For operators running wheelchair transport
Vermo is the dispatch software for services that drive people with disabilities to sheltered workshops, special schools, day centres and medical appointments. A manual wheelchair, a powered wheelchair and a transfer chair are three different spaces with three different loading times. Vermo plans with that difference instead of counting every passenger as one seat.
Not the distance. The question of whether this vehicle can take this passenger on this day, and how long boarding and alighting actually take.
Manual wheelchair, powered wheelchair and transfer chair are separate space types in the system. For wheelchairs and transfer chairs you set your own default loading times in minutes, and route planning uses them. A stop with a ramp is no longer a stop with two minutes of padding, it is the stop it really is.
Many minibuses carry spaces that are either a seat or a wheelchair bay. Vermo treats those as variable: a vehicle's free seats and free wheelchair spaces cannot both be used to the full, and the display says so rather than claiming a capacity that never existed.
Assigning a tour to a vehicle shows the arithmetic first: this tour needs this many seats and wheelchair spaces, this many are free. Optimisation also reports a vehicle with too few wheelchair spaces as a conflict instead of quietly planning the tour anyway.
A passenger travels without their wheelchair on one particular day, or the other way round. That is recorded as an exception on the single ride, optionally on the return ride of the same day, and the master data stays untouched. The ride is visibly marked as deviating.
An escort is not a note in a comment field, it is an extra seat in the plan. If the passenger brings their own escort, it counts exactly the same. Walking aids are carried in the count so storage space never becomes a surprise on the day.
The cost bearer's tariff carries the mode of transport. Manual and powered wheelchair are separate items with their own price agreements, as is the question of whether an escort is included. What was driven appears in the monthly billing the way it was agreed.
Wheelchair securement, escorts, cost bearers and data protection, sourced from standards, statute and courts rather than vendor blogs.
Almost every German tender document for disability transport contains one sentence about DIN 75078. It is never explained. This article turns the standard into an operator checklist and into capacity rules for route planning.
A required escort and a requested escort get confused every day. The difference decides whether a seat in the vehicle gets paid for and how the route has to be planned.
Wheelchair requirements, an emergency note, a call to say someone is ill. A transport operator processes health data whether it intends to or not. This article shows which fields fall under Article 9 GDPR and how to govern access, disclosure and deletion.
Whether a patient transport trip needs prior approval is decided at the dispatch desk in seconds. It gets paid weeks later. This article sorts out the general rule, the exceptions and the evidence you owe.
The 20-cent tax allowance reimburses a business trip. It is not a price for a transport service. This article walks through the cost blocks that make up the cost per kilometre in a minibus transport service, and why empty running quietly pushes the figure up.
In passenger transport, live positioning is an operating requirement rather than a surveillance tool. Employee data protection and co-determination still apply. This article separates what is mandatory, what is discretionary and what most operators store for far too long.
What operators want to know before the first conversation.
Wheelchair transport software plans rides where space in the vehicle is the scarce resource rather than time. It holds, for every passenger, what kind of space they need, which escort belongs to them and how long boarding takes. Out of that come tours whose vehicles actually fit, and a monthly billing run separated by mode of transport.
Yes, those are three separate space types. The difference is not a label: a powered wheelchair needs different securement and different room than a folding one, and a transfer chair user is moved into a vehicle seat rather than staying in the chair. Wheelchairs and transfer chairs each carry their own default loading time, which feeds into route planning.
Through a seating plan per vehicle type. Each space is a fixed seat, a fixed wheelchair bay or variable. Variable spaces count towards both capacities but only once: Vermo reports free seats and free wheelchair spaces separately and states that both cannot be used at the same time. When the vehicle type changes, the affected vehicles can be updated in one step.
It is recorded as an exception on that single ride. There are three states: as held in the master data, wheelchair today, no wheelchair today. The third is deliberately not the same as the first. The exception can be written to the return ride of the same day and is visibly flagged on the ride, so nobody has to guess later why capacity was calculated differently that day.
Always. Whether the operator provides the escort or the passenger brings their own makes no difference to capacity: it is one more seat in the plan. Whether the cost bearer pays for a provided escort, and for which period, is held separately on the authorisation.
Disabled passenger transport carries people seated or in a wheelchair, usually to recurring destinations such as a workshop, a school or a day centre, and needs no medical staff. Qualified ambulance transport with a patient transport vehicle, a carry chair or lying transport is a different service under a different licence. Vermo covers disabled passenger transport and seated medical rides, not qualified ambulance transport.
The one where two powered wheelchairs, a transfer chair and an escort all have to fit into a bus with four variable spaces. We rebuild it during the call, with your vehicles and your loading times. After that you will know whether it fits your operation.
