Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Assisted Rides is web-based software for running volunteer driver programs and other community assistance: rides, in-home visits, telephone reassurance calls, errands, deliveries, events and memberships, with your clients, volunteers and vehicles in one place. It supports organizations in both the United States and Canada. It was launched in 2010 by The AlterNetWays Company, LLC. Organizations have recorded more than 7,637,962 rides and services with it to date.

More than 200 nonprofits, faith-based organizations and government agencies use Assisted Rides, including Aging and Disability Resource Centers (ADRC), Area Agencies on Aging (AAA), Councils on Aging, Villages, Faith In Action and Interfaith Caregivers programs, Retired Senior Volunteer Programs (RSVP), Councils of Governments, Community Action Programs, Shepherd Centers, Jewish Family Services, Catholic Charities, local governments, and regional and statewide transportation programs.

Yes. Assisted Rides supports organizations in Canada as well as the United States, including addresses with provinces and distances in kilometers.

Services go on the same calendar as your trips: in-home visits, telephone reassurance calls, minor home repairs and any other forms of assistance you define, including team projects such as ramp building. You can also schedule errands when the client does not need to be in the vehicle (prescription and grocery pickups), delivery routes such as meals, shuttle routes, and events such as classes, outings and group activities with sign-up rosters, attendance and optional fees. Memberships, dues and ride allowances can be tracked too.

Yes. You can give volunteers the Self-Assign permission, so they log in and assign open rides and services to themselves without office help. Together with the automatic emails and text messages, this saves your coordinators a lot of time. Volunteers can also block out days they are not available, and you can record which days and times each volunteer prefers.

Yes. You can allow your members to log in and schedule their own requests, so they do some of the scheduling work for you.

Yes. You assign agency-owned vehicles to requests the same way you assign volunteers, with drag-and-drop on the Scheduling page, using paid or volunteer drivers. You can capture pre-trip and post-trip inspections with your own questionnaires, track fuel logs and maintenance schedules for grant-funded vehicles, and see vehicle and volunteer trips separately in your reports.

Assisted Rides supports manual and automated sending of Emails, Text Messages, and Autocalls to your members. You can configure what emails/texts/calls are automatically made in your Agency Settings. We have a special focus on the communication channels that each person prefers, and by setting their Notification Preference, Assisted Rides will automatically send the message via that method.

Assisted Rides is a web application built to be responsive to the size of your screen. You can log into Assisted Rides using your phone's browser, and Assisted Rides will automatically resize to fit your device. Native iOS and Android apps for Clients and Volunteers are in the final testing phase, and will be free to download.

Yes. We create APIs for our clients as needed to support their work. If an integration will benefit other organizations too, we build it at no charge; if it will only be used by you, we agree on a fair price with you first.

Yes, that is possible! Assisted Rides allows you to collaborate with other organizations in a couple of different ways. You can form a Partnership where each organization has an account, and we link them together for reporting, or a single account can use the "Areas" feature to separate your programs and you can still report on each Area independently.

Assisted Rides Partnerships are when two or more organizations want to combine their data together, but operate independently. For example, we have several state wide programs that have multiple agencies, and they are separate, but want their aggregate data reporting together. Or another example is an organization chain may want to link their different offices data together for aggregate reporting. This feature is free, and can help meet your reporting needs.

Pricing is an annual subscription based on the volume of rides and services you schedule each year, plus any optional features you choose. Small (up to 2,000 rides/services a year) starts at $1,500 a year, Medium (up to 5,000) starts at $3,000 a year, and Large (more than 5,000) starts at $4,500 a year, with additional tiers in increments of 2,500. Every plan includes unlimited clients and volunteers. The Pricing page has the details.

No, Assisted Rides is priced according to the rides/services you schedule. You can have as many office workers (Managers, Supervisors, Staff), and Volunteers and Clients as you want within your account. We do not charge any additional fees based on the number of accounts that are logging into Assisted Rides.

No, support and training is offered to your team so that you can effectively use Assisted Rides. We know that there will be more support/training needed at the beginning of our partnership, but we're here to support you through start-up, staffing changes, and interest in new features too.

We are actively adding features to Assisted Rides, and if we get a suggestion for a new feature or report that we think will benefit other organizations, we will not charge your organization to build the feature. There are special cases where you may ask us for a custom integration with another service, and if that request will only be used by you, then we will negotiate a fair price for adding that feature for you.

With the annual subscription pricing structure, each year you'll receive a new invoice based on your organizational settings, and you just pay your invoice, and we automatically renew your contract for another year.

During the start-up process you will need to estimate your upcoming year totals for your Rides/Services scheduled, and if you overestimate you would be entitled to a refund the following year, but if you underestimate your scheduling totals we will invoice you the difference from the previous year, and adjust our estimates for the upcoming year.

Your account is fully functional on the first day. Most organizations take a little time to get comfortable and settle into their normal routine, and are typically scheduling rides and services in less than 14 days. Your staff go from beginners to intermediate and advanced users in a short time. We can import the data you already have, and support and training are included at no extra cost.

Yes, we have ability to import your existing data. There is always going to be some work involved to transform your existing data into the Assisted Rides format, but our import process has saved hundreds of hours of manual data entry!

Use the Request a Demo page. We email you within one business day to set up a time, then give you a live 45 to 60 minute demo on Zoom, tailored to your program, followed by a written summary of pricing and next steps, with no obligation.

Yes. Instead of a separate demo system, we set up your organization's real Assisted Rides account and give your team access. During the trial you can enter your real destinations and start configuring Assisted Rides for your program. There is no fixed trial length. If you sign up, you keep all of that work. If you decide not to, we close the account, and on request we permanently delete any data you entered.

Yes. Assisted Rides is HIPAA compliant by default. Organizations that want tighter control can add the optional HIPAA Privacy feature, which adds privacy settings that limit access to information to "just-in-time". Clearly defined access control rules protect your data, and you decide what each person can see: for example, public notes are seen by your drivers, while internal notes are seen only by your office staff.

No! We take the stance that you own your data, and it is our responsibility to protect your data. We will never sell or share your organization's data.

Information security is a top priority. We implement several layers of defense including using secure coding practices, best practices for the infrastructure platform (Microsoft technologies), and active agents running on our dedicated servers that are actively monitoring for intrusion detection, and hacking attempts.

Your data will automatically be backed up for disaster recovery, and can be restored quickly. Our automated backups are taken every 6 hours, and have a 14 day retention period. The backups are stored offsite in secure locations in an encrypted format.

Assisted Rides uses one of the top hosting companies in the United States. Our dedicated servers are supported 24/7/365, in a secure data center facility centrally located within the United States.

More than 70 customizable reports. You can report by client, volunteer, county, city, ethnic group, CDBG groups, age range, trip type, member groups (such as veterans), destination groups, congregation, forms of assistance, low income and more, and track trip outcomes such as Completed, No-Show Client, No-Show Driver and Canceled.