Offers With the Fare Already On Them
Each job arrives with pickup, destination, passenger name, payment method and the fare, plus a countdown. The driver accepts or lets it pass — there is nothing to work out and nothing to ring the office about.
Driver App
A Taxi Driver App Your Drivers Will Actually Use
Job offers with the fare attached, one-tap navigation, earnings that update as the shift runs, and a chat line to the office — on the Android or iPhone the driver already owns.
- Job offers with the fare shown up front
- Keeps working through tunnels and dead spots
- No in-cab hardware — the driver’s own phone
The driver app is where a dispatch system either works or quietly does not. Controllers will tolerate a slow screen; drivers will not, and a fleet that stops trusting its app is back to ringing the office within a fortnight — which puts you where you started, with the software still on the invoice.
Cabica’s driver app runs on ordinary Android and iOS phones, with no in-cab hardware, no data head and no second device to charge. It carries your firm’s name and colours in the app stores, shows every job offer with the fare already calculated, and keeps working through the tunnels and car parks where signal disappears.
Driver App at a Glance
- Platforms
- Android and iOS
- Hardware
- None — the driver’s own phone
- Branding
- Your name and logo in both app stores
- Job offers
- One driver at a time, fare shown, with countdown
- Navigation
- Hands off to Google Maps, Waze or Apple Maps
- Offline behaviour
- State held, status queued and sent on reconnect
- Payments
- Card, cash and pay-by-link recorded per job
- Cost
- Included — £3/month per driver beyond the plan
What the Driver Sees in a Shift
Built around the fact that a driver looks at this for two seconds at a time, at a junction, in the rain.
On Shift, On Break, Off for the Night
One control puts the driver into the queue, holds their place through a break, or takes them off at the end. Queue position by zone is visible, so a driver can see where they stand rather than assuming they have been forgotten.
One-Tap Navigation
Pickup and drop-off hand straight to Google Maps, Waze or Apple Maps — whichever the driver already uses. We do not make them learn a worse map.
Earnings That Update Live
Completed jobs, cash taken, card fares and the running total for the shift and the week, on the driver’s own screen. Most settlement arguments are a driver and an office looking at different numbers; this is the same number.
Documents and Expiry Reminders
Licence, badge, insurance, MOT and PHV plate photographed and uploaded from the phone, with a reminder before each expiry. The compliance chase stops being a job somebody in the office does by hand.
Chat With the Office
A message thread per driver, and per job where it matters, so “I am outside and there is nobody here” is something the controller can act on rather than a radio call that interrupts everyone.
Why Driver Adoption Is the Whole Game
A dispatch system is only as good as the fleet’s willingness to use it. Three things decide that, and none of them appear on a feature list.
Drivers Trust a Queue They Can See
The first question a driver asks about any new system is whether it is fair. Not whether it is fast — whether the jobs are being handed out honestly, or whether somebody’s cousin is getting the airport runs.
Showing queue position by zone answers that without anyone having to be believed. The driver can see they are fourth in the town centre and second at the station, and that the job which just went past them went to somebody who had waited longer. A broadcast system — which is what a WhatsApp group is, and what several older platforms do — cannot answer it at all, because the fastest thumb wins and everybody knows it.
The behaviour change that follows is the point. Drivers stop hunting for jobs and start holding position in the zone where the work is, and that is what makes the rest of auto-dispatch work.
The App Has to Survive the Worst Ten Seconds of the Shift
Multi-storey car parks, railway underpasses, rural B-roads and the middle of a large hospital site all take signal away for long enough to break a naive app. If it forgets a job in progress, or silently fails to send an arrival status, the driver rings the office — and every one of those calls is the software costing you time rather than saving it.
Cabica’s app treats the connection as unreliable by default: job state lives on the phone, status changes are queued and replayed on reconnect, and the driver is not returned to a login screen mid-job. It is unglamorous engineering, and it is the single largest determinant of whether a fleet keeps using an app.
Settlement Has to Be a Number, Not an Argument
Friday afternoon in most taxi offices involves at least one driver disagreeing with their settlement, and almost always for the same reason: the driver has their own record of the week, the office has another, and there is no shared version.
Because the fare is written once when the job completes, the driver’s running total and the office’s settlement are literally the same rows. The driver watches it accumulate through the week rather than meeting a figure for the first time on payday. Disputes do not vanish, but they become questions about one job rather than about the whole week.
Worth Reading If Any of This Is True
- Your drivers are dispatched over a radio or a WhatsApp group
- You are buying in-cab data heads and replacing them when they break
- Drivers ring the office to ask what a job pays
- Settlement day is an argument about numbers nobody can see
- Licence and insurance expiries are chased on a spreadsheet
FAQ
Common Questions
What phones does the taxi driver app run on?
Ordinary Android and iPhone handsets — the ones your drivers already own. There is no in-cab data head, no tablet to buy and no second device to charge. Any phone new enough to run a current version of Android or iOS will run it.
What happens when a driver loses signal?
The app holds its state. A job in progress stays in progress, status changes made underground or in a multi-storey are queued on the phone and sent the moment signal returns, and the driver is never dropped back to a login screen mid-job. This is worth testing on any system you are shown, because tunnels and car parks are a daily event rather than an edge case.
Is the driver app branded as our firm?
Yes. It carries your name, logo and colours, and it is published under your firm in the App Store and Google Play. Drivers download your app, not ours, and a passenger who glances at the driver’s screen sees your brand.
Can drivers see how much a job pays before accepting it?
Yes. The fare is calculated when the booking is taken, so it is attached to the offer the driver sees. Accepting a job with the fare already on it is what removes most doorstep negotiation and most calls to the office.
Does the app drain the battery?
It reports location on a duty cycle rather than streaming continuously, which is the difference between a phone that lasts a shift and one that does not. Drivers on long shifts should still expect to run a car charger, as they would for navigation alone.
Can a driver work for two firms on one phone?
Yes. Each firm’s app is a separate install with its own login, so a driver badged with two operators keeps them apart, and neither firm sees the other’s jobs.
Does the driver app cost extra?
No. It is included in every plan, for every driver on that plan. Drivers beyond the plan’s included count are £3 each per month, which covers their app as well as their place in dispatch.