Bookings and the life of a job
The life of a job
A client's request arrives as To confirm. You confirm it, put a driver on it (To assign → assigned), the driver runs it — en route, arrived, picked up, dropped off — and it completes (or, if the passenger never comes, ends as a no-show). The client can cancel until the trip is underway, always with a reason you'll see; you can cancel from your side at any stage. Every trip carries its own number (#1001 and up, yours alone) — it's what you, your team, and the client all see on the trip, in its chat, and on the receipt.
Confirming
Confirmation is one tap on the trip — and several things you'd naturally do confirm it for you: pricing an unpriced request, assigning a driver, or taking any payment each confirms a pending booking in the same gesture. Bookings you create on a client's behalf skip the queue and start confirmed.
The rules you control
You decide what can be booked: minimum notice (out of the box, 2 hours — set it to what your operation needs), which services you offer (transfers, hourly, delivery), which vehicle classes serve which services, and your own booking restrictions with messages in your words. Clients who don't clear a rule see your message at booking time — they never get a silent failure. When you book on a client's behalf, your restrictions defer to you.
You can also publish your own booking terms — cancellation policy, wait-time rules, whatever your business runs on. With terms live, clients agree to them as part of booking, and each trip keeps a record of exactly what they agreed to and when. Terms live under your booking page's settings.
Changes and cancellations
Clients don't edit a booked trip directly — they send a change request (new time, address, vehicle class) that you approve or decline; approving applies the change automatically and the trip thread records it. Cancelling is available to the client up until the trip is underway, always with a reason attached.
When you cancel a trip, its driver gets a message and a notification that it's cancelled, and your client isn't messaged — their trip just shows Cancelled (a client who hasn't joined RideBits gets nothing at all). You can add a short reason; only your office sees it, on the trip's activity — never the client or the driver.
When the passenger doesn't show
Your driver gets to the pickup, taps Arrived, and waits. Once the pickup time has passed they can pick Passenger didn't show from the trip's ⋮ menu (with the RideBits app up to date — on an older version, they tell your office, who marks it): the confirmation shows how long they've waited ("You've waited 20 min") and takes an optional note, seen only by your office and the driver. Marking it adds a note to the trip by whoever marked it — "Marked a no-show — waited 20 min." with that note under it — which your office and the driver read in the trip's notes and your client never sees. The trip ends for them and tracking stops; the pickup stays "Arrived" — nothing pretends anyone was picked up. Your office can do the same: No-show sits beside Mark complete in the trip's ⋮ menu in the Console, or in the RideBits app once it's up to date, on any assigned or started trip once its pickup time has passed. When your office marks it, the driver gets a message with a push: the trip has ended for them. It's for trips at the first pickup — not deliveries, and not a passenger missing at a later stop, where the driver carries on with the trip.
There's no timer: RideBits doesn't enforce a minimum wait. Your booking terms are your own words, and your office makes the money call. The trip ends as a finished trip — your office sees No-show in the Console (and in the RideBits app once it's up to date, as drivers do), and your client sees Missed pickup on their trip page (an older version of the app shows "Completed"). Nothing is sent to your client — no message, no push; their app and trip page just update.
Every admin and staff member — except whoever marked it — gets a card in their Operations thread with a push: "Kenny marked Dana's 9:00 AM pickup a no-show (waited 20 min)." If the return leg of a round trip is still booked, the card says so, and the return stays booked — nothing happens to it on its own. The price stands and the trip waits in Unpaid, so you charge all, part or none of it, as you would on any trip. It counts toward your monthly trip allowance — the driver did the run.
The passenger turned up after all? Undo no-show on the trip in the Console, or in the RideBits app once it's up to date — open to whoever marked it and to your office until the trip's chat closes, a day later. The trip reopens where it was — at "Arrived", still heading to the pickup if your office marked it while the driver was on the way, or as assigned if the driver hadn't started — and tracking resumes; money already taken stays as it is. The undo adds a note too: "Undid the no-show — the trip is open again." If your office undid it, the driver gets a message with a push: the trip is open again. After the chat closes, change the price instead.
Closing out
To close out gathers the trips that never finished: open trips 6 hours past their pickup time that aren't running, and trips sitting "At pickup" an hour past their pickup time (in the Console, and in the RideBits app once it's up to date). Mark complete closes one out as completed, and your client's trip page then says "Trip completed" — never "Dropped off at …". If the passenger never came, use No-show instead.
Keeping trips organized
Labels are colored tags you define once and apply to any trip — filter your schedule by them, and choose per label whether drivers see it. Put them on clients too — "Coca-Cola", "VIP" — and every trip booked for that client carries them, ready to filter, export or price by. Notes keep the details that don't fit a field: each note can be shared with the driver or kept to the office. And the trip's Activity view shows its full history — every status change, edit, and note, in order — for your eyes only.
Sharing a trip
Share in the trip's ⋮ menu asks who the link is for, and makes the right one. The client gets the trip's page with the car on the map while it's on, the fare and what's been paid — the summary and receipt in one. It keeps working after the trip until you turn it off (share it after that and it's a new link), and ends with See your trips, the way into all their trips with you.
The passenger, when someone else is riding, and someone else waiting at the other end get the same page with no prices and no contact details. Those links work until a day after the trip, and you can turn them off at any time. The client can share one from their side too.
Clients who haven't joined yet
Plenty of bookings start with a call from someone who isn't on RideBits. Book for them anyway: in the app, tap + on the Schedule tab and choose New client at the top of the client list, or use Add a client at the top of Clients. A name and a phone number or email is all it takes, and you go straight to booking for them. In Clients they're in every view, and the Haven't joined yet view lists only them; "Hasn't joined RideBits yet" shows with their name there and on their trips. Their details are yours to correct until they join; removing one keeps their past trips on record.
No duplicates: if the number or email already belongs to one of your clients, you're shown that client instead. If it belongs to someone already on RideBits who isn't your client yet, they're added and you book right away — and they get an invitation in their app to become your client. Until they accept, they show as Invited · hasn't accepted yet. Fixing a mistyped number withdraws the invitation from the wrong person and invites the right one.
RideBits sends them nothing — no texts, emails or notifications — until they join. You're the messenger, from your own phone: Share → The client sends them the trip's page, and for a card, a card request goes out as a link you share. Payments you collect yourself — cash, transfer — you record on the trip as usual, and the summary page shows the trip as paid.
They join on their own terms. On your booking page ("Already booked with us?") or from See your trips on a page you sent them, they confirm the number you have for them with a code — or they sign up in the RideBits app with that number, or add that email to their account. Either way they're asked whether to accept being your client; accepting brings the trips you booked for them (and any card they gave you) into their account, and chat, notifications and in-app requests switch on. If they decline, nothing changes on your side.
"Ride now" requests
On-demand requests work on a promise clock: the client asks for a car now, you (and every admin) get pinged instantly, and you dispatch from a live view of your drivers. The mechanics live in Assigning drivers.