Moving a small taxi business from paper and WhatsApp to booking software

Plenty of small firms still run on a paper diary, a whiteboard and a WhatsApp group with the drivers. It works until the diary goes missing, a pre-book gets forgotten, or the council asks to see last March's bookings. This guide is for the owner of a small taxi business who wants to move onto booking software without dropping a job in the changeover. It covers what the records have to hold, what to get ready, a one-week plan, and what to do with the old diary.

Why move a small taxi business off paper and WhatsApp?

Because the records your licence asks for are hard to keep in a diary and a chat, and because bookings get lost in both.

Outside London, section 56 of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 says a private hire operator must record the particulars of every booking before the journey starts, in the form the council sets in your licence conditions. Councils spell that form out. Bath & North East Somerset Council's operator conditions (the version dated December 2018), for example, say the record must be kept "either in a ledger with consecutively numbered pages, or on a computer database/spreadsheet in an identifiable format", and must be produced for inspection by a council officer or the police.

A WhatsApp chat is neither of those. Bookings sit between photos and voice notes, they're on one person's phone, and if that phone is lost or wiped, so is the record. Bath & North East Somerset's penalty points table gives 4 points for failing to keep records of bookings in the prescribed form, and 12 or more points in a year means a report to the licensing sub-committee, which can suspend or revoke the licence.

There's a plainer reason too. A paper diary can't text the passenger a confirmation, can't show a driver the job on their phone, and can't tell you at a glance what's booked for Saturday night.

What does a booking record need to hold?

Every booking record needs the passenger, the time, the pickup, the destination, the driver and the vehicle, plus who took the booking. The exact list is in your own council's conditions.

The Department for Transport's Statutory Taxi and Private Hire Vehicle Standards ask councils to require operators to record:

• the passenger's name
• the time of the request
• the pickup point and the destination
• the driver's name and licence number
• the vehicle registration
• the name of the person who took the booking and the person who dispatched the vehicle

Councils set their own lists and their own time limits, so they don't all match:

Check your own council's operator conditions before you choose software, and make sure the booking screen has a box for every item on that list. Our guide to operator record keeping goes through the rules in more detail. London operators follow TfL's rules instead.

What should you get ready before you switch?

Get five things written down before you touch the new system. Doing this first is what makes the move take days rather than weeks.

1. Your prices. Your fixed fares, zones, airport prices and any extras. If they only live in your head, this is the moment to write them out. Our guide to taxi zone pricing shows how to lay out a zone map.
2. Your drivers and vehicles. Bath & North East Somerset, for example, expects a driver record with full name, address, badge number and licence expiry, and a vehicle record with the proprietor, registration, plate number and licence expiry. Load those details, not just a first name and a mobile number.
3. Your regulars and account customers. Names, numbers and the addresses they always use.
4. The people who take bookings. The Statutory Standards expect a register of everyone who takes bookings or dispatches vehicles, kept for as long as the booking records, and sight of a basic DBS check for each of them.
5. Every pre-booked job from today onwards. These are the jobs most at risk in a changeover. Count them before you start, so you can check the same number arrives in the new system.

How do you choose taxi booking software for a small business?

Choose the system that keeps the records your council asks for, takes bookings from the places your customers already book, and lets you leave with your data.

Questions worth asking any supplier:

• Does the booking record have every field in my licence conditions, including who took the booking?
• Do phone, website and WhatsApp bookings land in the same list?
• How do jobs reach my drivers, and do the drivers need a driver app on their own phones?
• What does it cost a month, and how much notice do I give to leave?
• Can I export my bookings, customers and drivers, in what format, and at what cost?

The last question matters more than it looks. Our guide to who owns your booking data covers what to check in the contract, and dispatch software for a small fleet compares the kinds of system on offer.

Dispatch AI is booking and dispatch software for taxi and private hire firms. It answers your phone, WhatsApp, texts and emails, books the jobs at your prices and sends them to your drivers on your own app.

A one-week plan for the move

Start on a Monday, so the switch lands midweek and well clear of a Friday night.

1. Monday: prices. Load your zones, fixed fares and extras. Book three test jobs you know the price of and check the quote matches.
2. Tuesday: drivers, vehicles and staff. Load the driver and vehicle records and the list of people who take bookings. Drivers install the driver app and log in.
3. Wednesday: customers and pre-books. Load your regulars and accounts. Copy every future pre-book from the diary into the system, ticking each one off in the diary as you go. Count them at the end: the diary and the system should match.
4. Thursday: practice. Whoever answers the phone books a dozen test jobs. Send a test job to each driver and have them complete it.
5. Friday and Saturday: run both. New bookings go into the system first and into the diary as a backup. At the end of each shift, check the two match.
6. Sunday: review. Look for any booking that's in one and not the other. Fix the reason, not just the booking.
7. The next Monday: switch. The diary goes in the drawer. Tell the drivers that if a job isn't in the system, it isn't a job.

Running both over a weekend is deliberately the hard test. If the system copes with a Friday night while the diary is still there as a safety net, you can drop the diary with confidence.

How do you move WhatsApp bookings over?

Move the customers, not the chats. Tell your regulars how to book from now on, whether that's the same phone number, a booking link or a WhatsApp number that feeds straight into the system.

For the drivers' WhatsApp group, set a date after which no job is given out in the group. Jobs only go through the system, so every job has a record with a driver, a vehicle and a time against it. Keep the group for news if the drivers like it, but not for work. Our guide to WhatsApp taxi booking covers taking customer bookings on WhatsApp properly.

What do you do with the old paper and WhatsApp records?

Keep them for as long as your council's conditions say, then destroy them securely. For Bath & North East Somerset that's at least 12 months after the last entry in the diary. Worcestershire Regulatory Services says electronic records must be viewable at the operating base and you must be able to print a copy if asked, so keep old chats somewhere you can actually show an officer.

Don't keep them forever either. The ICO's storage limitation principle says personal data should be kept no longer than you need it, though keeping records to meet a legal or regulatory requirement counts as a good reason. Write down how long you keep booking records and why, then stick to it.

Do you need to pay the data protection fee to the ICO?

If your bookings are on a computer or a phone, you most likely need to pay the data protection fee to the ICO, unless your business is exempt. The fee rules exempt processing that isn't done "wholly or partly by automated means", which covers a purely paper diary, but WhatsApp bookings on a phone are already automated.

Since 17 February 2025 the fee is £52 a year for tier 1 (turnover up to £632,000 or no more than 10 staff), £78 for tier 2 and £3,763 for tier 3, with £5 off if you pay by direct debit. Check your own position with the ICO before you go live.