Log travel (Travel Log)

What the Travel Log does

When you drive for work, the Travel Log keeps a record of each business trip. You enter your odometer readings and Worklog works out the distance. What those kilometres are worth depends on your business. A sole proprietor or a partnership gets no amount per kilometre from the Income Tax Act: you claim your vehicle's actual costs (fuel, repairs, insurance, tyres, licence, tolls, parking, a lease or rental of a car or of a bakkie, van or truck, and interest on vehicle finance, filed under Motor vehicle), less the private part, and your logbook decides the private part. A lease is not an instalment sale: for an instalment sale or hire purchase, record the vehicle as an asset and the interest under vehicle finance interest. Interest carries no VAT, so Money Out does not let you claim VAT on it, and the VAT on a hired car or double cab cannot be claimed either (VAT Act section 17(2)(c)); the VAT on a hired bakkie, van or truck can. A company, close corporation, co-operative or trust may reimburse its people for business travel in their own vehicles, up to the SARS rate per kilometre times the business kilometres. On Turnover Tax no expense is deducted, so neither saves any tax; a company or trust on Turnover Tax still sees what it may reimburse. The Travel Log says which of these applies to you. For a printable summary of your total kilometres, open Travel, under Scheduling Reports.

Before you start

Check your car's odometer before you leave and again when you get back, so you have a start and an end reading.
The Travel Log is under the "Scheduling System" tools card — the group that also holds the Diary and Time Log — or the "Work" group on the desktop sidebar. Open it and you will see the heading Travel Log.

Log a trip

On the Travel Log screen, tap + New at the top right. A box titled New trip opens.
To log a drive for a diary appointment, pick it under Diary appointment — Worklog fills in the trip type, date and reason for you, and where the trip went when the appointment has a location.
Under Trip type, tap Customer visit or Supplier visit. Customer visit is chosen for you to start, and the hint under Reason for the trip changes with it. Every trip here counts as a business trip, so don't log private driving.
In Reason for the trip, say what the drive was for, like Site visit in Soweto. SARS asks the reason for every business trip.
In Where from and Where to, say where the trip started and where you went — SARS asks for both. Places you have typed before show underneath; tap one to use it.
In Date, set the day of the trip. It starts on today's date.
In Start odometer type your reading before the trip, and in End odometer your reading after it.
Once both readings are in, a blue box appears. It shows the kilometres, and says they are recorded as business kilometres.
Tap Log Trip to save. Your new trip appears in the list.

💡Your end reading must be higher than your start reading. If it is not, or if a reading is missing, Worklog shows a short message and will not save until you fix it. A new trip also needs its reason, where from and where to. A trip saved before Worklog asked for these — or logged by Quick Log, WhatsApp or the Diary — can still be corrected without them: the missing ones show in amber, and the Travel report says how many trips still need them. If your start reading is lower than where your last trip ended, Worklog asks whether it's a typo or a different vehicle — you can still save it.

Reading your list

Each trip in the list shows its purpose on the top line — or the trip type when there is no purpose — with a coloured trip-type tag on the right, and below it the date and the kilometres of that trip, then where it went from and to. A trip missing a detail SARS asks for says so in amber. Each trip gets its own number (like TRP-2026-0012) the moment it is saved. Search by purpose, type or number, use Show ▾ to pick a trip type, who logged it (once two or more people have) or a stretch of time, and Sort ▾ to order by purpose, distance, number or date — the same way the other tools work. For the running totals, open Travel, under Scheduling Reports. Under the list, 📄 PDF and 📊 CSV / Excel print the trips as you have them — date, number, purpose, type, from, to, the odometer readings and kilometres, and for a company, close corporation, co-operative or trust what the business may reimburse at the rate — with the kilometres added up. The SARS logbook itself is the Travel report.

Some trips arrive without odometer readings. An on-site appointment in the Diary logs its round trip when you first save it, and Quick Log and the WhatsApp bot log a trip from the distance you give. These carry the kilometres only, unless you add the odometer at the end of the trip on Quick Log's trip card: type it, or tap 📷 Or snap the dashboard and check the reading it fills in.

💡The per-kilometre rate is set by SARS and Worklog fills it in for you. You can see the exact rate it used on the blue box that appears once both odometer readings are in. You do not type the rate in yourself.

Change or remove a trip

Tap the trip in the list to open it, change any detail, and tap Update Trip.
To remove it instead, tap the ✕ on the right of that trip.
When it asks Remove this trip?, confirm.

A note on tax

Worklog keeps the record and does the sums, but it is not a tax adviser. SARS expects a proper logbook to back the business use you claim. With no finished logbook for a year you can type your own estimate of your business use, but SARS can ask you to prove it, and a logbook is the proof it accepts.

💡For the logbook, open Travel under Scheduling Reports and tap Vehicle & logbook. Add your vehicle, its registration and the tax year's opening (1 March) and closing (end February) odometer readings, and the report shows your business and private kilometres.

Still stuck? Open the in-app help assistant, or email us at hello@worklogsolutions.co.za.

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