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Taking more but earning less? New Good Taxi Network fare tracker exposes commission, card fees and real hourly earnings
- Perry Richardson
- 1 hour ago
- 3 min read
Good Taxi Network has launched a new Fare Logging tool designed to give licensed taxi drivers a clearer picture of their earnings, working hours and business costs.
The feature allows drivers to record individual fares and hours worked before calculating figures including hourly earnings and performance across daily, weekly and monthly periods. Drivers can also set personal earnings targets and track progress against them.
The launch follows the introduction of personalised pre-booking web pages by Good Taxi Network, which are intended to help individual drivers establish direct relationships with passengers and generate their own advance bookings.
Fare Logging is aimed at drivers regardless of how they currently record their takings, including those using notebooks, spreadsheets, mobile phones or informal records. The system brings those figures into one location and converts them into information intended to show how a driver’s business is performing.
Importantly, the tool goes beyond gross takings. Drivers can record commission charged on app bookings, card processing fees, expenses and other business records, potentially providing a more accurate assessment of what remains after the costs associated with earning a fare are taken into account.
For drivers accepting work through booking platforms, commission tracking could provide particularly useful information when deciding which jobs are financially worthwhile. A driver involved in testing the system said: “When I realised how much the app jobs were costing me in commission, I started reducing the number I accepted. I realised I could actually take less in fares and earn more.”
Good Taxi Network said the feature is not intended to steer drivers towards or away from app-based work. Instead, it is designed to provide the figures needed for drivers to assess the value of different sources of work themselves.
Another driver testing Fare Logging said the system had changed how he assessed his daily earnings. He said: “I used to go home thinking I’d earned a certain amount that day. Once I started logging everything properly, I realised the real figure wasn’t what I thought it was. Now I know what I actually need to earn each day.”
Card processing charges can also be recorded. While individual transaction fees can represent a relatively small amount, the cumulative cost across hundreds or thousands of card payments can become a big operating expense for self-employed taxi drivers.
According to Good Taxi Network, information entered into Fare Logging remains private to the individual driver. Records can be exported for the driver’s own purposes, including sharing information with an accountant or using it alongside suitable financial and tax services.
A Good Taxi Network spokesperson said: “Ask most drivers what they’ve taken today and they’ll probably have a pretty good idea. But ask what they’ve actually earned per hour, how much commission they’ve paid this month or whether they’re on target for the week, and that can be much harder to answer.
“The information is already there. It might be in a driver’s head, written in a notebook or sitting in a spreadsheet. We’re simply giving drivers an easier way to bring it together and make those numbers useful.”
The Fare Logging feature also sits alongside expense recording and data export tools already offered to drivers. That could become increasingly relevant as self-employed workers like cabbies move towards greater digital tax record keeping under Making Tax Digital.
Where most drivers operate as sole traders and have traditionally maintained their own records using a range of methods, tools capable of recording income and costs as they occur could reduce the amount of retrospective administration required when accounts and tax information are prepared.
