Everything Driving School Diary does, in the order you will meet it.
Driving School Diary is a private diary for a single instructor. There are no accounts to create and nothing to log in to. Your data lives on your iPhone and, when you are signed into iCloud, syncs privately to your other Apple devices.
Open Settings and tap your profile at the top. Add your name, your driving school or trading name, your ADI badge number, your vehicle, and how pupils pay you. Your school name is used as the title of the iOS calendar your lessons mirror into, appears on your invoices, and is the phrase you type to confirm a full reset. To have a look around first, tap Load sample data; a banner on the calendar lets you exit sample data at any time and return to an empty diary.
The Calendar tab shows your lessons by day, week, month or year. In month view each day shows a dot when it has lessons, an orange dot when a completed lesson is still unpaid, and a small moon on days you have marked off.
When a pupil asks when you are free, select the day and a Free slots section shows tappable times worked out from your working hours, minus lessons already booked and your travel buffer. Tap a slot, or tap +, to add a lesson. Start typing in the pupil field to filter your pupils and pick one; the app fills in their usual lesson type and pickup. Set the time, add a note, and use Repeat weekly to create a run of lessons in one go.
Open a lesson to reschedule it, mark it completed, take a payment, record progress, run a mock test, attach a photo, or get directions to the pickup. For a repeating lesson you can cancel just that one, this and all future ones, or the whole series. To book a pupil in again, use Book same time next week in the lesson, or swipe a lesson to the right in the calendar and tap Rebook. You can also capture a time from a text or email: select the text, tap Share, choose Driving School Diary, and it opens Add Lesson at that time so you only pick the pupil.
In a hurry, use Quick add at the top of the Add lesson screen: type it the way you would say it, for example "double with Sam tomorrow at 4pm", and the app fills in the pupil, the lesson type and the time for you to check. It reads the pupil and lesson from your own lists and the time from the phrase, on your device.
Free slots are worked out from the same grid everywhere in the app, and when there are none it tells you why rather than just showing an empty box: outside your working hours, a day off, or already fully booked. If you mirror lessons into the iOS Calendar, a slot that clashes with something else in your day is flagged too. Motorway lessons sit alongside the other lesson types.
On any day with two or more lessons, tap Route & mileage to see your pickups in order on a map, with the driving time and distance between each one. If the gap between two lessons is tighter than the drive between them, the app warns you before you find out the hard way. One tap logs the estimated business mileage for the day.
The estimate covers the driving between your lessons only. It does not include the run from home, because the app does not hold your home address, so adjust the figure before saving if you want to count other trips.
Set your cancellation fee and notice period in your profile. When you cancel a lesson the app looks at how close it is and recommends either no charge or a late cancellation with the fee applied. It is only ever a recommendation; you decide, and you can always override it.
No-shows and late cancellations are treated as money owed rather than quietly disappearing: they show in your outstanding total, can be invoiced, and appear in the accountant CSV. You can also take a deposit against a lesson, and set a one-off custom price when a lesson is not your standard rate.
When you decide not to collect something after all, mark it waived rather than paid. The charge comes out of what the pupil owes and off your income, but the record of it stays, so your books show what actually happened and your tax figures are not inflated by money you never took.
The Pupils tab holds a profile for each learner: contact details, address, provisional licence number, transmission, practical test date, and their usual lesson, which pre-populates new bookings. Each pupil shows what they owe, their prepaid hours, a map and directions to their address, and quick buttons to message them.
For your licence check before a lesson, photograph the front and back of the pupil's provisional licence on their profile. From the front, the app reads the licence number, the expiry date and the date of birth on your device and fills them in for you to check, and the profile flags the licence in red once it has expired. Nothing leaves your phone: the pupil hands over their card, the photos stay on your device and your own private iCloud.
Once your list gets long, search at the top of the Pupils tab finds anyone by name, phone or email.
Use the waiting list to keep prospective pupils with a note, then swipe to convert one into a full pupil when you have a slot.
Tap Send statement on a pupil to produce a PDF account statement: every chargeable lesson, any deposits held, and the closing balance, ready to email or send on. Moving from another system or a spreadsheet? Paste a CSV of your pupils and the app will import them in one go.
Progress uses the official DVSA competency scale, the same one on a learner's driving record: 1 Introduced, 2 Under full instruction, 3 Prompted, 4 Seldom prompted, 5 Independent.
Before a lesson you can plan it: open the lesson, tap Plan this lesson and pick syllabus topics. The pupil's weakest topics are suggested first, and each carries a Highway Code reference. During or after the lesson, tap Rate progress and tap a level for each topic you covered; a pupil's current level for a topic is their most recent rating.
