How RideDesk works
Two questions matter before you commit your bookings to any system: how long until it is running, and what does a normal day actually look like once it is. This page answers both, including the parts that are genuinely manual.
The short version: setting up enough to take a real booking is an afternoon. Setting up everything — your own domain, your own sending address, WhatsApp, partners — takes longer, and most of that time is DNS records and waiting for approvals from Meta or Google rather than anything you do in the panel.
Getting set up
In order. Each step is useful on its own, so you can stop at any point and still have a working system.
- 1
Create the account and enter your company details
Legal name, address, VAT number, invoice prefix and logo. This is the identity that appears on every document and email, so it is worth doing properly once rather than correcting it on an invoice a customer already has.
- 2
Enter your rate card
The most important step, and the one that pays back immediately. Vehicle classes, per-kilometre and per-hour rates, minimum fares, and any fixed prices for routes you sell regularly. From here on, every quote from every channel is calculated from this.
- 3
Add your vehicles and drivers
Each driver gets a private link to send them — there is nothing for them to install and no account for them to create, which matters when a driver starts on Friday.
- 4
Decide how bookings reach you
Paste the booking widget into your existing website, or point a form at the API. Take a test booking through it and watch it land. If you also want WhatsApp or Instagram, connect them now, but do not block your launch on them.
- 5
Set up payment and sending
Connect your Stripe, PayPal or SumUp account so payment links work, and set your sending address. Sending from your own domain needs DNS records; until then, email goes out from a verified fallback address so nothing is blocked.
- 6
Choose what happens automatically
Reminders, the morning digest, payment chasers, whether cash bookings need a signature. Everything is off or on individually, and starting conservative is sensible — you can always automate more once you trust the flow.
The job, as your dispatcher sees it
One record holds the passenger, the route, the flight, the assigned driver and the money — so nothing about the ride lives in somebody’s phone.
Airport transfer · today
M. Weber · 2 pax
Frankfurt Airport (FRA) · T1
Hotel Jumeirah, Thurn-und-Taxis-Platz
Thomas S.
Accepted · 4 min ago
Every way work reaches you
Website, widget, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, Telegram, live chat, email, phone and marketplace partners — all landing in the same place.
A booking, end to end
The path a real job takes. Steps marked as a decision are the ones that stay yours.
- 1
The request arrives and is priced
From any channel. The server measures the route once, prices every vehicle class from your rate card, applies surcharges or an early-booking discount, validates a voucher if used, and stores the result under a reference. The price shown is the price the system will honour.
- 2
It is checked, then approved
The booking is recomputed against that stored quote and checked against your service area and notice period. With hands-off approval enabled and every check passing, it approves itself. Otherwise it waits as pending with the reason attached — a decision for you, never an automatic rejection.
- 3
You assign a driver, or forward it
A decision. Assign one of your own drivers, or forward the job to an approved partner at your margin. The driver gets their link; the customer sees only your business either way.
- 4
The driver confirms
They open the link and confirm or decline. Until they confirm, the booking is not confirmed. This single constraint removes the most common failure in dispatch: assuming a message was read.
- 5
The customer is told, once
One confirmation in their language, from your address, with the driver, the vehicle and the pickup. If you take payment by link it goes with it; if you take cash, you can require the customer to confirm by signing on a page instead.
- 6
The ride runs
On an airport job the flight is tracked, so the pickup time reflects when the aircraft actually lands. Reminders go to the customer and, closer in, to the driver.
- 7
It completes and settles
The invoice carries a real consecutive number, the payment is recorded against the booking, and cash a driver is holding shows on their balance until settled. Three months later the record still answers the question.
Priced by your rate card, on the server
The route is measured once and every vehicle class is priced from your own rates, so no channel can quietly undercut you.
Priced live from your own rate card · fixed, no surprises
A payment page per booking
Your own Stripe, PayPal or SumUp account, the full booking summary on the page, and a compliant invoice behind it.
