GPS Technology Can Help You Save Money

If you receive a travel allowance as part of your monthly salary, if you’re self-employed or if you’re a business owner, then you can claim a deduction on your income tax return for using your private vehicle for business purposes.

If your job requires a significant amount of car travel, then you could end up claiming a pretty sizeable chunk of cash back from the taxman each year. The catch, however, is that you can only claim returns for the actual kilometres driven in the carrying out of your business. This does not include personal travel nor travel between home and the office.

To ensure that you are claiming honourably, the South African Revenue Service (SARS) requires that you keep a logbook of your trips throughout the year. Without an impeccably kept logbook, you won’t be able to claim for travel.

Keeping a travel logbook sounds simple enough until you realise that it means writing down the details of each and every business-related trip you make. This includes the date of the trip, the kilometres you travelled, the starting location details, the destination details, and the reason for the trip.

If you drive around a lot in the course of conducting your daily business, then this means that you’ve got to do a lot of admin every time you park the car. Not only can this task be arduous and time-consuming, but it can be very easy to forget to do it at all. It can also be downright dangerous to sit in a parked car while your attention is focused on your logbook. Such behaviour can open you up to being hijacked or mugged.

Moreover, if you’re a business owner with more than one vehicle in your fleet, then the administrative burden increases significantly. More admin means more room for error, and more errors equates to money that is lost.

Record-Keeping Made Simple

Thankfully, you don’t have to keep a logbook and pen at the ready in your cubbyhole anymore. Never again will you have to sit in the parking lot, filling out details after every trip. Never again will you have to lose money on travel expense tax returns because your logbooks weren’t compliant.

Our fully SARS-compliant GPS Log Book technology can accurately record every detail of your travels for you automatically and spit out an impeccable report at the end. Once it’s been set up, simply plug it in and forget about it.

We have two devices to choose from – the GPS Log Book Classic and the GPS Log Book LiVE. The Classic is ideal for keeping track of your own personal car’s mileage, while the LiVE is perfect for business owners who want to keep track of their fleet.

The GPS Log Book Classic simply plugs into the cigarette lighter or 12 V outlet in your vehicle, doubling up as a USB charging portal while in operation. Once activated, the highly accurate GPS logs every trip.

All you have to do is plug the Classic into your computer or laptop at least once every two weeks, to upload stored trips from your device to the cloud using our automated GPS Log Book Sync Application.

The GPS Log Book LiVE is a little different in that it plugs into your car’s onboard diagnostics II (OBD-II) port.

The LiVE shares many of the same features and functions as the Classic, except that it allows you to view your vehicle in real-time on Google Maps. Unlike the Classic, the LiVE sidesteps the need to periodically remove the device to download the data onto your computer, since it uploads data to the cloud automatically in real-time.

This device allows the owner to remotely see the location, speed, position and status of the vehicle at any time. This is very useful for monitoring vehicle-bound employees and the routes travelled.

What’s more, the fact that it plugs into the OBD-II port and not the cigarette lighter means that it’s concealed and therefore less likely to be removed or tampered with. This device now comes with an extension cable that allows you to move the device around so that it is not plugged directly into the port.

Once the data from the GPS Log Book device is downloaded, our simple web-based interface, which features seamless Google Maps integration, makes it easy to create various reports and to customise locations and zones so that these are automatically recognised by the device in future – such as home or the office.

These reports include Tax Detailed Reports, Tax Summary Reports, Tax Business Trip Reports, Zone Detail Reports, Trip Lists and the most popular one: Business Travel Claims.

Use our Claims Calculator to find out how much you could be saving with GPS Log Book and start saving on your business travel by keeping SARS compliant digital records the smart and easy way. Get ready for Tax Season this month only! use voucher code: “FEB2022” and receive R200 off each device (valid through February 2022 only).