Back to blog
Blog
End the booking chaos today.
30-day free trial. No credit card required.
Blog
30-day free trial. No credit card required.
"We really should keep a trip log." The sentence comes up regularly in businesses, usually right after a fine has turned up that nobody can attribute to anyone. What they almost always mean is something simpler: knowing who had the vehicle and at what reading it came back.
It pays to keep apart the two questions a clean usage log answers: who had the vehicle, and at what mileage it came back. And then there is one more trip log, the one you would rather never have to keep.
1. Who had the vehicle? This is the keeper question. When a fine arrives, a scratch turns up, or an accident has to be cleared up, you need a defensible link between vehicle, period, and person. That requires a traceable usage log.
This is where the trip log nobody wants comes in. If the driver cannot be identified after a traffic offense, the responsible authority can order the registered keeper to keep a trip log under § 31a StVZO. For every single trip, that log then needs the driver's first name, last name, and address, the license plate, and the date and time the trip starts, and after the trip the date and time with a signature. A usage log that puts a name on every trip helps you answer the question of who was driving before it gets that far.
2. How many kilometers were driven? This is the operations question: service intervals, leasing mileage limits, allocating costs to departments. Mileage at pickup and return is enough, captured by the person who is sitting in the vehicle anyway.
To keep the first two questions permanently answered you need less than you might think, but it has to be reliable:
An earlier version of this post recommended making mileage a required field in the booking form. That was a workaround, and a weak one: at booking time nobody knows the reading the vehicle will come back with. Since September 2026 Dispoly has a feature built for this. It is called Pickup & return, and it comes with counters that carry over from one booking to the next.
Admins set the feature up on the resource's detail page, in the "Pickup & return" section. For vehicles there is the "Driver logbook" template (in German "Fahrtenbuch") with odometer, driver, purpose, fuel level, "Refueled?", and damage/remarks. The odometer is already set up as a required field. You can change everything afterwards. The field types are text, number, select, and counter. Each field is asked at pickup, at return, or at both, and is either optional or required. A cost center, for example, becomes a select field at pickup. A vehicle can have up to 20 fields, up to 8 of them counters. Damage is recorded as text. Dispoly does not capture photos or signatures.
Enter the current odometer reading right when you set up the counter. If you run several identical vehicles, set up one and bring the settings over to the others with "Copy from resource".
Every booking shows the buttons "Pickup" and "Return": on the dashboard, in the reservations table, and on the resource page. Any member of the organization can record, not only the person who booked. The recorder's name is stored, and the "Driver" field is prefilled with it.
Guests who booked through a public booking page need no account for this. They get a link in the confirmation email, in the approval email, and in the reminder 24 hours before the start, and they record in the browser, with no app and no login. The link works until 90 days after the booking ends.
Because Dispoly knows the last reading, it calculates the differences per trip and per month on its own. When the reading at a pickup does not match the previous return, the gap shows up in the logbook as kilometers "without booking". That is how you notice a vehicle was moved without anyone booking it. Corrections are possible by the person who recorded the entry, the person who booked, or an admin. The original value stays visible.
Not every trip has a booking. For the spontaneous drive to the workshop, a corrected reading, or a fire department callout, there are two routes:
Both land in the logbook marked "Without booking". If the key rack already has the QR code for your booking page, label both signs clearly, or someone will scan the wrong one.
How strictly entries are expected is a per-vehicle setting called "Enforcement":
No level blocks bookings. In Reservations, the "Handovers" tab shows admins what is being picked up today, what is out or overdue, and where a return or a pickup is missing. From there you record on someone's behalf, copy the guest link, or send a reminder with "Remind now". The "Handovers" card on the dashboard is visible to all members.
Every vehicle has a logbook with a month selector. Per counter it shows the reading at month end, the difference within the month, and the number of trips. Below that you find the individual entries with markers such as corrected, late entry, cancelled, via link, and without booking.
The export comes as CSV or Excel, for one vehicle or for all, one month at a time. Each booking is one row, and entries without a booking get rows of their own. Per counter there are columns for pickup, return, difference, and difference without booking, plus a "Driver" column. Numbers arrive as real numbers, German Excel included. The reservations export additionally shows "Picked up at", "Returned at", and whether the logbook is complete, and the resource export shows the current reading per counter.
Pickup & return is included in all plans, Starter too, at no extra cost.
| Question | What you need | With Dispoly |
|---|---|---|
| Who had the vehicle? | Vehicle, period, and person in one record | Yes: booking plus name at pickup and return |
| How many kilometers were driven? | Reading at pickup and return | Yes: counters with difference per trip and month, export as CSV or Excel |
| Trip log ordered under § 31a StVZO | Name, address, times, and signature per trip | No, Dispoly has no signatures |
For the vast majority of fleets with pool vehicles, the sensible order looks like this:
Two pages show what this looks like day to day: the vehicle logbook for pool cars and the handover checklist for shared resources. The page for fleets covers the whole fleet including trailers and equipment, the page for company cars covers shared company cars. For the organizational side of the pool model, see Managing pool vehicles.
Already have a mileage list in Excel? The free mileage gap checker shows where kilometers without an entry are hiding in it. For a step-by-step look at recording with a QR code at the vehicle, see Record the odometer with a QR code.
Trying it costs nothing: no contract, no setup fee, 30 days free.