Module · Vehicle trips

Where to find it in the app

• Use it: Finance → Vehicle trips
• Turn it on/off: your business name (top-left) → Settings → Modules → Finance → Vehicle trips

Plan: Solo and Business · Module group: Finance · Navigation: Finance → Vehicle trips

1. Overview

Purpose. A record of the kilometres you drive for the business, one trip at a time, with what your accountant needs on each one: the date, the odometer at the start and the end, the distance, the vehicle and why you went.

It records. It never works out a claim. There are two ways a business can claim its car in Australia, they have different rules and caps, and the rate changes every year. Which one applies and what your kilometres are worth is your registered tax agent's call, so the screen shows kilometres and nothing else. What it gives you is the record they need to make that call.

The distance fills itself in. A mobile business goes to the same houses again and again, and the round trip to a given client is the same every time. Tick Remember this distance once, and the next trip to that client arrives with the kilometres already typed. That is cheaper than a maps lookup and more accurate, because it is the route you actually drive.

Your vehicle is already in Equipment. A trip points at a vehicle from your Equipment & maintenance list, which is where its make and model already live. Put the registration in the Asset tag box and it prints on every record. A logbook identifies the car by exactly those.

2. When to use it

• You drive to clients, jobs or suppliers and want the kilometres recorded as you go rather than reconstructed in July.
• You keep, or want to start keeping, a logbook for the tax office.
• Your accountant has asked how you worked out your business kilometres.

3. Required permissions

Managers have both. Staff have the first.

4. Navigation path

Finance → Vehicle trips. Each financial year is a chip along the top; All years shows everything on record; Dates takes any two dates instead, for a period that is not a financial year. Whichever you pick, the figures, the CSV and the print all cover it.

5. What you'll see

Three figures for the year. Kilometres driven, Trips, and Without an odometer, which counts the trips missing a start or end reading. None of them is a dollar figure, on purpose.

By vehicle, when you have more than one: kilometres and trips for each.

The trips, month by month, newest first. Each shows the date, what it was for, the client, from and to, the vehicle, the odometer readings and the kilometres. Within a day the records sit in the order the car was driven, lowest odometer first, whatever order you typed them in, so the readings run forward down the page. A trip attached to a job names it, unless the purpose already says the same thing. A purpose the tax office would not accept on its own, such as business or work, carries a small too vague for the tax office tag so you can fix it.

Buttons: Log a trip, Odometer reading, CSV and Print. Inside Log a trip, By road appears once a client with an address is picked.

6. Turning it on

Your business name (top left) → Settings → Modules → Finance → Vehicle trips. It is on the Solo plan and the Business plan.

⚠️ The first time it is switched on, the database needs a small migration. Until then the page says so and the buttons are disabled. Whoever runs your HappierBiz setup runs it once.

7. Step-by-step tasks

7a. Log a trip

1. Finance → Vehicle trips → Log a trip.
2. Date. Today is filled in. A trip is recorded after it is driven, so a future date is refused.
3. Vehicle. Pick your car or van. If the list is empty, add it under Equipment & maintenance first, with the registration as its Asset tag.
4. Job, optional, and there when your business uses the Jobs tool. Type the job number or what it is. Picking one fills in the client, where you drove and the purpose, and the kilometres too when a distance is remembered for that client. The job then shows the kilometres driven to it. A job reference makes a stronger purpose than a sentence typed after a drive, because it points at work somebody can look up.
5. Client, optional. Start typing a name. If you have remembered a distance for them, the kilometres fill in when you pick them, and their suburb goes in To. For a client with an address on file, By road measures the road distance from your business address to theirs and offers it each way and there and back, in whole kilometres. Use fills the kilometres box. It is an estimate of the shortest route, not the route you drove, so the odometer readings stay the record, and once you have driven it, Remember this distance keeps the real figure for next time.
6. What was the trip for? Be specific: Guided home session, Nguyen rather than work. The tax office does not accept a one word purpose, and the box tells you when yours is too thin. Your own recent purposes are offered as chips.
7. From and To, optional.
8. Odometer at the start and at the end, optional but worth doing: the logbook method needs both on every trip. At the start is filled in with the vehicle's last recorded reading; change it if the dash says otherwise. The last few digits are enough in either box: after 84,200, typing 252 reads as 84,252 when you leave the box, and 005 after 84,990 rolls over to 85,005. Type the whole figure and it is taken exactly as typed. A reading below where the vehicle was last recorded is flagged in the box as you type, and one that contradicts another record outright, such as a figure the car had already passed on an earlier day, is refused when you save, naming the record it clashes with.
9. Kilometres, the whole trip. The three boxes work in every direction. Type both readings and the kilometres fill in. Type the kilometres against a start reading and the end reading fills in, and it moves if you change the kilometres. Correct the start reading and whichever figure was worked out follows it. A figure you typed yourself is never overwritten. There and back, if you came back.
10. Tick Remember this distance for [client] if you want the next trip to them to fill in by itself.
11. Log trip.

