in a single format so that you can always quickly find a spare part of a particular manufacturer and ask opinion about this product from a person who has already installed it?
Stop ... And why only repairs? After all, someone insured, refueled, "washed", perhaps in the same places as you? It would also be nice to read about it, and if necessary ask a question. And since we will record our gas stations, then why not immediately calculate the fuel consumption, and not compare it with similar cars - who knows what the expense should be on your used car? Again, look at hundreds of forums the same topics about consumption? After all, you can collect the entire user experience and show in a condensed, abbreviated version, in the form of statistics of ownership of a particular car model .
And then a lot of ideas - and the service station catalog, and the store in which the product is sold only when a person really needs it. For example, if a reminder about the next MOT has worked, during which you need to change the oil and filter. Here you are - a list of original and non-original filters and oils, as well as a list of stations with prices for this type of work - choose, read reviews, sign up at a station remotely, and waste your free time on ... {there may be your option} .
Well, we already got into the functionality, let's get everything in order.
Main functions
There are many of them, they are constantly replenished, expanded and improved. Just give a short list of what is already there:
You can keep a history of your car. All events are divided into three types: repair, refueling, other. Each event can be made public or hidden for viewing by other users. Well, really - who needs to know that some inexperienced deer drove into the rear bumper and had to be straightened (in the sense of a bumper, not a deer, although some of it even straighten out right in the place of an accident).
Events can be set reminders not only by date, but also by mileage. Moreover, the setting for mileage is unique: the reminder comes not just by the fixed average monthly mileage that you entered during registration, but by the constantly calculated mileage, depending on the actual user data. Thus, if you set a reminder to change the oil after 15,000 km, then for each new event added we will recalculate the average mileage, and shift the reminder to the day on which we predict this mileage. In fact, it is very convenient.
Of all the events we collect cost statistics . Monthly, by event type, even by type of fuel - if the user has gas / petrol, we will show cost and fuel cost graphs.
For example, I understood how it is necessary to consider the economic effect of the installation of HBO (gas equipment, gas in a simple way). You can not just assume the difference between the cost of gasoline and gas, and take into account the difference in consumption, which is usually on propane-butane 5% -10%. It is necessary to take into account the gasoline on which the car is heated (which is clearly seen from the graph), and also to take into account in saving the average mileage per month, since we drive less = more often we warm up = more gasoline goes = savings from HBO is less.
Well, of course, we can calculate the cost of 1 km for all costs, or for individual types and a certain period. This will help to understand whether it is worth driving a car or it is simpler and cheaper to take a taxi)) Although it is a moot point, of course.
For the convenience of users from different countries, all prices of the cost can be displayed in different currencies, or in the original, in which the data were entered.
Fuel consumption. This topic is so discussed, and the same topic is blurred in conversations on forums, comparisons with on-board computers (which, by the way, most often show fuel consumption incorrectly), that we decided to calculate consumption not only by dividing the distance traveled by the number of liters, but added several parameters: "Full tank" and "Forgot to write the previous refueling." Although for those who do not refuel to a full tank, we decided to leave the calculation of the approximate flow rate - with 2–3 filling stations, the data is, of course, incorrect, but the farther, the data become more accurate. Fuel consumption is visible both in gas stations and on the chart . This data can be compared with other cars of the same brand in the Cars section (which will be discussed later).
General statistics on models
Just keeping track of costs is good, but the same data can be useful to summarize all the information on a particular model. So, for example, now we can determine the average cost of 1 km, the number of repairs (depending on the mileage), the average fuel consumption (then there will be a division according to engine types and modifications). With the introduction of an updated list of standard repairs, we will be able to identify typical “sores” inherent in the same model, on different runs, the real cost of typical repairs depending on the region, etc. etc. Now everything depends only on the type of data compilation.
All these statistics will help to more objectively compare the models of interest to the user and determine the profitability of the purchase, not only by technical characteristics and / or reviews, but also by actual data. Indeed, for many people, choosing a car is a very difficult task. I myself have revised many tests, read many reviews and comparisons when choosing my car.
But even if you are not going to either buy or sell anything, we will simply compare your indicators with other users, so that you can determine the profitability / non-profitability of refueling / remot, etc. Already, after creating a new event, a mini-report is displayed showing the difference between your costs and the average for the same model.
Mobile versions
Well, where do without them . At the moment there is a mobile client for Andoird, Samsung Bada and a mobile version of the site for quickly adding events from regular phones; The iPhone version is under development (already indeed, since we have been swaying for a long time and only promised, so wait soon).
