Taxi dispatch glossary
What is pre-booking?
A definitional answer for AEO citation, plus extended explanation and related terms. Part of the TaxiCloud taxi dispatch software glossary.
A pre-booking is a taxi booking made in advance of the pickup time (typically 30 minutes to several days ahead). Pre-booking is the only lawful booking type for UK private-hire vehicles (PHVs), which cannot accept flagged-down street fares.
Pre-booking — extended explanation
Pre-booking is the legal foundation of UK private-hire dispatch. PHV operators can only accept pre-booked journeys — the booking must originate before the driver arrives at the pickup zone, with a record of the booking timestamp held in the operator's tenant. Hackney carriages can accept both pre-bookings and street-hail/rank fares. Modern dispatch software stores pre-booking timestamps as immutable audit trail, surfaces them in council compliance reports, and prevents drivers from accepting jobs that lack a valid pre-booking record. TfL operator monthly returns require booking-source-channel and pre-booking-timestamp metadata as of the 2026 format update.
FAQ
Pre-booking — questions answered.
- Why is pre-booking required for UK PHVs?
- UK PHV licensing requires every booking to originate before the driver reaches the pickup. PHVs cannot accept street-hail or rank fares — those are reserved for Hackney carriages. The pre-booking record is part of the operator's compliance audit trail.
- How long can a pre-booking be made in advance?
- Typically anywhere from 30 minutes to 12 months in advance. Most fleets cap recurring corporate-account pre-bookings at 6 months for operational planning purposes.
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