Moving off Limo Anywhere: a UK operator's checklist

Limo Anywhere has been the default operating system for the American limousine trade for two decades. It claims over 5,400 operators in more than 60 countries, and for a US livery company with affiliate work flowing through LA Net, it is hard to argue with. A UK chauffeur operator runs into a different set of edges. This is a checklist for deciding whether those edges are worth a switch, and for doing the switch without losing a booking if they are.

Where it rubs for a UK operator

The bill arrives in dollars. Published plans start at $99 a month for Core and run to $549 for Black, each with a per-trip charge on top ($0.25 or $0.20 per trip), a monthly trip allowance with a higher rate once you exceed it, and a one-off licensing fee of $299 to $899. A UK operator therefore pays a variable amount in a foreign currency and cannot read the true monthly cost off the plan page.

VAT is a reporting checkbox, not a pricing rule. Limo Anywhere's System Rate Manager is built around US livery rates, and its documentation does not describe whether a rate is inclusive or exclusive of VAT. UK account clients expect an invoice that states the net, the VAT and the gross figure, and they expect the quote to have said the same thing. Operators end up carrying that logic in their heads or in a spreadsheet beside the system.

The integrations point the other way across the Atlantic. QuickBooks sync is published; no Xero integration appears on their site. Their AI sales agent is a website chatbot and their lead capture works from web forms, not from a written email enquiry.

Leaving is under-documented. The published data movement is inbound only: you email a CSV and they batch-upload it overnight, quoted at three to five business days and covering Accounts, Affiliates, Points of Interest, Zones and Fixed Rates. No self-serve export process was found on their site. Before you plan anything else, ask their support team in writing for a full bookings export and confirm what columns it contains.

None of that makes Limo Anywhere a poor product. If a meaningful share of your work arrives as farm-ins through LA Net, the network can outweigh every point above, and the Limo Anywhere comparison says so.

What Kairo's importer does with your export today

Kairo does not yet have a Limo Anywhere importer. The only system with its own purpose-built adapter is Dever, and that is written up in Moving off Dever Software. A Limo Anywhere file goes through the generic path instead, which works in two passes.

The first pass matches exact header labels that are safe in any export: Date-Time, Booking Ref, Account Number, Account Name, Telephone, Email, Num. Passengers, Driver, Driver Tel, Flight Details, Mileage, Fare, Total, Payment Type, Status and a few more. The second pass reads the wording of any header still unplaced and matches common patterns: a column containing "pickup address" or "collection" becomes the pickup, "drop off" or "destination" becomes the drop-off, "via" or "stop" becomes a waypoint, "flight" or "terminal" becomes flight details, "reg" or "plate" becomes a vehicle registration, and so on. Whatever neither pass can place shows as Skip on the mapping step, where you choose a field for it or leave it out.

From the mapped rows Kairo creates or matches contacts, clients (matched on account name), drivers (matched on name, created inactive until they sign in), vehicles (keyed on registration) and one job per row. Payment-state columns in the file are read as evidence for reconciliation rather than used to mark a job paid on their own.

Three things do not come across from any bookings export: invoices, rate cards and payment history. Historic invoices stay in a read-only copy of the old system. Rates are rebuilt in Kairo, in sterling, and checked against a sample of jobs you have already charged. A Limo Anywhere export priced in dollars will need converting before that check means anything.

A one-page runbook

1. Request a full bookings export in writing and note the date it was produced.
2. Open the file. Check that pickup, drop-off, date, time, fare and account are separate columns, and rename any header that is ambiguous before upload.
3. Confirm the currency on every money column and convert to sterling if the export is in dollars.
4. Upload to Kairo, confirm the mapping step, and read the preview before importing.
5. Compare counts. Clients, drivers, vehicles and forward bookings should agree with the totals in Limo Anywhere.
6. Rebuild the rate card and price five or six historic jobs. They must return the figures you actually invoiced.
7. Give Limo Anywhere the 30 days' notice their terms require, but keep the account open through the parallel week.
8. Key new bookings in Kairo only for one live week, reconciling each day's sheet against the old system, then sign off and cancel.

Kairo can run that list for you as a Managed Launch, £495 one-off, with a written guarantee: miss the agreed checklist and you choose between a refund of that fee and continued work at no further charge. Or do it yourself with no setup charge. The subscription is the same either way and is priced by fleet size on the pricing page, in pounds, with no per-trip fee.

Send one historic booking, a rate-card sample and your export through the founding pilot route and Kairo will return a written scope, including which columns would need hand mapping. Or open a free trial and put the file through the importer yourself.