What is automatic and what is not
The honest split. Anything involving money, a promise to a customer or a judgement call stays with a human by design.
| Who does it | Why | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing a request | Automatic | Your rate card is the only input, so there is nothing to judge. |
| Approving a booking | Automatic when every check passes | A failed check means something is genuinely unusual, which is exactly when a person should look. |
| Assigning a driver | You | Who is free, who knows the route and who you trust with this client is local knowledge software does not have. |
| Confirming to the customer | Automatic, after the driver confirms | The message is only true once someone has committed to driving. |
| Chasing payment | Automatic | Repetitive, unambiguous, and nobody enjoys it. |
| Cancelling with a fee | You, with the policy applied | The system calculates the tier and the refund; whether to charge it is a customer relationship decision. |
| Replying to a customer message | You, optionally AI-drafted | A draft saves the typing. Sending is a person's decision. |
| Answering a chat while you sleep | The bot, if enabled | It can take a real booking through the quote engine, and hands off anything it cannot handle. |
Rentals, with the paperwork attached
Day rates and duration discounts, included kilometres, condition at handover and return, and an agreement the customer signs.
4 d
Period
€ 149/d
Rate
−10%
Long-stay
Your brand, your domain
Your colours, your logo and your sending address, on a hostname you own. Customers never learn what software you run.
Booking page, panel & emails — 100% your brand, none of ours
Moving from what you use now
Most operators arrive from a spreadsheet, a notebook and a WhatsApp group — or from another system they have outgrown. Either way the sensible order is the same: get the rate card right, run new bookings through RideDesk while old ones finish where they are, and do not attempt to import history on day one.
Existing customers can be imported, or backfilled from bookings once they start flowing. If you are migrating invoices, set your starting invoice number to continue your existing sequence rather than restarting at one — the counter is deliberately allowed to skip forward for exactly this reason.
The part people underestimate is their own rate card. Many businesses discover that what they charge is not quite what they thought they charged, because the real rule lived in someone's head. That is uncomfortable for an afternoon and valuable forever.
How a booking moves
Arrive, get priced, get a driver, get confirmed, get paid — the same path whichever channel it came from.
Sign up & make it yours
Create your organization, set your rate card, connect your domain and drop in your logo and colour.
Take bookings everywhere
Point your website at RideDesk, plug in the API, forward marketplace jobs, or add them by hand.
Dispatch & get paid
Approve, assign a driver or partner, send the pay link, and let the automations handle the rest.
What comes with it
The capabilities that turn a booking list into a business you can run from one screen.
Built-in CRM
Every booker becomes a customer record — history, documents, billing details, lifetime value.
Two-way inbox & WhatsApp
Reply to customers by email or WhatsApp from inside each booking. No separate app.
Live flight status
Airport pickups track the flight automatically — delays surface before the driver leaves.
Bookable by AI agents
A per-tenant MCP endpoint lets AI assistants get a quote and book — priced by your rules, never theirs.
Quote-to-booking analytics
See what visitors entered, which class they picked, and where they dropped off the funnel.
Automations & reminders
Confirmations, driver reminders, payment chasers and a morning digest — on autopilot.
You can stop after step two
Company details plus a rate card is enough to take a real booking, price it, dispatch it and invoice it. Everything after that — WhatsApp, your own domain, partners, automation — adds reach or removes typing, but none of it is a prerequisite for going live.
Frequently asked questions
How long before I can take a real booking?
An afternoon, if your rate card is clear. Company details, vehicle classes and rates, one driver, and the booking widget on your site is the minimum viable setup, and each of those steps is useful even if you stop there.
Do I need to move my website?
No. The widget embeds into the site you already have, including WordPress, and there is an API for a custom build.
Do my drivers need training?
Realistically no. They receive a link, open it on their phone, and see their jobs with a confirm and a decline button. There is no app, no password and no account.
Can I import my existing bookings and customers?
Customers yes, and they also backfill automatically from bookings. Importing historical bookings is usually not worth it: let the old system finish the jobs it holds and start clean, otherwise you spend a week reconciling data you will never look at.
What happens if a check fails on a booking?
It stays pending with the reason recorded, and appears on your dashboard as needing attention. It is never rejected automatically — an out-of-area pickup or an unusual price is a conversation, not a refusal.
Can I run it alongside my current system for a while?
Yes, and it is the low-risk way to switch. Point one channel at RideDesk, keep the rest where they are, and move the others once you are comfortable.
What if I get it wrong while setting up?
Almost everything is a setting you can change, and deleted records go to a recovery area rather than vanishing. The one thing that is deliberately hard to undo is an issued invoice number — those are voided, never deleted, because that is what an auditor expects.