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On the desk is a witness questionnaire from the fines office. The van was caught by a speed camera three weeks ago, and the authority wants to know who was driving. The Outlook calendar says "Van, site visit" for that day, nothing more. Then someone asks whether you should have been keeping a logbook all along.
The answer depends on who is asking for the logbook. The tax office, the road traffic authority, and your own organization each mean something different. This article sorts out the three for Germany, shows what a usage log for pool vehicles should contain, and gives you a template to copy. It is general information, not legal or tax advice. For your specific case, talk to your tax advisor.
Not in general. A logbook (Fahrtenbuch) becomes necessary in three situations:
For a pure pool vehicle with a ban on private use, point 1 usually does not apply, and point 2 only applies once it is too late. You should still keep a usage log.
If employees may also use a company car privately, that is a taxable benefit (§ 8 (2) EStG). The default is the 1% rule: each month 1% of the gross list price, plus 0.03% of the list price per kilometer of distance if the car is also used for the commute. If you want to tax only the actual private share instead, you need a proper logbook and receipts for the vehicle's total costs.
What goes into it is set out in the wage tax guidelines (R 8.1 (9) no. 2 LStR). For each business trip:
For private trips the distances are enough, and for the commute between home and the first place of work a short note is.
The form matters just as much. According to the Federal Fiscal Court (BFH), a logbook has to be kept promptly and in closed form, and it has to show the trips completely and in continuous sequence (judgment of 9 November 2005, VI R 27/05). For an electronic solution, later changes have to be technically impossible or at least documented in the file itself. An Excel sheet does not meet that bar (judgment of 16 November 2005, VI R 64/04), and neither does a notebook pieced together after the fact from the calendar and memory.
The tax question only comes up if private trips or the commute are allowed. A pool vehicle that may only be driven for business creates no taxable benefit. Where there is nothing to value, you do not need a logbook to value it.
The ban does have to be provable, though. Under the Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF) letter of 3 March 2022 on providing company vehicles to employees (para. 19), it is proven by documents such as a provision in the employment contract or another basis in employment or civil service law, and those documents belong in the payroll record (Lohnkonto). A verbal announcement in a team meeting is not enough. A written basis that covers the ban on private use, booking and the usage record in one document can be put together with the free pool vehicle use agreement, as a PDF or Word file.
The BFH takes such bans seriously. There is no general rule of experience that vehicles from the employer's fleet are always available to one or more employees for private use (judgment of 21 April 2010, VI R 46/08). Even for an employed managing director, it cannot simply be assumed that a ban on private use was only issued for show (judgment of 21 March 2013, VI R 42/12).
Our assessment: a ban on paper is one thing. If a wage tax audit asks whether the vehicles really were only used for business, a record showing who had which vehicle when, and how many kilometers were driven, helps. That is not a tax logbook, but it shows you take your ban seriously.
The situation changes once a pool vehicle may go home overnight, for example for on-call duty. Then the commute or private use can become relevant for tax. Vehicle pools have their own calculation: a flat 1% of the list prices of all pool vehicles, divided by the number of authorized users (BMF letter of 3 March 2022, para. 14, and H 8.1 (9-10) LStH, entry "Fahrzeugpool"). Settle that with your tax advisor before the first key stays out overnight.
Fines and logbook orders. If it cannot be established who was driving after a traffic offense, the authority may order the vehicle keeper to keep a logbook for one or more vehicles under § 31a StVZO. Before each trip, the driver's surname, first name and address, the license plate, and the date and time the trip starts then have to be entered; after the trip, without delay, the date and time it ended, with a signature. The book has to be kept for six months after the order expires. This duty has nothing to do with tax. Businesses should not rely on "we don't know who was driving": the Higher Administrative Court of North Rhine-Westphalia considers it proper commercial conduct to document trips in company cars over the longer term (order of 30 June 2015, 8 B 1465/14).
Stopping and parking offenses. If the driver remains unknown, the keeper bears the costs of the proceedings (§ 25a StVG).