All mobile clients work offline, that is, without an internet connection. Connection is required only at registration / first login, when creating a new machine (the list of brands and models is taken from the server) and during synchronization (which I personally recommend doing more often).
Many users choose our mobile applications because of the ability to store data in the cloud, so we try to keep this segment in a special account and constantly make various additions and buns.
Financial side
The project began with its own money, and approximately to the level of 6-7 thousand registered users was financed from its own pocket. Now we have found angel investments (not at specialized events, since there we have more funds that invest starting at 200K, and often after the first round of angel investment has passed).
Regarding the business model - we do not plan to make paid accounts for ordinary users. Perhaps, a fee will be introduced for a business account (for enterprises) that want to maintain their fleet on our logbooks, but in this case, the functionality for them will significantly expand in terms of integration with financial and accounting software. I will tell about other types of monetization (except advertising, of course) in the following posts when the plan of work in this direction will be prepared and approved. I’ll just say to all interested potential partners that the service is in the “demand study” stage and we are ready to discuss any interesting options for cooperation.
I would like to say a special thank you to Denis Dovgopoly and the guys from the Growth Up incubator. In the spring and autumn of 2010 with their help they got on the crash test of the project, and also attended the IDCEE conference, as a result they were able to identify important areas in the development of the service, rethink their entrepreneurial abilities and learn a lot of useful information about the venture business. Perhaps this is one of the most active and professional people working with startups in Ukraine. Of course, maybe there is someone else whom we have not met and with whom we have not met, but in any case I advise everyone to talk with them to all people who are trying to raise their project.
Technical side
The service is written from scratch in PHP, uses the MySQL DBMS as the Nginx web server. We have been hosting recently on Hetzner.de. Before that, they lived on Burst.net - at a cost on a VPS, the price is attractive, but sometimes the server hung up, you had to reload or write support, a year or a year and a half ago they had a fire, but the data was all preserved and after a day everything worked. Those who are at the very start, and money is running out - you can perekantovatsya the first time there. Although Hetzner is also considered inexpensive and affordable, it is still a bit more expensive.
Development
Every day we collect feedback, suggestions and requests from our users, and are working on their implementation. We are trying to improve the quality of statistics issued by improving the algorithms for calculating averages for models and for individual users.
- Affiliate program. While in manual mode, but still connect the functionality of the logbook to third-party car websites, forums, blogs. It is possible to customize styles, for example, as done at http://dn.spacioclub.ru . We plan to make an automated affiliate program, add statistics for partners.
Anyone (especially the largest) who want to have the functionality of DriverNotes, please contact us . The partner program works on the principle of dating Mamba, through redefining the subdomain to our ip (for example, like love.mail.ru did). We will earn together. - As mentioned above, the iPhone version of the mobile application and the mobile browser version of the site will be released soon.
- For each event you can add a photo, description, and put up for discussion.
- In the near future, we connect personal MOT cards . They will contain a standard list of maintenance work, such as changing oil, candles, belts, etc., which can be assigned a repetition period (for example, once every 10,000 km or every 60,000 km), as well as add their own views. works Soon it will be possible to choose a suitable MOT card from those already created by other users and opened for viewing. There is an idea to give access to car dealerships and auto dealers to create official maintenance maps, which will then be integrated into user maps, and ... we will keep the intrigue here, as there are several interesting ways to develop this function.
- Catalog of car services and other "automotive" business organizations and the mechanism of user interaction with these organizations, through which it will be possible to conduct a user tender for services of interest.
- Of course, geolocation , objects on maps and all the things inherent in this - search, reviews, photos, etc.
- We want to connect our service with the “brains” of the car through a smartphone (or tablet) and the OBD II diagnostic connector via bluetooth. This will allow Service Centers and Service Stations to do remote diagnostics of the car on the way, and users to have an on-board computer enhanced in functionality, the data of which can be transmitted to the cloud for further analysis (for example, a low battery charge level may indicate the need to replace it and in this case, the user will be offered various battery options for purchase, along with reviews and battery rating).
- Already, there are requests for localization of the resource in other countries (Italy, Bulgaria, Estonia, etc.) - and we will definitely expand to the global market.
That seems to be all that I wanted to tell. I really hope that was interesting.
Be sure to wait for your comments, feedback and suggestions for improving the service. We welcome proposals for cooperation.
Respectfully,
DriverNotes team
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/137895/
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