Road Trip – Keep Track of Car Maintenance and Costs

If you are like me and have a vehicle under novated lease, you need to keep track of your running costs so you can make the appropriate claims but also to help you keep track of your distance travelled which will affect your FBT liability. Otherwise, you might like to keep track of how much that aging vehicle is really costing you as time progresses.

Of course, there are a variety of solutions. Some people have spreadsheets whilst others have a whole stack of paperwork or might just make a mental note.

Personally, I use a neat little iPhone app called Road Trip (I use the full version after evaluating the lite version for a few months).

Road Trip (Fuel Tracker)

Of course, keeping track of your petrol costs and distance travelled is a must for those leasing vehicles. Road Trip makes this process a snap by entering in your odometer reading (either for the tank or your total reading), the amount of petrol you put in the tank and how much it cost. You can even add in details such as where the petrol station was located as well as the payment method.

Road Trip (Expense Tracker)

Another significant component of a novated lease are  the maintenance costs. You can keep track of servicing, minor repairs as well as insurance and registration payments in a similar way to how fuel is tracked.

Road Trip (Statistics)

One of the best features is the statistics screen which tracks the cost per litre of petrol, fuel economy as well as the moving average of fuel economy. It really does put things in perspective when you might have an older or less fuel economic vehicle and you are shopping around for a replacement vehicle.

If you want to track more than one vehicle or the ability to export results to Excel, you’ll need to fork out for the full version of Road Trip but at $5.99 I think it is a small price to pay to keep your tracker and statistics in your pocket.