You would struggle to find a fleet operator or a company car driver without a smartphone. If you happen to be one, then please do get in touch and let us know how you do it, because we love an old-school story. But for everyone else, mobile devices and their associated applications have mushroomed across the world and they are just as ubiquitous in the fleet sector. 

Many have replaced administrative tasks previously confined to spreadsheets or physical pieces of paper - a boon in the pandemic age - rendering them a speedier and often more reliable and compliant way of tackling the likes of vehicle checks and mileage capture, or just paying for everyday sundries such as parking. 

Here, we examine ten of the most valuable and versatile mobile applications available to business car operators and drivers today. The criteria of the apps we picked is that they must be either free or cheap, available to anyone (such as those that are the preserve of a particular company's customers did not make the cut) and provide a genuinely useful service to the modern fleet industry.

Accident Buddy 

Price: Free

A handy little app for walking distressed drivers through the post-collision process. Accident Buddy's 'report incident' function includes a form that tells the user precisely what information they need to gather about themselves, their vehicle and third parties in the wake of a shunt. It includes functions to illustrate whether the vehicle is still driveable, where the damage is, perceived fault, weather conditions and a function to flag up injuries, while video and photo facilities help to make the report more accurate and cut down on the unpleasant 'he said, she said' business of insurance claims. 

The developer also offers white-label services to the fleet and insurance industry so, if you already have such an app via something like an insurer or a leasing company, you might well be using it already. 

Caura 

Price: Free

If your drivers go anywhere near a part of the road network with extra charges, then it may be worth them downloading Caura, which facilitates payments for the likes of tolls, congestion or clean air zone charges and parking via a single app, while grey fleet drivers could also benefit from the ability to cough up for MOTs, road tax and insurance - along with notifications about when each one is due. Drivers enter their vehicles' registration number and the app displays a series of details including renewal dates and options to remotely settle up for the aforementioned charges via online payment services. 

Citymapper

Price: Free; in-app purchases £2.99-99.99 

Driving through a major city is not usually much fun and, unless your fleet comprises only vehicles that avoid clean air zone charges, it can also be expensive. Parking at the edge of town and picking up public transport is often a good way around it - for cost, time and environmental reasons - and Citymapper helps users navigate exactly that. It steers them to the most appropriate type of transport (train, tube, bus etcetera) and provides what it claims are highly accurate routes and timings. A total of 50 million international users and a suite of Google Play awards suggest the developers are on to something, and it also offers the subscription-based Citymapper Pass travelcard, which allows users to pay for different types of public and private transport, although, according to its website, the card is currently limited to London. 

Fleetcheck Driver 

Price: £2 per vehicle per month

Vehicle inspection apps are all the rage, but you often have to be an existing customer of something like a software or fleet management company to access them. Yes, it is a paid-for service, but Fleetcheck's Driver app is available to any fleet of any size and has a customisable DVSA-approved checking facility to ensure drivers give their vehicles the necessary once-over before they hit the road and catch any issues beforehand. 

It surpassed ten million checks this year, which the company's managing director Peter Golding chalks up to an increasing desire for paperless inspections both for convenience and from a biosecurity perspective amid the pandemic. 

"Covid has made people realise that, if they were reliant on a paper-based method of communicating with an office or wherever, nowadays, that really needs to be phased out. We're seeing a far higher adoption of the app than ever, and a lot of that growth has happened over the last 18 months."

HMRC 

Price: Free

It is certainly not the flashiest app of our selection, but HMRC's offering is useful for employees who need to get hold of fundamental tax information, such as codes and national insurance numbers, and also allows them to calculate their take-home pay after income tax and NI deductions. Other functions include details about income and potential benefits, along with facilities to track forms and letters, change personal details and, for those who have overpaid, claim refunds. Unfortunately, it does not extend as far as company car tax and, as far as we can tell, there are no dedicated application to fulfil such a function, at least on the Google Play store (but there are websites that do it). HMRC's offering is nonetheless handy for tax basics, though.