Logbook guide
Keeping a travel logbook for SARS
If you receive a travel allowance from your employer or principal, SARS lets you claim a deduction for business travel when you’re assessed, and the claim rests on a logbook. This page sums up what SARS asks that logbook to show, and how TaxmanSeKilos records each part.
Checked against SARS’s own page on claiming for travel on 12 October 2026. SARS’s page is the authority: read it for the full rules, and for SARS’s eLogbook template for each tax year.
What SARS asks the logbook to show
The year’s odometer readings
The tax year runs from 1 March to the last day of February. Record the odometer reading on 1 March and the closing reading on the last day of February. Your total kilometres for the year are the closing reading less the opening one.
Every business trip
For each business trip, record at least:
- the date;
- the kilometres travelled;
- where you started, where you went, and the reason for the trip.
Add up your business kilometres for the year. You don’t have to record details of private travel, but it’s part of the year’s total.
What doesn’t count as business
Travel between your home and your place of work can’t be claimed as business travel.
More than one vehicle
Keep a separate logbook for each vehicle you used.
If you claim your actual costs
Keep an accurate record of all your vehicle expenses for the year as well as the logbook.
How long to keep it
Keep your logbook for at least five years from the date you submitted your return.
You may use SARS’s own eLogbook template, but SARS doesn’t say you must: a logbook that shows the details above is what counts.
How TaxmanSeKilos keeps it
Readings that add up
Every trip runs from one odometer reading to the next, so the kilometres in your logbook always add up to what the odometer shows. On 1 March the app reminds you to record your odometer reading: with a notification if you allow it, and with a banner on the home screen until you’ve recorded it. That one reading is both the closing reading of the year that ended the day before and the opening reading of the new one, so the SARS logbook export uses it for both, next to the year’s total, business and private kilometres. The export says which readings are your recorded 1 March readings; if one is missing, it takes that reading from the year’s trips and says so. You can add a past year’s reading from the vehicle’s edit sheet.
Each trip’s date, distance, place and reason
Every trip has its date, its start and end readings, where it started and where it went. The starting point fills in from the previous trip’s destination; tap it to choose your Home or Office place or a recent destination, or type another. A business trip also has its purpose and client, which together make up the details of business travel.
Business or private
Mark each trip business or private. Driving between home and work is private, so log it as private. If kilometres go missing between two readings, the app shows the gap, and one tap logs it as private; a gap you leave open appears in the export as an “Unaccounted” row.
One logbook per vehicle
Each vehicle has its own odometer, trips and export.
Costs and receipts
Add tolls, parking and fuel to a trip, with a photo of the receipt. The bookkeeper’s workbook lists every cost with its totals, and the accountant’s PDF includes the receipt photos.
Keeping it
Export each tax year once it ends, and keep the files somewhere safe for at least five years.