How JollyDrivers works

Three kinds of people use JD, and one person can be more than one of them. A solo driver-operator switches between roles in the same account.

The life of a booking

1. Booked. A rider chats with the AI booking assistant, or uses the operator's public booking page, or the operator enters the booking themselves. However it arrives, it goes through one shared set of checks: the operator is set up for this kind of work, the trip has both ends, the payment method is one JD understands, and any customer named on it really belongs to the person booking.
2. Confirmed. JD emails the customer a confirmation in the operator's name.
3. Driven. The driver works through the trip in their own workspace: en route, arrived, on board, completed. The rider sees each step live, and the operator sees it on their fleet view.
4. Paid. The fare is recorded as cash, card or invoice. JD raises the invoice in the operator's own Xero and records the payment against it when the money arrives.
5. On the record. Every step is an event in the booking's history. That history feeds the driver's hours, the operator's reports and the compliance pack.

For riders

• Book in plain language. The assistant asks only for what is missing, and knows about airports and flight arrivals.
• Follow the trip live and message the driver.
• Keep a list of "my drivers" and rebook the ones you trust.
• Sign in with Google or with a code sent to your phone. No password.

For drivers

• One calendar across every operator you drive for, with warnings when two jobs clash or are too close to reach in time.
• Buttons for each stage of a live trip, SMS to the rider, and marking a trip paid by cash or card.
• Your hours logged from the trips themselves, with fatigue warnings at thresholds you set.
• Your availability and blocked-out time, compliance documents with expiry reminders, and training courses from your operator.
• Earnings statements showing your share of each fare under your operator's own commission.

For operators

• A fleet dashboard of live trips, drivers and vehicles, with no dispatch console to sit at.
• Invoices raised, approved, amended, grouped and voided in your own Xero, and payments recorded there too.
• Your own fare book: flat suburb-to-suburb prices, per-kilometre and waiting rates, and a quick quote across every driver.
• Driver onboarding by invitation, compliance readiness at a glance, and an audit-ready export.
• Safety management plans published with a fingerprint, so you can prove which version was in force on a given date.

The technology, briefly

JD is an ASP.NET application with a live interface over SignalR, so screens update without a refresh. It installs as a progressive web app, and on phones it runs as a real app rather than a shrunken desktop site. Booking chat runs on Anthropic's Claude. Addresses and routes come from Google Maps. Invoicing uses the Xero API, and messages go out through SMSGlobal and email. A card payment is taken on the operator's own terminal and recorded here against the booking — JD does not process the card itself. Every booking is stored as a record plus an event history, so the current state is fast to read and the full history can always be checked.

Some capabilities are switched on for each operator rather than for everyone. A few are still being built and are not live — among them a marketplace for finding new drivers, and direct links to government registers. Peer checking of a driver's compliance documents against a public register is live.

JollyDrivers is in closed beta. Operators and drivers join by invitation; write to hello@jollydrivers.com.au.

Common questions