Private hire booking system
A private hire operator has a problem a taxi rank does not. Every job has to be booked through you before it happens, it has to be recorded before the driver moves, and that record has to survive long enough for a licensing officer to ask for it. The booking system is not just how the work gets done — it is the evidence that the work was done lawfully.
On this page
- The booking record is a licence condition, not an admin habit
- The job, as your dispatcher sees it
- Every way work reaches you
- The eight particulars, and where each one lives
- Priced by your rate card, on the server
- What no vendor can tell you
- A payment page per booking
- Rentals, with the paperwork attached
- What else a private hire operator actually needs
- Your brand, your domain
- How a booking becomes a record
- How a booking moves
- What comes with it
- What to ask a vendor
- Frequently asked questions
Most software in this market is sold on dispatch speed and driver apps. Useful, but it is not what your licence turns on. This page starts from the record you are legally required to keep, because a system that produces it as a by-product removes an entire category of worry, and one that does not will quietly make you keep a second set of books.
The booking record is a licence condition, not an admin habit
Outside London, section 56(2) of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 requires an operator to "keep a record in such form as the council may, by condition attached to the grant of the licence, prescribe" of every booking invited or accepted, and to produce that record "on request to any authorised officer of the council or to any constable for inspection". The Act deliberately does not say what the record must contain or how long you keep it — your council sets that in your licence conditions, which is why the answer genuinely differs between neighbouring authorities and why no vendor can honestly promise you blanket compliance.
In London the detail is written down. Regulation 11 of the Private Hire Vehicles (London) (Operators' Licences) Regulations 2000 lists eight particulars that must be in the record before the journey begins, and regulation 16 requires each booking record to be preserved "for six months from the date on which the booking was accepted".
This matters for software selection more than any feature comparison, because the eight particulars are not a reporting afterthought — they are fields that have to exist on the booking, be filled in before the car moves, and still be there months later. A system that treats any of them as optional free text is one you will be reconciling by hand.
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.
M. Weber · 2 pax
FRA T1 → HOTEL JUMEIRAH, FRANKFURT
LH 402 · on time · Business Van
THOMAS S. · Accepted · 4 min ago
€ 89.00
Paid
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.
The eight particulars, and where each one lives
Regulation 11 for London operators; outside London your council prescribes the form, and this list is the sensible baseline to hold a vendor to. The right-hand column is where RideDesk keeps each one.
| Required particular | Where it sits in the record | |
|---|---|---|
| Date booked, and the journey date | "The date on which the booking is made and, if different, the date of the proposed journey." | Both are stored separately on every booking — when it arrived, and when it runs. They are different fields precisely because they are different facts. |
| Who the booking is for | "The name of the person for whom the booking is made or other identification of him." | The passenger on the booking, linked to a customer record so a repeat booker is the same person each time rather than a re-typed name. |
| Time and place of collection | "The agreed time and place of collection, or, if more than one, the agreed time and place of the first." | Pickup time and address, captured with autocomplete so the address is a real place rather than a typo. |
| Main destination | "The main destination specified at the time of the booking." | The destination as quoted — held on the booking rather than being re-derived later from wherever the car actually ended up. |
| Fare or estimated fare quoted | "Any fare or estimated fare quoted." | The quote is computed server-side from your rate card and stored against the booking, so the figure on the record is the figure the customer was given. |
| The driver | "The name of the driver carrying out the booking or other identification of him." | The assigned driver, who has to confirm the job — so the name on the record is one that was accepted rather than one that was hoped for. |
| Any operator sub-contracted to | "If applicable, the name of the other operator to whom the booking has been sub-contracted." | Forwarding a job to a partner is a first-class action, so the receiving operator is on the booking rather than in a WhatsApp thread. This is the field most systems have no home for. |
| The vehicle | "The registered number of the vehicle to be used or such other means of identifying it." | The vehicle registry holds the registration, and the vehicle is attached to the job rather than assumed from the driver. |
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
What no vendor can tell you
Your conditions are your council's, and they vary — on the form of the record, on how long you keep it, and on whether a computerised system is accepted at all. Some authorities specify retention far longer than London's six months. Read your own licence conditions, or ask your licensing officer, and hold any vendor claim about "compliance" against that document rather than against a marketing page — including this one. What software can honestly promise is that the particulars are captured, timestamped and exportable; whether that satisfies your authority is between you and them.
