Car Wash Management System: a worked example in PHP and MySQL

The problem it solves

A busy car wash needs a simple way to record customer vehicles, track each wash from waiting to completed, prevent double-booking a vehicle, handle payment, and give managers daily totals and printable reports without internet.

Who uses it

What it does

• Login and Roles

  Secure login with hashed passwords, session regeneration, CSRF protection and role-based access. Manager, attendant and cashier see only their allowed menus and actions.

• Vehicles and Customers

  Attendants record customer name and phone, and vehicle plate number, make, colour and owner. Manager can view and edit all records. Plate numbers are unique.

• Wash Bookings

  Attendants create a booking for a vehicle and service, defaulting to Waiting. They assign a washer and move the job to In progress and Completed. Manager can cancel a booking. The list filters by plate number, date and status, with pagination. The main rule prevents a vehicle from having two active bookings.

• Payment Recording

  Cashier records payment for a completed job, choosing cash or simulated card. The payment amount is the booking amount. Today's money taken is shown. Receipts are simulated and printable.

• Services and Prices

  Manager adds, edits and removes wash services, including Exterior wash, Full wash, Interior cleaning and Polish and wax, each with a price in Naira.

• Daily Report and Chart

  Manager sees cars washed today, money taken today, and a bar chart of washes each day for the last seven days. A printable daily report lists completed bookings and payment totals.

Screens

Screenshots of the running system, taken by our checks. The records are sample data and are labelled so on each page.

Database tables

• usersStaff accounts for login and role-based access.id, username, password_hash, full_name, role, active, created_at
• customersCustomer details for vehicle ownership.id, full_name, phone, created_at
• vehiclesVehicles washed at the car wash.id, plate_number, make, colour, customer_id, created_at
• servicesWash services and prices set by the manager.id, name, price, active, created_at
• bookingsWash jobs from arrival to completion.id, vehicle_id, service_id, attendant_id, status, amount, created_at, updated_at
• paymentsPayments recorded for completed bookings.id, booking_id, cashier_id, amount, method, created_at
• settingsSmall key and value store, including the sample data label flag.setting_key, setting_value

Built with

• PHP. It ships with XAMPP, runs without internet and is the language chosen for this project.
• PDO with the MySQL driver. Placeholders keep user input out of the SQL text, and transactions and row locks protect a vehicle from double-booking.
• MariaDB / MySQL. It is the database bundled with XAMPP and needs no internet.
• Bootstrap. Gives a clean page on desktop and phone without a CDN.
• Chart.js. Charts the daily report offline from the bundled file.

How to run it: running a PHP project on XAMPP. Not sure which language to pick? Python or PHP.

How it was tested

75 of 75 tests passed, 75 of them automated. The system was also installed from scratch and every screen was opened as the right kind of user before it was accepted.

What it does not do

• Card payment and receipts are simulated, not real transactions.
• SMS notices are not sent.
• Parts inventory, stock, payroll and multiple branches are out of scope.
• There is no customer self-service portal.
• The database connection defaults to root with an empty password and is meant for one local XAMPP machine.
• Concurrent load and very large data sets have not been tested.