Finance, Operations
LogMyRide
A vehicle log book that drivers fill in from a phone, and the tax form writes itself
- 5 minfrom copying the template to a live app
- 0servers, accounts or fees: it runs in your own Google Sheet
- 1stof every month, last month's Form B lands in your inbox
The problem
If a car is used for both office and personal travel, Indian income-tax rules expect a log book: Form B under Rule 6D, with every trip’s date, times, meter readings, places and purpose. Almost nobody keeps it. The paper book lives in the glovebox, the driver fills a week in one go from memory, and at year end the accountant guesses the split.
What I decided
Keep the paper book’s shape exactly, and remove every reason not to fill it in.
- The log book is a Google Sheet you own. No server, no account with me, no fees. You copy the template once and the app lives inside your copy. Everything stays in your Drive.
- Drivers never sign in. Each driver gets a personal link by email; opening it is the sign-in. They add it to the phone’s home screen and it opens like an app.
- The form is the book. Date, times, start and end meter, from and to, who used the vehicle, office or personal. “Save and add next” carries the end place and meter forward, so three trips take a minute.
- The owner audits, the driver does not. The owner can flip a trip between office and personal, add a remark and mark a period as audited. Audited trips lock for drivers, who get an email.
What it does
- Report for this month, last month or any dates: start and end meter, total kilometres, the office and personal split, and the kilometres nobody logged between one trip’s end and the next one’s start.
- Form B as a PDF to print or share, or as an Excel file to work on. On a phone, share straight to WhatsApp or email.
- On the first of every month, last month’s Form B arrives by email without anyone asking.
- English or Hindi, light or dark, three themes, three text sizes. Drivers are not all the same age or on the same phone.
The decision I would defend
Running the app as the owner and carrying the driver’s identity in a link. The alternative, a sign-in screen, would have forced every driver to have a Google account with access to the Sheet. A link is one tap, works on any phone, and can be revoked from the owner’s screen in a second.
Lessons
- A tool built for a legal form wins when it looks like the form. Drivers trusted the screen because it matched the book they already knew.
- The monthly email is the feature people mention first. The report nobody has to remember is the one that gets read.
- Free and in-your-own-account is a product decision, not a pricing one. It is why a small business will try it at all.
Get it
LogMyRide is free to use, not to sell or rebrand. Copy the template Sheet to your own Google Drive; the setup guide is inside it, and the whole thing takes about five minutes.