Software for a curb that never slows down.

It is one system for the curb: the plate is read at check-in, condition photos and the key hook are logged against the ticket, the guest gets a text ticket instead of a paper stub, retrievals run from one shared queue, and the ticket closes with a card payment, a tip, cash, or a charge to the hotel room. The ticket, the keys, the queue, and the money all read from the same record.

The first release covers one complete path, from a car arriving to a closed ticket: plate read and condition photos at check-in, the parking spot and key hook on the ticket, the guest text ticket, the shared retrieval queue, payment and tips at the curb, and the shift report. Hotel room charges, validations for partner businesses, and multi-venue reporting come after the core shift works.

The runner points a phone at the car and the plate is read for them, so there is nothing to type while the line builds. They take condition photos of the car as it arrived, note the parking spot, and hang the keys on a numbered hook. The ticket carries all of it, and the guest gets a text with their ticket link. Check-in is done before the next car reaches the stand.

Every ticket names its hook. When the keys are hung, the hook number goes on the ticket; when a runner takes the keys for a retrieval, the ticket shows who took them and when. At shift change, any key still out shows against a name instead of a memory. The classic failure, a runner going home with a set of keys in a pocket, becomes visible the moment the hook count does not match the tickets still open.

The guest taps the link in their text ticket and asks for the car from the table, the room, or the lobby. The request lands in the same queue every runner on the shift can see, and the guest gets a message back with roughly how long it will take and another when the car is at the curb. Nobody calls the front desk, and nobody stands outside guessing.

Every request joins one queue in the order it arrived, and every runner works from that same list. The request shows the plate, the parking spot, and the key hook, so the runner goes straight to the right car with the right keys. When a venue empties at once, the queue is the difference between a line that drains in order and a crowd shouting ticket numbers at the stand.

The photos taken at check-in are saved on the ticket with the time, so the car condition on arrival is a record, not an argument. When a guest says a scratch or a dent appeared in your care, you open the ticket and look at the car as it arrived. If the mark is in the photo, the conversation ends there. If it is not, you have the starting point for a fair claim. Either way, the answer comes from the record, not from who was on shift.

When the guest pays by card or phone, the tip is offered on the same screen and recorded against the ticket. The ticket names the runner who brought the car, so the tip follows the work instead of going into a shared cash box to be split from memory at the end of the night. Cash tips still happen; the system simply makes the card tips visible, counted, and tied to the person who earned them.

The valet ticket is matched to the guest stay at check-in, and the parking charge is posted to the room bill in the hotel system, the list of charges the guest settles at checkout. That replaces the old routine where a night auditor worked through a paper list of cars, searched for each guest one by one, and typed the charge in by hand, with the errors and refund arguments that came with it. Visitors who are not staying pay by card at the curb instead.

With a text ticket, there is nothing to lose: the claim lives on the guest phone. If the phone is dead or left behind, the stand finds the car from the plate and the guest name, then checks identification against the ticket before the keys are handed over. A car is never released on a plate alone. The lost-ticket argument at the stand, with a line forming behind it, mostly disappears.

No. The guest side runs on a normal text message and a link that opens in the phone browser. No app store, no account, no password. That matters at a curb, where the guest is a diner, a patient visitor, or a traveller who will use the link once. The runners use the working app; the guest only ever sees their ticket, their request button, and their payment screen.

The runner keeps working without a connection. Check-in, the key hook, the parking spot, and the retrieval queue all live on the device, and everything lines up when the signal returns. Underground garages and basement lots are exactly where valet cars are parked, so a system that needs a live connection to write a ticket will fail in the place it is used most. Test it with the connection off, not only at the stand.

The board is the handover. Cars parked, keys out, retrievals waiting, and tickets still open are all on one screen, so the incoming shift reads the state of the stand instead of hearing it. Nothing depends on the outgoing runner remembering to mention the car in the far corner or the guest who asked for an early retrieval. What the board shows is what the shift owns.

