Mileage Log

A row per trip, with both odometer readings

Date, start reading, end reading, miles driven, and what the trip was for. An optional column marks each trip business or personal, and a totals strip runs along the bottom.

Twelve to twenty-eight rows. Header fields for the vehicle, the month and the year can be printed or left off.

Why both readings, when one number would do

Because the two readings are evidence and the miles column is a claim.

A log recording only "42 miles" cannot be checked by anybody, yourself included. Start and end readings can be reconciled against each other across a month and against the odometer itself, and that is what makes the record hold up if anyone ever asks. It catches your own arithmetic slips too. Those accumulate quietly.

Write the end reading when you stop, not later. A number reconstructed on Sunday from memory is a guess wearing a number's clothes.

What tax authorities generally want

Details vary by country and they change, so check your own current rules rather than taking a printable's word for anything. The requirements overlap a great deal in practice. This sheet carries a column for every one of the usual ones — the date, the destination or purpose, the mileage, and a way to separate business use from personal.

The two things people most often fail to keep are the purpose of each trip and a record of the year's opening and closing odometer readings. Write a real purpose — "client visit, Leeds" rather than "work" — and note the reading on the first and last day of the year somewhere safe.

Contemporaneous beats complete

A log filled in as you go, with a few gaps, is worth more than a tidy one written up in April from a diary.

Keep the sheet in the car with a pen clipped to it. The single biggest reason mileage records fail is that the log lives on a desk and the driving happens somewhere else.

The business/personal column

Worth having if the same vehicle does both, which is most people's situation.

The rule that catches people out in several jurisdictions is that ordinary commuting between home and a regular workplace is usually personal rather than business. Mark it honestly — a log where every trip is business is the pattern that attracts attention.

Settings and printing

Title, rows (12–28), the business/personal column, and the header fields. A4 or US Letter, printed at 100%.

One sheet a month at twenty rows, kept in a folder, is a system that survives a year. Twenty-eight rows suits heavy driving. Twelve suits the occasional business trip in a car that is mostly private.