Kerby · for driving instructors · not open yet
Kerby is everything about teaching people to drive except the driving: the lessons that repeat every week, the pupil records, the DVSA progress, the money you are owed and the money you spent. Built for a phone, in a car, between lessons.
Founding rate
£5a month
For the first hundred instructors, held for as long as you stay. The price is £10.
Recurring slots set once rather than twenty-six times. Every lesson carrying its pupil, its topic and whether it has been paid for.
Home
What is left of today, and what has been left undone.
Diary
Every lesson, who it is with, and whether it has been paid.
Money
What came in, what went out, and who still owes you.
Nobody became a driving instructor to do paperwork.
The teaching is the easy part. It is everything around it that gets done at nine in the evening, on a sofa, from memory.
The diary is in three places
A paper book in the door pocket, the phone calendar, and a WhatsApp thread where someone asked to move Thursday. The right one is whichever you looked at last, and a double booking costs you a pupil rather than an hour.
Nobody remembers who owes what
Cash at the end of a lesson, a transfer that arrived on Tuesday, half a block paid up front in March. It adds up at the end of the month, if it adds up at all, and the awkward conversation is always with the pupil you least want to have it with.
Progress lives in your head
A pupil asks whether they are ready and the honest answer is a feeling. It is worse for them. A learner who cannot see how far they have come quietly decides they are not getting anywhere.
The end of the shoebox
THEBOOKS
What came in, what went out, and what is actually left. The number you want when someone asks how it is going, and the one your accountant asks for in April.
Who owes you
Cash, bank or card, recorded against the lesson. Hours counted down on a block as they are used. One list of everyone carrying a balance, so the chase is a glance rather than an evening.
Costs
Fuel, insurance, finance, tyres, training, phone. Adding one takes under fifteen seconds, because an expense screen that takes longer than that does not get used in a car.
Mileage
Business and personal kept apart the way HMRC wants them. One row a day, so the same journey cannot go in twice.
The year so far
This week, this month, the tax year to date. Income minus costs, without exporting anything into a spreadsheet first.
What a calendar app cannot do
THERECORD
Every scheduling tool can hold an appointment. None of them know what a bay park is, or that a pupil at level 3 on roundabouts is not ready for a test.
Graded 0 to 5, the scale you already use on paper, and ticked from inside the lesson, on the same screen where you mark it complete. The record belongs to the pupil and survives a change of instructor.
Controls and instruments
Moving off and stopping
Mirrors and signalling
Junctions
Roundabouts
Crossings
Dual carriageways
Reversing and parking
Emergency stop
Independent driving
Eco-safe driving
Night and weather
These are the categories the record is organised into. The topics inside them are transcribed from the published DVSA Driver’s Record rather than written from memory. You would recognise a wrong list immediately, and it is expensive to correct once pupils have been graded against it.
TENPOUNDS
A flat monthly subscription and nothing else. No commission, no percentage, no fee per booking or per pupil. Kerby earns the same whether you teach forty hours a week or four.
Founding rate · 100 places left
£5a month
For the first hundred instructors, held for as long as you stay. Not an introductory rate, and it does not step up after a year.
£10 a month is about a quarter of an hour of one lesson. One pupil who turns up because they were reminded covers it for a quarter.
It is cheaper here than in the app. £5 a month on a founding place, or £10 once they have gone. Subscribe inside the iPhone app instead and it is £6.99 and £14.99, because Apple takes about 29% of an App Store subscription once its commission and VAT are out.
It is the same Kerby either way, and a subscription bought on this page works on the phone.
No commission
Not on any lesson, at any volume.
Your money never touches Kerby
Card payments settle from Stripe straight to your account.
Sixty days free
The full thing, no card to start.
Cancel whenever
From inside the app, and it stops there.
Claim a founding place
This becomes your Kerby account. Nothing to fill in again when we open.
The whole ladder, including the parts that do not exist yet
At launch
Management
£10 a month
£5 for the first hundred instructors, held for as long as they stay.