The report card (open a pupil, then Progress record) is your one-stop brief: overall test readiness, average skill, strong points, what needs work, suggested next topics, a test-date countdown and your notes. Share it as a PDF in a tap.
The Highway Code (GOV.UK) · Learning to drive (GOV.UK)
Open a lesson and tap Run a mock test to mark it like the real thing: tally driving (minor) faults, serious faults and dangerous faults. The result follows DVSA rules, a test is failed by any serious or dangerous fault or by more than 15 driving faults, and the latest result appears on the pupil's report card. The driving test (GOV.UK)
Record the outcome of a real practical test as a pass or a fail and the app builds your first-time pass rate over time, which is a genuinely useful number to know and a fair one to quote.
From Business or a pupil, tap Invoices then +. Pick the pupil and the app gathers their completed, unpaid lessons that are not already invoiced, and totals them. Open an invoice to mark it sent, paid or void, and to share it as plain text or a PDF. Marking an invoice paid also marks the billed lessons paid, and your payment instructions from your profile are included so pupils know how to pay.
Add a business logo in your profile and it appears on invoices, receipts and statements. If you are VAT registered, add your VAT number and rate and the PDFs show a proper VAT breakdown.
Money is paid directly to you; the app never holds it. In Settings, under your profile, add your payment handles:
Then open a lesson, swipe a lesson in the calendar, or open an invoice, and tap Take payment. Choose the amount, either this lesson, everything the pupil owes, or a custom figure, and then how they are paying: a contactless card on the phone itself with Tap to Pay on iPhone, a PayPal or Stripe pay link with a QR code the pupil can scan, cash, or bank transfer.
Every payment you record, however it was made, produces a numbered PDF receipt you can email or send by WhatsApp, and you can send it again later from the lesson or the invoice.
Set up PayPal.me · Create a Stripe Payment Link
Tap to Pay on iPhone lets you accept contactless payments on your iPhone, through SumUp: physical debit and credit cards, Apple Pay and other digital wallets. The pupil holds their card or device to the top of your iPhone. There are no extra terminals or readers to buy, charge or lose.
Setting it up once. In Settings, open Card payments (SumUp) and tap Connect SumUp, then log in or create a free SumUp account. SumUp handles the account, the identity checks and the money; the app only asks for the connection. When it is connected, Settings shows your merchant account and confirms in green that this iPhone is ready, so you know it will work before a pupil is sitting next to you. Tap the set-up button to accept Apple's terms and watch Apple's short how-to-tap tutorial, which stays available in Settings to replay whenever you want it.
Taking a payment. Open a lesson, swipe a lesson in the calendar, or open an invoice, and tap Take payment. Choose the amount as usual, and Tap to Pay on iPhone sits at the top of the payment options. The pupil holds their card or device to the top of your iPhone for a few seconds, and when the Done tick appears the card read is complete. The app records the payment, the card method and the transaction reference, then produces the same numbered PDF receipt you get for cash.
The money. It goes straight to your own SumUp account and on to your bank. The app never holds it and takes no commission. Card payments are processed by SumUp Payments Limited (FCA reference 900700), who charge their own fee per transaction, which is between you and them. If a tap is cancelled or cannot be completed, the app offers to send a pay link or QR code instead and records nothing until a payment actually succeeds.
What it needs. An iPhone running iOS 26 or later, which means iPhone 11 or later
or iPhone SE (2nd generation) or later; every iPhone that can run the app supports
Tap to Pay on iPhone. Also a connected
SumUp account, and a one-time activation the first time you use it. Card payments also need Apple's
approval of the payment capability, which is being completed for the App Store release. Cash, bank
transfer and pay links never depend on any of that and always work. Terms apply.
More about Tap to Pay on iPhone ·
SumUp's own guide
If a pupil pays for a block of lessons up front, open their profile and tap Top up prepaid hours. When you mark a lesson completed, the app draws the hours from their balance and marks the lesson paid automatically. Their remaining balance shows on the pupil screen.
The Business tab shows income (paid), outstanding, expenses, mileage and net, both this month and all time, plus a six-month income chart and hours taught. Log expenses like fuel and insurance, and your business mileage, which is valued at the HMRC approved rate of 45p per mile. Export for accountant produces a CSV of your paid lesson income, expenses and mileage to send straight on. Simplified vehicle expenses (GOV.UK)
Scan a receipt instead of typing it in. Point the camera at it and the app reads the amount, date, shop and likely category and fills in the expense for you. It all happens on your iPhone, using Apple's own text recognition and, on newer devices, the on-device Apple Intelligence model. The photo never leaves your phone.
