Consolidated VAT invoice for UK employee taxi trips

## How does CabsOn handle monthly VAT invoicing? We consolidate every UK ride taken by any employee on your corporate account into one VAT invoice, issued on the first working day of each month for the previous calendar month. The invoice is a single PDF, accompanied by a CSV export for your accounting system, and it is a valid HMRC VAT invoice for a business-to-business supply. Your finance team can reclaim input VAT on their quarterly VAT return using it directly. The invoice contains the eight items HMRC requires for a full VAT invoice: our VAT registration number, your business name and VAT number if you have one, a unique sequential invoice number, the tax point date, a description of the supply, the rate of VAT applied, the VAT-exclusive amount per ride, and the VAT-inclusive total. UK taxi and private hire services are standard-rated at 20 percent, and that rate is what appears on every line. ## What appears on each ride line? Each ride is one row on the invoice and one row in the CSV. The row includes the ride identifier, journey date and time, passenger name, pickup postcode, drop-off postcode, service class (standard, executive, wheelchair-accessible), booking channel, PO reference, cost centre tag, department tag, project code, driver identifier, net fare, VAT amount, and gross total. Totals for net, VAT, and gross appear once at the foot of the invoice for the full period. Finance teams typically pivot the CSV by cost centre or department to produce internal recharge journals. Because the tags come from the booking form rather than a post-hoc reconciliation, the data is clean at source. If a booker leaves a cost centre blank and your approval rules require one, the ride does not complete booking, so this rarely happens in practice. ## Is the consolidated invoice HMRC-compliant for reclaiming VAT? Yes. UK VAT-registered businesses can reclaim input VAT on business travel by taxi where the supplier issues a valid VAT invoice. Our consolidated invoice meets the full VAT invoice requirements set out in VAT Notice 700 section 16. This applies whether your invoice value is above or below the simplified invoice threshold, and it applies to trips taken by any employee, not only directors or senior staff. Two caveats apply from HMRC's side rather than ours. Input VAT on business entertainment is not reclaimable, so if a ride is used to entertain a client, that portion of your VAT return should be adjusted internally. And VAT reclaims must be tied to your business's own VAT-registered supply chain, so sole traders below the VAT threshold cannot reclaim regardless of the invoice format. We provide the invoice; your accountant applies the reclaim rules. ## Can I set spending limits per department? Yes. Your admin portal at business.cabson.uk includes department and cost centre records with a monthly spending budget per record. When bookers select a cost centre at booking time, we check the projected fare against the remaining budget. If the ride would breach the cap, the booking is either blocked or held for approval depending on your policy. Budget utilisation is visible in real time on the dashboard. Budgets do not affect what appears on the consolidated VAT invoice — every ride that completed appears, regardless of budget status — but they help your finance lead prevent overruns before month end. Some customers set budgets deliberately low to force approval on every ride from a specific team; others use budgets purely as a warning threshold. Both patterns work. ## What data does the corporate reporting include? The reporting suite in the corporate portal covers ride volume, spend, and unit economics broken down by department, cost centre, project, individual employee, service class, day of week, and pickup or drop-off area. Reports can be run over any date range and exported to CSV or PDF. Common views finance leads use include monthly spend per department, top ten most-frequent travellers, average fare by service class, and month-on-month volume trend. Reports are read-only and pull from the same underlying data as the consolidated VAT invoice, so reconciliation between the two is always exact. If a manager queries a specific spend figure, your finance lead can drill from the report cell to the individual ride and the specific line on that month's VAT invoice. ## Can I split the invoice across multiple subsidiaries? Yes, one consolidated VAT invoice per legal entity. If your group operates through multiple UK limited companies — common in hotel groups, recruitment umbrellas, and PE-backed portfolios — each subsidiary is set up as a separate corporate account under a group parent, with its own VAT number, PO ranges, and payment terms. Central finance sees a rolled-up group view; each subsidiary receives its own HMRC-compliant invoice. We do not split a single legal entity's invoice further, because HMRC ties invoicing to the VAT-registered supplier and buyer relationship. If a single company wants departmental sub-totals, those appear on the CSV export rather than as separate invoices. In practice this is what finance teams prefer, since departmental splits inside a single company are an internal cost allocation exercise rather than a supplier invoicing one. ## How does this compare with Uber for Business and Addison Lee? Uber for Business, Addison Lee, and Gett all offer monthly consolidated VAT invoicing in the UK with broadly similar HMRC compliance. Uber has the largest city coverage and the strongest surge-availability during peak demand. Addison Lee has particularly strong chauffeur-class capacity in central London and is a familiar name for finance teams already using them for airport transfers. Where we differ is in the depth of PO and cost centre tagging on every ride line, the CSV structure that imports cleanly into Sage and Xero without manual mapping, and the pricing model — no setup fee for smaller accounts, no minimum monthly spend, and no separate charge for corporate features. For a mid-sized business running fifty to five hundred rides a month, the total cost of ownership is usually meaningfully lower with us. For a very high-volume London-only account, Addison Lee's chauffeur network and Uber's coverage may still be a better fit. ## When does the first consolidated invoice arrive? The first consolidated VAT invoice arrives on the first working day of the month after your first ride. If you open your corporate account and take rides in July, your first invoice is dated the first working day of August. If you open an account but do not use it in a given month, no invoice is issued that month — we do not bill for account access. Invoice payment terms are typically thirty days from tax point date, though we accept fourteen and forty-five day terms on request during registration. Payment methods include bank transfer, direct debit, and corporate card. There is no card surcharge. For central government departments and NHS trusts we accept the standard public sector thirty-day payment window with a purchase order.