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.
Rentals, with the paperwork attached
Day rates and duration discounts, included kilometres, condition at handover and return, and an agreement the customer signs.
What else a private hire operator actually needs
The record is the floor. These are the things that decide whether the system is pleasant to run a fleet on.
Pre-booking as the normal case
Private hire work is booked ahead, sometimes weeks ahead. That sounds obvious until you use a product built for immediate dispatch, where a job three weeks out sits awkwardly in a queue designed for the next ten minutes. Quotes that hold their price, jobs that sit calmly in the future and a board that shows tomorrow as clearly as today are the difference.
Sub-contracting that is modelled, not improvised
Nobody covers every job with their own cars, and the regulations assume you will sub-contract by giving it a field of its own. Forwarding a booking to a partner at an agreed margin, and tracking what you owe them, belongs in the system for operational reasons and ends up satisfying a record-keeping duty as well.
Drivers without an app store
Private hire driver turnover is real, and every install is friction you pay for repeatedly. A private link per driver opens their own jobs on any phone, with no password to reset and nothing to reinstall when someone changes handset. They can still confirm, decline and see the passenger and flight details.
Pricing computed on the server
Distance and hourly rates by vehicle class, fixed prices for named routes, zones for the surrounding towns, plus surcharges and early-booking discounts — all recomputed and verified before a booking is accepted, so a price posted by a browser can never become a promise you are held to.
Bookings arriving from where your customers are
A widget on your own website, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, a chat bot that can actually complete a booking, phone jobs typed in once, and partner or marketplace work. Each becomes the same kind of record regardless of the door it came through.
Invoicing for account customers
Schools, care contracts, hotels and corporate accounts want a monthly invoice against a company rather than a card link per journey, with consecutive numbering and a document your accountant accepts.
An activity log you can point at
Who changed what, when. It exists for ordinary operational reasons — arguments about who cancelled a job — and it is also the thing that lets you reconstruct events when somebody asks about a booking from four months ago.
Your own brand on all of it
Your domain, your logo, your sending address. Every confirmation a customer receives is either building your name or a vendor's, and over a few thousand jobs that difference compounds.
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
How a booking becomes a record
The same sequence that gets the passenger collected also produces the evidence.
- 01
The booking arrives and is dated
From your website, a message, a phone call typed in, or a partner. The arrival time is recorded because it is a different fact from the journey date, and the regulations treat it as one.
- 02
It is priced and the quote is stored
The route is measured, every vehicle class is priced from your rate card, surcharges and discounts apply, and the figure the customer sees is held against the booking as the fare quoted.
- 03
A driver and vehicle are attached
You assign a driver — or forward the job to another operator, which is recorded as exactly that. The driver confirms, so the name on the record reflects a commitment rather than an unread message.
- 04
The passenger is told, once
One confirmation carrying the driver, the vehicle and the pickup, from your own address. The same details the record holds are the details the customer was given.
- 05
It completes, and it stays
The job finishes, payment is recorded against it, and the booking remains queryable and exportable for as long as you need it — which is the part that matters when the request comes without notice.
How a booking moves
Arrive, get priced, get a driver, get confirmed, get paid — the same path whichever channel it came from.
Create your organization, set your rate card, connect your domain and drop in your logo and colour.
Point your website at RideDesk, plug in the API, forward marketplace jobs, or add them by hand.
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.
What to ask a vendor
These are chosen so that a product built for street work rather than private hire will visibly struggle.
Show me a booking sub-contracted to another operator
It is an explicit field in the London regulations and a daily reality everywhere. If the demo answers with "you would put that in the notes", the record you keep will be a paragraph of free text rather than data.
Export me six months of bookings, right now
Ask them to do it in the demo, not to describe it. You want a real file with the particulars as columns. This is simultaneously your exit route and your inspection answer, and a vendor who has thought about either will do it without hesitating.
What is the date the booking was taken?
Surprisingly often the only date stored is the journey date. If the system cannot tell you when the booking was accepted, it cannot produce the first of the eight particulars.