7b. Record an odometer reading

The logbook method wants the odometer at the start and end of each financial year. Odometer reading records one figure on one day against a vehicle, with no distance and no client. Do it on 1 July and 30 June, or as near as you can.

7c. Edit or remove a trip

Edit on any trip you logged. A manager can edit anybody's. Remove asks first and takes the kilometres off the year's total.

7d. Hand it to your accountant

Both cover the period chosen at the top: a financial year, all years, or any two dates under Dates. So if your accountant wants a period that is not a financial year, such as 1 April to 31 March for a car the business owns and an employee drives, set the dates and download from there.

CSV downloads every trip in the period as one row each, in a logbook's columns: date, type, driver, vehicle, registration, from, to, purpose, odometer start, odometer end, kilometres, client, job, notes. Kilometres are a plain number so the column can be summed.

Print gives you the record as a page to save as a PDF, one section per vehicle, with the totals at the top and, at the foot, plain facts about the record: how many trips have no odometer, how many have no vehicle, how many have a purpose the tax office would not accept, and whether the year's start and end readings are there.

8. Examples

A regional organiser. Sarah drives from home to a client in Drummond Cove and back, 46 km. She logs it with both odometer readings, picks the client, and ticks Remember. Every later visit to that client arrives with 46 km filled in; she only touches it if she detoured.

A cleaner with two cars. The van and the hatchback are both in Equipment. Each trip is logged against the car that made it, and By vehicle shows the split, which is what a logbook needs.

Year end. On 30 June she records an odometer reading for the van, downloads the CSV, prints the record, and sends both to her accountant with the profit and loss.

9. Reports & exports

• CSV, one row per trip or reading, logbook columns, kilometres as a number.
• Print, the record by vehicle with the completeness facts, to save as a PDF.

Neither contains a rate, a dollar figure or a claim.

10. Common mistakes

• "Work" as the purpose. Not accepted by the tax office on its own. Name the client or the errand.
• Odometer readings the wrong way round. The end must be at least the start; the form refuses it and says so.
• A reading the car has already passed. An odometer counts up, so a trip cannot read lower than a figure recorded on an earlier day, and two trips on one day cannot cover the same kilometres. Both are refused. A trip typed up out of order on the same day is allowed, with the figure flagged so you can check it.
• Forgetting the year's readings. The logbook method wants the odometer on the first and last day of the financial year. The printed record tells you if they are missing.
• Expecting a dollar figure. There is not one, by design. The claim is worked out by your accountant from this record.

11. Troubleshooting

The page says the module is not switched on at the database. Migration 485 has not been run. Whoever runs your HappierBiz setup runs it once and the page fills in.

My vehicle is not in the list. Add it under Equipment & maintenance. Only active equipment is offered; a written off vehicle keeps its name on old trips but is not offered for new ones.

The end reading changed when I typed the kilometres. That is the running odometer: the end reading is the start plus the kilometres, and it follows the distance you type. Type the end reading itself if you would rather the kilometres follow it.

The end reading did not fill in. A distance with a decimal (46.5) cannot make an exact whole reading, so the kilometres stand on their own. Round it, or type the end reading.

The start reading is wrong. It is offered from the highest figure on record for that vehicle, whoever drove it. Type over it; nothing you type is changed.

The box says the reading is lower than the last one. The vehicle is recorded at a higher figure already. Either the figure on the dash was read short, or the earlier record has a typo in it. The trip still saves, because a trip typed up days late is ordinary, but it is worth a look while the drive is fresh.

It refuses a reading and names another trip. That reading cannot be true alongside the one it names: an odometer counts up, so nothing can sit below a figure the car had already reached, above a figure it reads on a later day, or across kilometres another trip has already recorded. Correct whichever of the two is wrong.

By road says to add your business address first. The distance is measured from your business address, set under Settings. Add it and press the button again.

By road cannot place the client's address. The address on their profile is incomplete or misspelt. Fix it there; a suburb and state are enough for a rough figure, a street address for a good one.

By road could not work out the distance. The routing service did not answer. Type the kilometres from the odometer, or try again later.

There is no Job field on the form. Either this business does not use the Jobs tool, or your role does not open it. The trip still records perfectly well without one; a job reference is only a stronger purpose.

I need a period that is not a financial year. Dates at the top of the year chips takes any two dates. The panel says "Pick both dates" until both are there, and it will not accept a second date earlier than the first. Back to the year returns to the financial year chips.

I cannot see a colleague's trips. Seeing other people's trips needs the See everyone's trips permission.

12. Error messages