Business Trip Logger iPhone app

As you may or may not know, if you receive a travel allowance from your company, SARS requires you to keep a logbook of all your travelling you do in your personal car through the year. At the end of the year, you need to submit a logbook with your tax return to show what kilometers have been used for business & what have been used for personal travel.

This  from the SARS website:

The income tax system allows taxpayers who receive a travel allowance to claim a deduction for the use of their private vehicle for business purposes. In order to claim a deduction, the first step is to record your vehicle’s odometer reading on 1 March each year (the first day of the tax year for individuals) and again on the last day of February the next year (the last day of the tax year for individuals). These opening and closing readings give you your total kilometres travelled for the year. And recording your mileage will help you make an accurate claim when submitting your tax return.

TIP:  SMS your own car’s kilometre reading as on 28 February 2010 to your own cell phone for safekeeping.

Hellz, hows that tip hey. What a CLEVER idea hey….If you are still stuck in the stone ages. You can download the “logbook” in PDF format from the SARS website, and then keep scraps of paper in your car, until the dude at the car wash thinks it “rabbish” and chucks it away, never to be seen again.

Enter the Business Trip Logger iPhone app. From the smart dudes down at New Media labs, the VERY simple app allows you to record your mileage as and when you use your car for business, and then simple at the end of the year, export it to CSV, and BOOM ! you done. No Mess. No Fuss.

From the app store:

This application allows you to log all your business trips to a website. Each entry stores a client name and reason for the trip, a start odometer reading, trip distance and an end odometer reading. A list of all trips can then be downloaded as a CSV and submitted with your tax returns.

Simple hey. And it’s free. Just do yourself a favour, and get it :)