Insights turns the raw numbers into the ones that actually tell you something: revenue per taught hour, how full your diary is, how many pupils are active, your no-show rate, and the average number of lessons it takes your pupils to pass.
Who owes me lists your debtors by how much and how long, oldest debt first, with a single tap to chase them or take the payment there and then.
For anything you pay on a cycle, like insurance or an association fee, use Recurring costs. Set the amount and whether it is weekly, monthly, quarterly or annual, and each payment records itself on its due date so you never re-type it. Costs are recorded when they are paid, which is the cash basis most instructors use, so paying yearly or monthly both give the right total for the year. Turn a cost off to stop it; the payments already recorded stay.
The tax summary does the Self Assessment arithmetic for a UK tax year (6 April to 5 April). It gives you turnover, allowable expenses and net profit against the SA103S box numbers your return actually asks for, an estimate of what to set aside for income tax and Class 4 National Insurance, your figures broken into Making Tax Digital quarters, expenses by category, and a side-by-side of the mileage allowance against actual vehicle costs so you can see which method suits you. Mileage is valued at the HMRC approved rates, 45p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles in the year and 25p after that. You can choose the cash or accruals basis, and add a use of home flat rate for the hours you work at home. Share it as text or a PDF. It is an estimate for your own records, so check the figures before you file.
Message a pupil from their profile or a lesson by WhatsApp, text, call or email; WhatsApp appears when it is installed on your phone. To message everyone on a given day, open the calendar and tap the paper plane, write your note and use Insert name and Insert time. This is not a broadcast: tapping a pupil opens their own WhatsApp or Messages with the note ready, and you tap send there. Add a review link to your profile for a one-tap Ask for a review action after a pupil passes.
Save the messages you send over and over as templates, with tokens for the pupil's name and lesson time so each one comes out personalised. Two are built in and worth knowing: a one-tap running late note, and a post-lesson recap summarising what you covered. If a lesson falls through, Fill a gap offers the free time straight to your waiting list.
Turn on reminders in Settings for a notification the day before and an hour before each lesson, a day-before reminder for a pupil's practical test, and a nudge when a completed lesson is still unpaid. You can also switch on a morning summary, a single notification with the shape of your day. Allow calendar access to mirror your lessons into a dedicated iOS calendar named after you, so they sit alongside the rest of your day.
Add the Diary widget to your Home Screen for today's lessons or the week ahead (long-press, Edit Widget, to switch), and Lock Screen accessory widgets show your next lesson. Ask Siri, or use the Shortcuts app, for Add a lesson, My next lesson and What I am owed. Long-press the app icon for quick actions straight into the jobs you do most.
When your phone is connected to CarPlay and you have a lesson today, open Driving School Diary on the car screen. It shows the pupil and their stats with a Start lesson button, then a short list of activities and a one-to-five score, recorded straight onto the lesson. It is designed so the supervising instructor can score with a single tap, without handling a phone during the lesson.
In Settings, Renewals and reminders, record when your ADI badge, car insurance, MOT and DBS check are due; the app reminds you 30 days before each and shows what is due soon. You can also track a pupil's Pass Plus modules and theory test pass date, and the report card warns if their theory certificate expires before their practical. Pass Plus (GOV.UK) · Book or manage a driving test (GOV.UK)
Settings, Share my card builds a branded card from your profile: your logo or photo, your school and your name, a DVSA Approved Driving Instructor line with your ADI number, phone, email, transmission, languages and a review link.
Share it three ways: as an image for WhatsApp, Messages or email; as a contact card the other person taps once to save into their Contacts; or as plain text with tappable details. There is a QR code on screen too, so someone standing next to you can scan it and have your number. The card only shows what you have filled in, so add your logo, ADI number and review link to make it richer.
Save the places you go back to, test centres, practice areas, that awkward roundabout, with directions a tap away. They are available when you are setting a pickup or planning a route.
Your diary is stored on your device and, when you are signed into iCloud, backed up to your private iCloud and synced to your other Apple devices. Nothing is shared with pupils or any third party. In Settings you can Export backup to keep an off-device copy and Restore from backup to bring it back on a new phone, turn on Require Face ID / passcode to lock the app, and choose Light, Dark or System appearance. A privacy cover hides pupil details whenever the app is not in the foreground, so nothing sensitive is on show in the app switcher. Reset lives in Settings, Advanced; it permanently erases everything on the device and asks you to type your driving school name to confirm.
One thing worth knowing: an exported backup is a plain file containing your pupils' personal details. Keep it somewhere you would be comfortable keeping their paperwork, and delete old copies you no longer need. See the Privacy Policy for the full picture.