Search for an ATO approved logbook app and you will find apps describing themselves that way. It is worth knowing what the phrase can and cannot mean before you choose one on the strength of it.
There is no approval list
The ATO does not certify, approve, endorse, or maintain a register of logbook apps. There is no process to apply to, no assessment to pass, and no mark to be granted. An app cannot be ATO approved because there is nothing to be approved by.
What the ATO does is set out what a record must contain. Any app, spreadsheet, notebook, or printed template that produces a record meeting those requirements is acceptable. Any that does not, is not, however it markets itself.
So the phrase “ATO approved” in this category means one of two things: a loose shorthand for “meets the requirements”, or a claim that should not have been made. Neither is a reason to choose a product. The question worth asking is narrower and answerable: does this record contain everything the ATO requires?
What the ATO actually says about electronic records
Electronic records are explicitly acceptable. The ATO’s position is that you can use any electronic device or app to keep your records, subject to the same requirements that apply to any record:
- the record must be a true and clear copy of the original
- it must be in English
- it must be kept for the required period and be retrievable throughout it
Source: ATO, keeping records.
There is no preference for paper, and no penalty for using an app. A phone in your pocket is a better fit for the contemporaneous requirement than a notebook in the glovebox, because entries have to be made at the end of each journey or as soon as possible afterwards.
What an app has to capture
Judge any logbook app against the requirements, not the marketing. For each journey during the logbook period, the record needs:
- the reason for the journey
- the destination
- the odometer reading at the start and at the end
- the total kilometres
And for the period as a whole: start and end dates, start and end odometer readings, total kilometres, work-related kilometres, and the resulting business-use percentage. Full detail in what a logbook has to contain.
An app that records GPS distance but never asks for an odometer reading is not producing a compliant logbook, however accurate its tracking is. An app that files trips into categories but has no free-text purpose is missing the field that establishes deductibility. Both are common.
Questions to ask before you rely on one
- Does it capture odometer readings, or only GPS distance
- Can you record a purpose in your own words, not just a category
- Does it enforce a continuous twelve week period, or let one quietly lapse
- Can you export the full record as a PDF or CSV, without the app
- Will the export still be readable in five years
- What happens to the record if you stop paying, or the company closes
The last two matter more than they look. Records have to be kept for years after you last rely on them, which is usually well beyond the life of the phone. See how long to keep your logbook and receipts and where your logbook data lives.
Whether the app is where the risk sits
Mostly it is not. The requirements that fail in practice are behavioural rather than technical: a period that ran eleven weeks, a purpose column that says “work” forty times, odometer readings written up in October from memory.
A good app helps with exactly those, by prompting at the right moments and by making an entry cheap enough to make at the time. That is a real advantage over a notebook, and it is a different claim from being approved.
LogSprint records every field listed above and exports the finished logbook as a PDF and CSV. It is not ATO approved, because no app is. What it does is record what the ATO requires, on the day the journey happened.