Candidate Interview Taxi Service for Corporate Recruitment

## How does a candidate book a taxi without downloading an app? The candidate does not book anything themselves. Your team books the ride from the CabsOn corporate portal at business.cabson.uk on the candidate's behalf using guest booking mode. You enter the candidate's name, mobile number, pickup address (usually a hotel, home address, or mainline station), and interview location. The candidate then receives a text message with the booking reference and a link to a live tracking page — no app install, no account creation, no password, no top-up. On the day of travel the driver identifies the candidate by name at the pickup point; the candidate does not need to show an app screen or scan a QR code. This flow is designed for one-off travellers who have no ongoing relationship with the platform, which is exactly the case for external interview candidates. The person doing the booking inside your organisation does have an account — a corporate portal login with a role of Booker, Approver, or Admin. Bookers can create rides but cannot see billing detail; Approvers can authorise rides above a set spending threshold; Admins manage staff, departments, and the monthly invoice download. Most recruitment agencies set every consultant as a Booker and route rides above a defined value to an Approver for sign-off. ## What does the confirmation SMS include? The SMS sent to the candidate contains the booking reference, pickup address and time, drop-off location, the driver's first name once assigned, the vehicle make and registration number, an estimated fare, a link to the live tracking page, and a support number. A second SMS is sent when the driver is on the way, and a third when the driver arrives at the pickup point. The candidate never sees your commercial rate, does not see the invoice-side detail (VAT, cost centre, requisition), and cannot amend or cancel the booking — cancellation authority sits with the booker in your portal. This keeps the candidate experience simple and stops candidates from unilaterally changing a booking your team has arranged around a fixed interview slot. ## How is the ride billed if the candidate does not pay anything? The ride is billed directly to the hiring company's corporate account, not to the candidate. Every candidate journey booked in a calendar month is aggregated into a single PDF invoice sent on the first working day of the following month. The invoice lists each ride separately with date, pickup and drop-off, distance, fare, VAT at 20 percent, and any tags applied at booking. The candidate never sees a fare, never pays anything, and never files an expense claim. Your finance team pays one supplier invoice per month rather than processing individual claims for candidates who may not even end up joining the business. VAT is fully reclaimable in the normal way through your VAT return, subject to your accountant's advice on candidate-travel treatment under HMRC rules. Corporate accounts are payable on 14-day or 30-day terms depending on monthly volume, and standing arrangements can be set up so the invoice is emailed directly to your accounts payable inbox rather than a named individual. Historical invoices and CSV expense exports remain downloadable from the Invoices page of the corporate portal indefinitely. ## Can we tag rides by role, hiring manager, or requisition number? Yes. The booking form includes structured fields for cost centre, department, and reference — most recruitment teams use these for hiring manager, business unit, and requisition ID respectively. The tags flow through to the monthly invoice and to the CSV export, so finance can allocate spend to the internal cost centre that owns the hire and recruitment leads can report cost-per-interview by role, team, or client. Departments and cost centres set up in advance from the Departments page of the corporate portal appear as dropdowns during booking to avoid free-text drift. If you use an applicant tracking system (Greenhouse, Workable, Bullhorn, Vincere, and similar), we recommend recording the CabsOn booking reference against the candidate record so recruiters can trace a ride back to a specific interview slot. We do not currently offer a packaged ATS integration; if that is on your requirements list, our operations team can walk through API options for higher-volume agencies. ## What UK cities and airports does CabsOn cover for candidate transfers? CabsOn operates as a national UK ground-transport network across all major cities and every commercial airport. Common candidate journeys include Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton, and City airport transfers into central London; Manchester Airport into the city or MediaCity UK; Birmingham International into the city centre and Solihull; Edinburgh and Glasgow airport transfers into their respective centres; and cross-city travel in Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool, Bristol, Nottingham, and Newcastle. Meet-and-greet at airports is available on request — the driver waits at arrivals with the candidate's name displayed on a board. For candidates travelling in by train, we pick up from any UK mainline station. Vehicle types range from a standard saloon (up to four passengers) through an estate for candidates arriving with luggage from a national interview trip, up to executive class for senior hires or investor-day guests. Wheelchair-accessible vehicles (WAV) are available in every major city with 24 hours' notice. ## How does this compare honestly to Uber for Business or receipt reimbursement? Uber for Business is a strong product for internal employee travel where the traveller already has the Uber app installed and simply switches to a corporate profile at booking. For candidates that setup does not hold: you are asking a candidate to install an app for one journey and switch to a profile they will not use again, which most candidates decline. Uber's coverage in smaller UK cities and towns is also patchier than a licensed private-hire network operating regional fleets, and airport meet-and-greet with a name board is not part of the Uber flow. Receipt reimbursement is the current default at most recruitment agencies and works well when volume is low. It becomes expensive above roughly ten candidate journeys per month because of the finance-team time spent chasing receipts, verifying VAT numbers on third-party invoices, and answering candidate queries about reimbursement timing. It also creates a poor candidate experience — being out of pocket for travel to an interview is a recurring complaint in candidate feedback surveys, particularly for early-career applicants. CabsOn sits between these: no app friction for the candidate, and no reimbursement admin for finance. Where Uber for Business is genuinely ahead — instant on-demand booking within the app for internal staff who already use Uber personally. Where reimbursement is ahead — no need to set up a supplier account if you only book two or three candidate rides per year. If your volume is above ten candidate journeys per month, we believe direct billing is the lower total-cost option once you include the finance-team hours saved. ## What data appears on the monthly invoice? Each monthly invoice is a single PDF with a summary page and a line-item detail page. The summary shows total spend, total VAT, ride count, and a breakdown by department and cost centre. The detail page lists each ride: booking reference, date and time, candidate name (optional — many agencies switch this off for GDPR reasons and rely on internal tags instead), pickup address, drop-off address, distance in miles, fare excluding VAT, VAT at 20 percent, and total. A CSV export of the same data is available for finance systems that need to import journey data into general-ledger cost allocation. All historical invoices remain in the portal indefinitely for HMRC's seven-year retention requirement. ## Who inside our organisation can book a candidate ride? Only staff you invite to the corporate portal, with a role of Booker, Approver, or Admin. New staff can be added by an Admin at any time from the Staff page; single sign-on via Google Workspace or Microsoft Entra is available for larger recruitment agencies who prefer to manage access through their existing identity provider rather than a separate password. Budgets can be set per department or per booker to cap monthly spend, and rides above a defined threshold can be routed to an Approver before dispatch. Every booking is auditable — the portal shows who booked which ride, when, for which candidate, and against which cost centre.