- Book a weekly lesson once and it repeats every week. Drag it to move it, or cancel it with a reason
- Add a pupil with just their name and phone number. Licence number, theory pass and test date can wait, or stay blank forever
- Tick topics off the DVSA Driver's Record on the lesson itself, as you finish it
- Lesson notes: what you covered and what is next, so three weeks off is not a guessing game
- Who owes you, what is left on a block, and what came in as cash, bank or card
- Costs and mileage, split business and personal the way HMRC wants them
- One earnings screen: this week, this month, the tax year to date, income minus costs
- Email reminders to pupils, and notifications to your own phone
- A private link each pupil can open to see their own lessons and progress, with nothing for them to install
- An enquiry list, so a lead is not lost in a message thread
- Your lessons show up in Google or Apple Calendar on their own, so the rest of your life can see them
- Bring your pupils in from a spreadsheet, and take the lot back out whenever you like
After launch
Pro
More than £10
We will price it once it is built and we know what a text message actually costs us to send. A real number later beats a guess now.
- Making Tax Digital quarterly submissions, which become compulsory for many sole traders in April 2027
- Your income and costs are already in here, so a quarterly return is a button rather than an evening
- A booking page of your own, showing the free slots your diary actually has
- A card deposit taken when they book, so a pupil who does not turn up has paid for some of it
- More than one car, and more than one instructor sharing a diary
- The pupil's page carrying your name and your livery rather than ours
Further out
Marketplace
Not priced yet
It only works once enough instructors have live diaries for a learner to have a real choice. Every signup to the base tier is what builds that.
- A listing learners search by the area you actually cover
- Enquiries arriving without you advertising for them
- Your ADI registration, DBS check and insurance shown as checked. The thing a parent is really looking for
- Still no commission: a lesson booked through Kerby pays you exactly what a lesson booked by text does
- The learner pays Kerby for the introduction, not you. No lead fees and nothing per enquiry
And one thing you buy on top, whichever tier you are on
Text reminders
£5 a monthThe one channel a seventeen-year-old reliably reads. A text before every lesson, and one when a lesson moves.
Covers 100 texts a month; a full week-in, week-out diary sends more than that, and the rest are 5p each. A long one, or a name with an accent in it, counts as two, because that is how the networks bill them. Add it or drop it whenever; it does not change your subscription.
The first column is the longest on purpose. Everything that saves you time every day and costs us nothing to run belongs in the base tier. A hobbled diary does not get used, and a tool that does not get used is not worth paying for. The two beyond it are a different product wearing the same login, and the one thing that genuinely costs money every time it runs is priced that way, on its own, rather than used as the reason to sell you a tier.
Whatever those two end up costing, they are separate plans you can ignore. Your own subscription does not change because they exist, and nothing on this page today moves out of the base tier later.
No-shows
A pupil who does not turn up has still cost you the hour, and you cannot sell it twice.
Included at £10
- Email reminders to pupils before a lesson
- A notification to your own phone: tomorrow's schedule, who has not paid, who has a test coming
- A private link per pupil showing their lessons and progress: no app, no signup, nothing to install
£5 a month on top, and why
Text messages. A seventeen-year-old does not read email, so we know a text is what you actually want. Each one costs us just over 4p, and a busy month of reminders can cost as much as the whole subscription, so it cannot sit inside the £10 without the £10 going up for everybody, including the people who would never use it.
An add-on rather than a dearer plan, so nobody has to buy quarterly tax filing to get their reminders. Add it or drop it whenever you like.
Before you join
Reasonable questions
Can I use it today?
Do my pupils have to install anything?
What is the catch with £5?
Do you take a cut of what my pupils pay me?
Will there be learner search, so pupils find me?
Can I get my data back out?
I am a trainee (PDI). Can I use it?
A hundred places,then that is that.
£5 a month for as long as you stay, against a price of £10. Nothing is charged today and nothing is charged without you choosing it. Joining holds your rate and creates the account you will sign in to when we open.
100of the hundred founding places still open
Claim yours
Two minutes, and nothing to fill in again when we open.