Monday morning in the accounts office
Your drivers are self-employed, and each week the office has to settle up with every one of them. The driver did some account work, which the firm will invoice and collect. They took fares paid by card through the app or the card machine, and that money came to the firm. They took cash fares and kept the cash. And they owe the firm their weekly circuit fee, rent on a firm-owned car, or a commission on their work, depending on their arrangement.
So on Monday someone exports the account jobs from the dispatch system, downloads the card payments from the payment provider, checks the rent list, and works through each driver in a spreadsheet. The result is either a payment to the driver or an amount the driver owes. Then the questions start: a driver says a job is missing, or a card fare was paid twice, or their rent was taken when they were on holiday.
Why settlements are fiddly
The arithmetic is simple. The inputs are not.
| Input | Where it comes from | Common problem |
|---|---|---|
| Account jobs | Dispatch system | Waiting time or extras added after the job |
| Card and app fares | Payment provider, such as Stripe or your card terminal provider | Refunds and chargebacks weeks later |
| Cash fares | Driver | Not needed for settlement, but often muddled in |
| Circuit fee, rent or commission | Driver's agreement | Different arrangements for different drivers |
| Deductions and credits | Office notes | Fuel cards, fines passed on, damage, holiday weeks |
Different drivers are on different arrangements, and those arrangements change. The only full record of who is on what is often the person who does the settlements.
The cost of settling by spreadsheet
The office loses most of a day every week. Mistakes, when they happen, are caught by the drivers, which damages trust quickly: a driver who has been short-changed once checks every statement afterwards and complains about the rest. Disputes take longer than the settlement itself, because finding the evidence means going back to three different systems.
When the person who does the settlements is away, nobody else can do them with confidence, and payments to drivers are late.
Settlements that build themselves
What we build is a settlement process that follows your arrangements with drivers, using data from the systems you already have.
- Each driver has a settlement profile: their arrangement, such as a flat weekly fee, rent, a commission rate on certain work, or a mix, and the dates when it changed.
- Account jobs are read from your dispatch system through its API or reports, including waiting time and extras.
- Card and app payments, refunds and chargebacks are read from your payment provider and matched to jobs and drivers.
- Deductions and credits, such as fuel cards, damage agreed with the driver or holiday weeks, are entered once in the tool with a note.
- Each driver gets a weekly statement showing every job, every payment, every deduction and the balance, sent by email or visible in a driver portal.
- Anything that does not match, such as a card payment with no job, or a job with no driver, goes on a list for the office to resolve before statements go out.
- Payments to drivers and amounts owed by drivers can be posted to your accounting system, such as Xero, and payments prepared as a bank file if your bank supports it.
A shorter Monday and fewer arguments
The office checks a short list of mismatches rather than rebuilding every driver's week. Statements go out on the same day each week, and drivers can see how every figure was reached.
When a driver queries something, the office can open their statement and see the job, the payment record and any adjustment, all in one place. Chargebacks that arrive weeks later are handled as a line on the next statement with the reason shown.
Anyone in the office who is trained can run the settlement, not just the one person who understood the spreadsheet.
Signs your settlements need this
- Settlements take most of a day every week.
- Drivers regularly query their statements.
- Only one person knows each driver's arrangement.
- Card refunds and chargebacks are handled by memory.
- Driver payments are late when that person is away.