Damage and accident prevention. Section 36 of DGUV Vorschrift 70 "Fahrzeuge", the German statutory accident insurers' regulation on vehicles, requires drivers to report any defects they notice to the supervisor in charge and, when drivers change, to the next driver as well. A damage field at return records that report. And when the insurer asks after an accident who was at the wheel, you have the answer.
Costs and maintenance. Kilometers per department or cost center, leasing mileage limits, service intervals: all of it depends on the odometer reading at pickup and return.
Names, periods, and odometer readings are personal data. Decide how long you keep them. What to consider is covered in our article on GDPR and booking data.
Copy the table into Excel, Word, or your booking system. The "Recommendation" column is our assessment for pure pool vehicles, not a legal requirement. Ready to print or as an Excel file, it is available as a free vehicle logbook template.
| Field | When | Recommendation | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vehicle (license plate) | pickup | required | attribution |
| Driver | pickup | required | fines, damage, insurance |
| Date and time | pickup and return | required | who had the vehicle when |
| Odometer | pickup and return | required | distance driven, spotting gaps |
| Purpose or destination | pickup | recommended | showing business use |
| Cost center or project | pickup | optional | allocating costs |
| Fuel level | pickup and return | optional | handing over to the next person |
| Refueled? | return | optional | reconciling the fuel card |
| Damage / remarks | return | recommended | defect reports under DGUV Vorschrift 70 |
Two additions, depending on your situation:
Vehicle, period, and the person who booked are already part of the booking. What is missing is what happens when the key changes hands. In Dispoly, the feature for that is called "Pickup & return". Admins set it up per vehicle, on the resource's detail page in the "Pickup & return" section. The "Driver logbook" template brings odometer, driver, purpose, fuel level, "Refueled?", and damage/remarks. Only the odometer is required in it; you decide which other fields are required. The other vehicles take over the setup with "Copy from resource".
| Template field | Where it comes from in Dispoly |
|---|---|
| Vehicle | the booked resource |
| Driver | template field, prefilled with the name of the person recording |
| Date and time | booking period plus the time of pickup and return |
| Odometer | counter, prefilled at pickup with the last known reading |
| Purpose, fuel level, Refueled?, damage | template fields |
| Cost center | add it yourself as a select field |
Recording. Every booking shows the "Pickup" and "Return" buttons: on the dashboard, in the reservations table, and on the vehicle's page. Any member of the organization can record, because the person driving often did not make the booking. At return the pickup reading sits next to the field, and the difference updates while you type, for example "+55 km". Guests who booked through a public booking page get a link by email and record in the browser, without an account.
Trips without a booking. Counters carry over from one booking to the next. If the vehicle was moved in between, the logbook shows the gap as kilometers "without booking". For those trips there is QR quick entry: a printable A4 PDF sign with a QR code for each vehicle that opens the form without a booking and without a login. When a booking is due, the same sign also records its pickup or return. In the app there is also the "Entry without booking", which can be back-dated.
Following up. You set the enforcement level per vehicle. With "Remind", missing entries are flagged, and if the return is missing, a reminder email goes out two hours after the booking ends. "Enforce" additionally emails the vehicle's contact person if the return is still missing after three days. Nobody gets blocked from booking. The "Handovers" tab under reservations gives you the overview.
Reporting. The logbook shows, per vehicle and month, the reading at month end, the kilometers driven, and the number of trips. The CSV or Excel export has one row per booking, plus rows for entries without a booking, with the booker, the driver, pickup and return times, and for each counter the columns pickup, return, difference, and difference without booking.
Where the line between a booking record and an electronic logbook runs is covered in Mileage and trip logs. What else belongs in the record at a handover is in our handover checklist. If you still manage the bookings themselves in Excel or Outlook, start one step earlier: Managing pool vehicles. The feature at a glance is on the vehicle logbook page.
Pickup & return is included in all plans, including Starter, at no extra cost. Trying it costs nothing: no contract, no setup fee, 30 days free.