A: Private Hire and Taxi Software.

A: Phatsoft is designed to be used by individual taxi drivers, private hire drivers, chauffeurs etc.

A: Phatsoft is a simple accounting system for drivers. It records journeys and expenses. It allows for customers who have accounts that they pay monthly and statements can be printed when required.

A: Phatsoft allows you to keep your income and expense information on the computer, together with basic details about your customers and drivers. If your data entry is accurate, regarding journeys (whether paid or not paid) and expenses incurred (whether paid or not paid), your accountant should be able to produce your accounts quicker and hence it should save you much more money that Phatsoft's original cost.

A: The current price of Phatsoft is £49.00. This is a one-off purchase for a license to use Phatsoft. No further fees are required.

A: Yes, you may install Phatsoft on up to 2 computers. Any more than that, you will need to buy extra licenses.

A: You can de-activate the license on the computer that you don't want to use for Phatsoft anymore. To do this, first back up your data on the old computer. Save the backup file (using the built-in backup function in the Management Section, to something like a CDR or USB Thumb Drive so you can transfer it to the new computer later. Then, click ... <how do we do this? I thought we had this built in but I can't see it on my copy of Phatsoft (v 1.0.2.3)>. Next, download Phatsoft again on the new computer (or install it from disk if you have a disk). Next, activate your new Phatsoft installation using the link provided when you start the program. Use the same email address and password that you used when you first bought the program or when you first registered it. Finally, use the Restore feature in the Management menu to restore your data from wherever you saved it to from the old computer.

A: We recommend that you back up your data at least once per month and certainly more frequently if you do a lot of data input. If you update Phatsoft daily, you should back up once a week.

A: It is always better to back up to something other than the same computer's hard drive. Nowadays, a USB memory stick (also known as a thumb drive) is a good idea. They are cheap, small and easy to use. It is always best to keep the backup in a location different from where the computer is. This is in case of fire, flood, theft etc. (heaven forbid!). Alternatively, you could back up to recordable or rewritable CD. To do this, you will first need to back up to your hard drive and then use Windows or software that you are used to to copy the backup file to the CDR or CDRW. You could also specify a network drive as the backup location.

A: We are continuously updating Phatsoft in line with feedback received from customers. Each time you open Phatsoft, if you have an Internet connection, the program will check if any updates are available. If they are, you will be notified via an icon in your system tray. Double-clicking on that icon will start the download process and after a couple more clicks, Phatsoft will be updated.

A: Yes, you can go to www.phatsoft.co.uk, choose the Download link and click on the "Download latest update patch" link. This will allow you to save a zip file that you will unzip to a location on your computer. Once the zip file has been unzipped, you can run the "update" file and Phatsoft will be updated to the latest version.

A: This can occur with older versions and is something that we are working on to avoid. If you do witness this, simply choose to activate online and use the email address and password that you originally used to register on the web site. Your software will once again be activated. We apologize in advance if you are required to do this.

A: This error is caused by having a corrupt installion of Microsoft's .Net framework. You can either download .net Framework from http://www.phatsoft.co.uk/downloads/Dot-Net-Framwork.zip or else follow the instructions in the Microsoft Knowledgebase article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306160.

A: 1) Backup the current database of PHATSoft 1.4.x to a safe location (Ex: Desktop). It should not be anywhere inside the <PHATSoft Installation> folder.
2) Uninstall PHATSoft 1.4.x
3) Install PHATSoft 1.5.1
4) Open PHATSoft 1.5.1
5) Navigate to Restore database
6) Open the file saved in Step (1)