Cards, phones, cash, validations, and room charges all close against their tickets, so the shift total is the sum of the tickets, not a cash box counted at midnight against a stack of stubs. Parking money, tips, and discounts show as separate lines, and a gap between what the tickets say and what was collected points at a specific ticket, not at the whole team.

Yes, when the venues are set up as separate stands on one record. Each stand keeps its own queue, its own key board, its own rates, and its own shift report, while the owner sees every venue in one place. A runner who works two venues carries one login and one way of working. Rates, validations, and tip rules can differ by venue without splitting the operation into separate systems.

Buy a maintained platform when it covers the stand. Valet platforms already handle plate read check-in, text tickets, retrieval queues, payments, and tips, and that is the right call for most single venues. Build custom when the operation breaks the template: a valet company running many client venues with different rates and reporting per client, a hotel group that needs the room charge to follow its own rules, a tip split no platform supports, or a queue that has to work across several stands at one property. Compare the platform fee against the cost of owning the system before you decide.

For a small, well-defined task with someone technical managing it, freelancers are often cheaper. The pattern that goes wrong is a non-technical buyer coordinating several freelancers becoming the project manager, the tester, and the person who discovers the pieces do not fit. A valet software company earns its fee when the work needs coordination across check-in, keys, the retrieval queue, payments, and the hotel connection: one accountable party, one phase price, and checkpoints against the whole shift. If your need is one screen or one fix, hire the freelancer.

The first paid phase may cover a bounded audit, a proof of concept, a recovery plan, or a small first release. The final price depends on how many stands and venues the system covers, whether the hotel room charge is in scope, how rates, validations, and tip rules differ by venue, what it needs to connect to, and whether ticket history needs moving over. The agreed phase is priced in writing before it starts. First phases start at $10000 for a bounded first release. Our parking management software guide puts a full custom parking platform at $80,000 to $210,000; a valet-only first release is a narrower build than a whole garage platform, and its price is set by the curb path in scope.

You judge what you can see, not the code. Every checkpoint is working software you click through yourself, tested against the shift agreed at the start: a check-in finished before the next car arrives, a key found from its hook number alone, a request sent from a phone landing in the queue, a tip landing with the right runner, and a room charge appearing on a test guest bill. Progress is reported in plain language: what changed, what's next, and what it costs. Because you own the code, the accounts, and the operating notes throughout, nothing about the work is locked inside our heads. Our job is to make the work checkable; your job is to check it against your business.

You own the code built for you and control where it lives, the cloud accounts, the data, analytics, and third-party subscriptions. Outside services and open-source pieces keep their own licence terms. The operating notes and handover material stay current so another capable team can take over.

We need one person who owns the operation, access to the relevant users and systems, timely answers on business rules, and someone who can accept or reject each milestone. A weekly working session is usually enough once the scope is stable. Your team should not have to manage developers day to day. The team that scopes your project is the team that does the work: no handoff to another vendor after you sign, and you can talk to the people doing the work directly.

Yes. Takeover is a common first engagement, and it always starts with an audit: where the code lives, how your data is organized, what is tested, which outside services it depends on, who can access what, and how updates go live. Code that is understandable and fit for the next release stays; only the parts blocking reliability get replaced. AI-built prototypes from Lovable, Replit, Bolt, or v0 can be assessed as starting points. And if you already paid another vendor and have nothing working, the audit tells you which story you have before you spend more.

Ask for the quote to name everyone who will use the system, including your own crew. Every platform has two products: what guests see, and what your people use all day: the check-in screen, the key board, the retrieval queue, the shift report, and a record of who did what. When that second product is quoted as an 'admin panel' on a single line, it becomes the overrun. Our quotes treat your team's screens as their own scope, with their own users. Then the phase names the workflow, what 'done' looks like, the price, and the exclusions, all before paid work starts. You review working software at agreed checkpoints, and when new information changes the scope, you hear the effect on price and timing before anything is approved.

Every launch includes post-launch warranty cover for defects in the agreed scope, release support, and small screen corrections. After that, work can continue as another fixed phase or an ongoing product engagement. The code and accounts stay under your control either way.