What PassReady Actually Does: A Full Tour of the Driving Instructor App (2026)
Free software gets written off as a toy. This is everything PassReady does for a driving instructor today, screen by screen, with the numbers and the limits.
PassReady is a full business platform for UK driving instructors, not a booking calendar. It runs your public booking page, diary, pupil app, reminders, business insights, Making Tax Digital records and paperwork, at £0 a month. Your pupils get DVSA progress tracking across 28 topics, a test-readiness score and 633 theory practice questions. Everything below is live today, and where something has a limit, we say so.
| In numbers | |
|---|---|
| Monthly fee | £0, with no pupil limit and no end date |
| DVSA progress topics | 28, across 6 categories |
| Theory practice questions | 633, plus 168 road signs and all 307 Highway Code rules |
| Mock theory test | 50 questions, 57 minutes, pass mark 43, the same format as the real test |
| Teaching handouts | 18, across 6 categories, branded with your name |
| Tax Pack file types | CSV, OFX, QIF, FreeAgent CSV, mileage log, SA103 summary and receipts |
| Works on | iPhone, Android, tablet and computer, in the browser, added to your home screen |
Getting found and booked
Your own booking page. Every instructor gets a page at passready.co.uk/i/yourname showing your prices, the areas you cover, a map and your real availability. It is built so Google can read your name, your areas and your prices, which helps local learners find you. Until you switch on card payments, learners send a lesson request that you confirm. Once card payments are on, they book and pay in one go.
Only slots you can actually reach. When a learner picks a time, PassReady estimates the travel time from your previous lesson's postcode and only offers slots you can get to. It is an estimate based on distance, not live traffic, and the check runs again at checkout so nobody can book a slot you cannot make.
A waiting list when you are full. Learners who find you fully booked can join your waiting list instead of going elsewhere.
Filling gaps. If a lesson cancels, you can offer the gap to your pupils with a discount, and they get a notification on their phone.
Your cancellation policy, enforced. You set the notice period (24 hours unless you change it). Lessons paid by card are refunded automatically according to your rules, so there is no awkward conversation.
Running the diary
A proper diary. Day, week and month views, recurring weekly lessons, lesson types, breaks set for each day, and a “running late” option that moves the rest of your day on.
Bring your diary with you. If you are moving from another app or a calendar, you can import a calendar file, a CSV, a calendar link or your Google Calendar, rather than typing every lesson in again.
Cash lessons in the same place. Pupils who pay cash or by bank transfer sit in the same diary as online bookings, with the same reminders and records, and there is no fee on them for anyone.
Reminders that go out on their own. Pupils get a reminder two days before each lesson and another two hours before, by email and phone notification. A pupil with no email address who is not on the app yet can get one reminder by text instead. You get a summary of tomorrow every evening and a round-up of your week on Sunday evening.
What your pupils get
This is the half most instructors never see before they sign up, and it decides whether pupils actually use the system instead of texting you at 10pm.
- DVSA progress tracking across 28 topics in 6 categories, with a test-readiness percentage and their three weakest areas shown on their dashboard
- Theory practice with 633 questions, 168 road signs and all 307 Highway Code rules, plus full mock tests in the real test's format
- A daily practice streak, a countdown to their test date and mileage milestones
- Live tracking of you on the way to pick them up, whenever you switch location sharing on for that lesson
- A quick rating after each lesson, so you hear how it went
- Private practice logging: a pupil can add up to 3 supervisors, such as a parent, who see their readiness score and hours and log practice drives, which you then see
Pupils use it in the browser on their phone and add it to their home screen, so there is nothing to download from an app store. They join through your invite.
Knowing your numbers
Your real hourly rate. Your lesson price is not what you earn per hour once travel time and fuel are counted. PassReady works out your effective hourly rate so you can see the difference.
Which areas pay. Area profitability ranks your postcode areas by what they really earn you after travel, which is useful when you are deciding where to take on new pupils.
Pupils who are drifting. PassReady learns each pupil's usual gap between lessons and flags them as at risk when that gap doubles, so you can check in before they quietly stop booking.
Cancellation patterns and demand. See which days and times get cancelled most and what that costs you, and get a picture of when learners are searching for lessons, so you know where opening more hours would pay.
Tax and paperwork
Making Tax Digital records. Lesson income is recorded as you work. Expenses go into the categories self-assessment uses (the SA103 boxes), you can photograph receipts, and business mileage is recorded from your lesson postcodes. At the end of each quarter, one tap builds a Tax Pack with CSV, OFX, QIF and FreeAgent files, a mileage log, a summary and your receipts, ready for your accountant or your MTD software. Reminders arrive 30, 14, 7, 3 and 1 days before each deadline. PassReady keeps the records; it does not give tax advice or file with HMRC for you.
Car and badge reminders. Add your cars and PassReady flags your MOT, road tax, insurance and ADI badge 30 days before they run out.
CPD and reflective logs for your own development records, in 8 categories, useful for the standards check.
Teaching handouts. 18 DVSA-aligned handouts across 6 categories, from manoeuvres to test day, branded with your name. Preview them, print them or share them with a pupil.
Your data, yours to take. Export your lessons, earnings, pupils and expenses as spreadsheets whenever you like.
Card payments, when you want them
Everything above works with no card payments at all. When you do switch them on, learners pay when they book, so there is no chasing money and a no-show does not cost you the lesson. That also unlocks gift cards, promo codes and block bookings.
Every app charges something when you take card payments, because the card processor charges on every payment. On most apps that charge sits on top of a monthly fee. On PassReady there is no monthly fee, and the charge is one published booking fee that the pupil pays: PassReady's 4.2% plus card processing, rounded up to the next whole pound. On a £40 lesson the pupil pays £43 and you receive £40.23.
What it does not do
Being straight about the limits, because a tour that oversells is worth nothing:
- There is no App Store app. PassReady runs in the browser and sits on the home screen like an app. For most people that is quicker to set up, but it is a real difference.
- Travel times are estimates, worked out from distance, not live traffic.
- No 3D junction or manoeuvre diagrams for in-car teaching, which some long-established apps have.
- Some things are still being built, including downloading handouts as PDFs. We will say when they are live, not before.
The quickest way to judge all of this is to click through it. The demo has every instructor and pupil screen with sample data in it, and needs no account. For the detail on individual features, see how smart scheduling works, the business insights and Making Tax Digital for driving instructors.
Click through every screen first.
The whole of PassReady is open at /demo with sample data, instructor side and pupil side. No account, no email, no card. If it suits how you work, signing up takes a couple of minutes and costs nothing a month.
Open the demo