Can a job exist without a driver or vehicle attached?
Of course it can before allocation — the question is whether the system will let it stay that way through to completion, and whether it will tell you which jobs did.
What happens to the record if I stop paying?
You may still be required to produce records for bookings taken while you were a customer. Ask what happens to the data at the end of a contract, and how much notice you get.
Is the price on the record the price the customer was quoted?
If the fare is recalculated at completion rather than stored at booking, the record shows what you charged, not what you quoted — and those are different things.
Frequently asked questions
What is a private hire booking system?
It is the system a licensed private hire operator uses to take bookings, price them, allocate a driver and vehicle, tell the passenger, take payment and keep the record. The distinguishing feature against ordinary taxi software is that every job must be pre-booked through the operator and recorded before the journey starts — so the record is a first-class output of the system, not a report you run afterwards.
What records must a private hire operator keep?
Outside London, whatever your council prescribes in your licence conditions — section 56(2) of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 requires the record and leaves its form to the authority. In London, regulation 11 of the PHV (London) (Operators' Licences) Regulations 2000 lists eight particulars that must be entered before the journey begins: the booking date and journey date, who it is for, the agreed time and place of collection, the main destination, any fare quoted, the driver, any operator it was sub-contracted to, and the vehicle. Check your own conditions rather than assuming London's rules apply to you.
How long do private hire booking records have to be kept?
In London, regulation 16 requires each booking record to be preserved for six months from the date the booking was accepted, with vehicle and driver records kept twelve months from when they ceased to be available. Outside London there is no single national period — it is set by your council as a licence condition, and some authorities require considerably longer. This is one to read off your own conditions rather than take from any vendor.
Does a computerised system satisfy the record-keeping condition?
That depends on your authority. Some councils specifically require an approved computerised booking system; others accept records in whatever form their conditions prescribe. What software can do is make sure the particulars are captured as structured data, timestamped, and exportable on demand — which is what any authority is ultimately asking to see. Whether a given system satisfies your particular conditions is a question for your licensing officer, and any vendor who answers it for you without reading your conditions is guessing.
Is private hire software different from taxi dispatch software?
The engine is the same and most products serve both. The emphasis differs: hackney work can be flagged on the street and metered, while private hire must be pre-booked through the operator and recorded, which puts weight on the booking record, the quote given in advance and sub-contracting. If a product was designed around immediate dispatch and a meter, those three tend to be the thin parts.
What about minicab operators — is it the same thing?
Yes. "Minicab" is the everyday word for a private hire vehicle, particularly in London. The licensing regime and the record-keeping duty are the same ones described here, so a system suitable for one is suitable for the other.
Can it handle jobs I pass to another operator?
Yes, and it should be one of the first things you check in any product. Forwarding a booking to a partner is modelled as its own action, with the receiving operator recorded on the job and an agreed margin tracked so you can see what you owe. That covers the operational need and happens to line up with the sub-contracting particular the London regulations require.
Do my drivers need to install an app?
Not with RideDesk. Each driver gets a private link that opens their own jobs on any phone — no app store, no password, nothing to move when they change handset — and they can confirm, decline and see the passenger and journey details from it. Given how often private hire drivers change, an install step is a cost you pay again every time somebody joins.
Will it work with my existing website?
Yes. Booking and enquiry forms embed into any site, there is a WordPress plugin for sites you would rather not touch code on, and a documented API if yours is custom-built. Being pushed onto a vendor's own website template is worth resisting — it usually means the booking flow cannot be separated from their hosting later.
What does it cost for a small operator?
RideDesk has a Free Forever plan that takes real bookings and issues real invoices with no card and no trial clock, which covers a genuinely small operation. Beyond that, the thing to compare across vendors is not the headline figure but whether the price moves when you add a vehicle or a driver, and what the total looks like at double your current volume.
Is this legal advice?
No. It is a description of what the legislation says, with the sources named so you can read them yourself, written to help you ask a vendor better questions. Your obligations come from your own operator licence conditions and your licensing authority, and where this page and your conditions disagree, your conditions win.
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See it with your own rides
Set up an account, load a handful of real bookings and see how they move through dispatch. No card needed to look around.