How can I use Trello to manage bookings and drivers for a taxi service?

[Black Taxi India]

Hi everyone 👋
I run a premium taxi service in North India (Black Taxi India), and I'd like to utilize Trello more effectively to manage our daily bookings, drivers, and trips.

Right now, we manage everything manually, but I'd love to set up a Trello workflow. Ideally, I want to:

• Create a new card for each booking (with pickup, drop-off, customer name, and time).

• Assign each booking card to a driver.

• Automatically move cards to “Ongoing” when the trip starts, and to “Completed” once it’s done.

• Get a daily summary of upcoming rides (maybe via email or Slack).

I've looked into Butler automation, but I'm not sure of the best setup.

• Should I create separate boards for each city/route, or one main board with lists?

• Is it possible to integrate Trello with Google Calendar for scheduling rides?

If anyone has experience setting up Trello for service-based businesses, I’d love to hear your tips.

Thank you so much for your attention and participation.

[Blair at Atlassian]

Hi Black Taxi India team 🖤

Thank you for sharing your goals and questions with the Community! Trello is a super great tool for managing service based workflows like yours, and I’m happy to offer some ideas to help you get started. Also encourage you to check out our customer stories to get an idea on how other businesses have adopted Trello.

There are many flexible ways to set up Trello to fit your needs..there’s no single “right” way, so feel free to experiment and find what works best for you!

Board structure: One approach you might try is using a single board with lists for each stage of the booking process, like “New Bookings,” “Assigned,” “Ongoing,” and “Completed.” You can use labels or custom fields to indicate details like city, route, or other specifics, which helps keep everything organized without the need for multiple boards.

However, if your operations are distinct for each city, you may find it more effective to create separate boards for each location. Ultimately, it depends on how you prefer to organize your workflow. Many teams try out a few different setups before settling on the structure that works best for them.

Cards to represent taxi bookings: You could definitely create a card for each booking and use Custom Fields (available with Trello Premium) to capture pickup, drop-off, and time. Assign cards to drivers by adding them as members to each card. You could use our email to board feature, or another option to sync third party tools to Trello.

Automation in Trello can help automate workflows:

• Set up rules to move cards to “Ongoing” when a custom field (like “Trip Started”) is checked or when a due date/time arrives.

• Automatically move cards to “Completed” when another field is updated or a checklist is finished.

• Use Automation to send daily summaries to email or Slack with the “Report” and “Email/Slack” actions.

• There's a TON of options with Automation on Trello boards.

Integrations:

• Google Calendar:  Check out Calendar View for Trello boards, and our Planner also connects to Google Calendar. For deeper integration, tools like Zapier or Unito can sync Trello cards with Google Calendar events.

• Slack: The Trello-Slack integration allows you to receive notifications and summaries directly in your Slack channels.

Tips:

• Start with one board and adjust as your needs grow

• Use labels or custom fields and other board utilities 

• Explore API

• Explore board templates

If you’d like step-by-step setup instructions or have more specific questions, feel free to ask! The Community is here to help.

Best of luck with your Trello setup!

Blair

Atlassian Support