How to Set Department Spending Limits on Corporate Taxi Accounts

## How does the CabsOn department budget system actually work? We consolidate every booked ride made by staff assigned to a department into a running total held against that department's monthly cap. The cap is denominated in pounds sterling gross (VAT-inclusive) so what you set is what your finance system sees on the invoice. Rides count against the cap at the point of booking using the quoted fare, with a small reconciliation at ride completion if the final fare differs — waiting time, route deviations, or driver tips can add to the quoted figure. Utilisation resets at 00:01 on the 1st of each calendar month, matching our invoicing cycle so no ride ever straddles two invoice periods. The cap can be a hard limit or a soft limit depending on which of three policies you choose (block, approve, or warn-only), giving finance teams either strict enforcement or visibility with flexibility. Because we run our own private-hire fleet with drivers on account terms, we can enforce the cap at booking time — third-party ride-hailing apps that pass rides to independent drivers cannot always do the same. ## Can I set different taxi caps for different UK offices? Yes — each department is its own cap, so if you have offices in Manchester, Leeds, London, and Birmingham, you set four different figures. A media agency we work with sets £4,500 per month for their London creative team, £3,200 for Manchester production, £1,800 for Leeds studios, and £900 for Birmingham admin. Departments are independent — Manchester overspending does not draw from London's remaining budget. If you want a group-level ceiling as well, contact your account manager and we can layer a company-wide cap on top of the per-department caps. You can also set seasonal caps: some clients raise Manchester's budget in November and December to cover Christmas party season, then reset in January. Cap changes are effective immediately for future bookings and are logged in the audit trail with your admin username and timestamp. ## How do I create a department in the business portal? Sign in at business.cabson.uk with your admin account, click Departments in the left navigation, then click Create Department. Give it a name (e.g. "Manchester Office"), assign a department manager (the person who approves over-cap bookings and receives utilisation alerts), pick a colour tag for reporting, then save. Repeat for each office or cost centre. You can also import departments in bulk via CSV if you are migrating from an existing spreadsheet — the columns are name, manager email, colour tag, and default cost centre code. Once departments exist, the Budgets page in the portal exposes a row per department with an editable monthly cap column — updating a cap is as simple as clicking the figure, typing the new value, and pressing Save. ## How do I assign staff to a department? Open the Staff page, click any employee's name, then set their Primary Department. Staff can only belong to one primary department at a time — the one their bookings count against — but they can be granted "cross-charge" permission if they occasionally book on behalf of another team, for example an executive assistant booking for both London and Manchester teams. Cross-charged bookings go against the department the assistant explicitly selects at booking time, not their default. New joiners can be invited from the Staff page with an emailed activation link, and departing staff can be deactivated in one click — deactivation preserves their booking history for reporting but immediately prevents any new bookings against your account. Bulk staff import via CSV is supported for onboarding fifty or more employees in one go. ## What happens when a department hits its monthly cap? At 80 percent utilisation the department manager receives an email alert; at 90 percent a second alert; and at 100 percent one of three things happens depending on the policy you have set: - **Block**: any further booking attempt returns "budget exceeded — please contact your manager" and no booking is created. The traveller can request an exception which routes to their line manager. - **Approve**: the booking is created in Pending status and the department manager receives an approval request in the portal and by email; the ride does not dispatch until they approve. This is the most common setting for finance teams who want visibility without disrupting operations. - **Warn-only**: the booking dispatches normally but the manager is notified so they can investigate. Some clients use this for senior travellers whose bookings should not be blocked but should be seen. Most of our clients use Approve for junior staff and Warn-only for senior travellers, department managers, and directors. You can switch modes at any time without losing history. ## Can managers approve over-cap bookings from mobile? Yes — approval requests are actionable from the business.cabson.uk portal on desktop and mobile browsers, and each email alert contains an approve/reject link that authenticates you back into the portal for a single action. A finance director we work with typically approves from her phone during her commute; the median approval-to-dispatch time in our data is around four minutes. If a manager does not respond within a configurable window (default fifteen minutes for immediate bookings, four hours for scheduled bookings), the request escalates to a fallback approver you nominate at department setup, so operations never stall waiting on one person. ## How do department budgets show up on the monthly VAT invoice? Departments become line-item headings on your PDF invoice. Under each department heading we list every ride made by staff assigned to that department in the previous calendar month, with pickup, drop-off, date, driver reference, net fare, VAT at 20 percent, and gross. A department subtotal sits at the foot of each section, then a grand total for the company. If you use PO numbers, POs can be captured at booking time or set as a department default. VAT is itemised per ride so your finance team can reclaim input VAT correctly under HMRC rules; the invoice includes our UK VAT registration number and satisfies HMRC's requirements for a valid VAT invoice for input tax reclaim. ## Can I run reports on department taxi spending during the month? Yes — the Reports page shows spend-to-date, remaining budget, projected month-end spend based on run-rate, and top spenders per department. You can filter by date range, department, individual traveller, cost centre code, or booking type (immediate versus scheduled), and export to CSV, Excel, or PDF. Live utilisation is also visible on the dashboard as a set of progress bars — green under 60 percent, amber between 60 and 80, red above 80 — so finance leads spot problems before an invoice arrives. A weekly digest email summarising utilisation across all departments can be scheduled from Reports Settings if you want a pushed summary rather than pulled reports. ## What if my finance year runs April to March, not January to December? Department caps reset monthly regardless, but our reporting supports custom financial year settings. Open your Company Profile and set your financial year start month; year-to-date figures on Reports respect that setting even though invoices remain calendar-monthly. Multi-currency support is currently limited to GBP — if you have offices outside the UK, they would need a separate account. Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales are all supported on the standard UK account with the same VAT and invoicing model. ## How long does department budget setup take? For a two-office configuration such as Manchester plus Leeds with around ten staff each, plan on fifteen to twenty minutes end to end: five minutes to create the two departments and assign managers, five minutes to bulk-import staff via CSV, five minutes to set the caps and choose your approval policy. Multi-office rollouts of thirty or more sites take longer and we typically offer a one-hour onboarding call at no charge for accounts of that size. Once departments are configured, day-to-day admin is minimal — most finance teams check the utilisation dashboard once a week and adjust caps quarterly.