Track Your Business Mileage for Revenue: The Irish Trip Logbook

Who needs an Irish mileage logbook

Not everyone who owns a car claims mileage — but if you do, the logbook is not optional. It's the evidence base for every claim. The people who genuinely need one:

• Company directors claiming mileage from their own company at civil service rates — director-employed trips
• Employees reimbursed at civil service rates — site visits, client meetings, conferences, training days where the employer pays travel on Revenue-approved rates
• Sole traders tracking actual motor expenses — where you need to prove the business-use percentage of your total motoring costs for your Form 11
• Company-car drivers — under the BIK regime, your benefit-in-kind tax rate depends on your business mileage for the year. Our Company Car BIK Ireland guide covers the 2026 rate table and why business mileage is directly in your pocket
• Contractors and consultants — where your invoice to the client includes mileage at civil service rates
• Anyone with a second-employment claim for travel between workplaces (not commute from home)

What Revenue actually requires

Revenue's guidance is specific about the minimum content of a business mileage log. For every trip you claim:

• Date of the trip
• Starting point (address or named location)
• Destination (address or named location)
• Business purpose — why the trip was made (meeting client X, inspecting site Y, attending conference Z). "Work" is not enough
• Distance in kilometres
• Vehicle engine size and CO2 / EV status — because it determines which rate column applies
• Cumulative year-to-date business distance — the rate changes as you cross band thresholds, so running totals matter

Records must be kept for 6 years from the end of the relevant tax year. If Revenue opens an audit, the logbook is the primary evidence — a rough memory of "I did about 800 km this month" will not support a claim.

Current civil service rates — quick reference

The Department of Public Expenditure's civil service rates have been in force since 1 September 2022 and remain the approved rates for Revenue-reimbursed business travel in April 2026. Three engine bands, four distance bands, applied cumulatively in the tax year:

EV drivers claim under the 1201–1500cc column — there's no separate flat EV rate. For complete rate tables including Reduced Rates (training/course travel), eating-on-site, overnight and subsistence rates, see our Mileage Rates Irelandguide.

The current options — and their problems

Without a dedicated tool, Irish drivers claiming mileage usually fall into one of four patterns:

• A notebook in the glovebox — accurate at the moment of logging, but the notebook gets lost, smudged or left at home. Entries become illegible. At year-end, the accountant spends an hour decoding it for you at her hourly rate
• A spreadsheet — better, but tedious. Every trip is a fresh row. Columns for date / from / to / km / purpose / engine band, and you forget to update the running total. Six years of backups if you actually want records Revenue will accept
• MileIQ, Driversnote or TripLog — solid international apps but none of them natively implement the Irish four-band civil service rate structure. MileIQ uses a single user-set rate (IRS-style, flat). Driversnote supports many countries but historically hasn't had the full Irish banded structure built in. TripLog is US/UK-centric
• Nothing — the most common option. "I'll remember." A significant percentage of Irish small-business motoring claims are supported by no logbook at all, and those are the claims Revenue targets in an audit

How odo.ie Pro's trip logbook works

The logbook is designed around how Irish mileage claims actually work — three trip types, period filters, categorical totals, and a PDF export your accountant will recognise on sight.

Trip types

• Business — claimable at civil service rates. Client visits, site inspections, meetings, conferences, supplier collections, training courses
• Commute — home-to-main-workplace. Not Revenue-claimable under standard rules but tracked separately for your own analysis (and for commute tax-benefit schemes if applicable)
• Private — personal driving. Important for sole traders who claim actual motor expenses at a business-use percentage — the logbook computes the ratio across any period

Logged fields per trip

• Date + time
• From (starting point)
• To (destination)
• Distance (km, entered directly or via a simple calculation if round-trip)
• Purpose (free-text — the Revenue-required "business purpose")
• Route (optional, for trips where specific route matters)
• Vehicle (if you have multiple cars, logged per vehicle)
• Trip type (Business / Commute / Private)

Period filters

The logbook's period selector lets you view any of:

• This month (current)
• Last month
• Last 3 months
• Year-to-date
• Last year
• Any specific year with data (dynamic "year pills" appear for every historical year)

The category totals (Business / Commute / Private km) update instantly when you switch period, and so does the export. Custom date ranges are on the roadmap.

Exports

• CSV — every trip row, filterable in a spreadsheet, matching the Revenue-required fields. Ideal for reconciling against fuel receipts or client invoices
• Print-ready PDF — period-scoped, categorised by trip type, with totals per category and a summary row for the whole period. Designed to drop straight onto an Irish accountant's desk

A typical month with odo.ie Pro

1. Tuesday morning: drive to a client site in Galway. In the car park afterwards, open odo.ie on your phone, tap "Add trip", enter Dublin → Galway client-meeting, 210 km, Business. 30 seconds
2. Wednesday afternoon: collect office supplies from a supplier. Add trip: office → supplier, 18 km, Business
3. Friday: normal commute. Add trip: home → office, 28 km, Commute (not claimable but tracked)
4. Saturday: school sports + shopping. Add trip: 45 km total, Private
5. End of month: switch the period selector to "This month". Business total = 250 km. Commute = 140 km. Private = 180 km. Export PDF
6. Tax time: switch to "Year to date" or "Last year". Export PDF. Email to your accountant. Your claim is backed with a documented, date-stamped, period-scoped record

odo.ie vs MileIQ, Driversnote and TripLog

The international apps are mature and genuinely good — but none of them are Irish. For Irish drivers specifically:

The case for odo.ie Pro is simple: if you drive for business in Ireland, using a tool that understands Revenue's rules natively means your log is compliant by construction rather than by post-hoc formatting.

Pricing — does it pay back?

odo.ie Pro is €8/month or €6/month billed yearly(two months free on the annual plan). For most Irish business drivers, the logbook alone justifies the subscription:

• One hour of accountant time at year-end typically costs €80–€150 — more than a full Pro annual subscription
• A single disallowed mileage claim in an audit can cost hundreds, plus interest and penalties
• Business-use-percentage documentation for sole traders can save €500–€2,000/year in legitimately claimed motor expenses — money left on the table without a clean record
• BIK-band documentation for company-car drivers — under the 2026 rules, moving from the highest business-mileage band to the lowest costs about 9 percentage points of OMV. On a €40,000 car, that's ~€3,600/year of BIK. Clean logs directly protect your payroll

Join the Pro waitlist at odo.ie/pro — we'll email you when the logbook launches and you can try it for 14 days before being charged.

Frequently asked questions