Log a trip
New entrySaved places
Recent trips
All trips
| Date | Start | Destination | Purpose | Client | Vehicle | Miles | Rate | Amount | Source |
|---|
No trips yet.
Log your first drive on the Log Trip tab, or restore a backup from Settings.
Filters
By client / entity
| Client / entity | Trips | Miles | Deduction |
|---|
By month
| Month | Trips | Miles | Deduction |
|---|
Rate subtotals
Split automatically when a range crosses a rate change| Rate period | Rate | Trips | Miles | Deduction |
|---|
Export
The PDF is landscape, repeats column headers on every page, and includes odometer readings, business-use %, rate subtotals and an attestation block with signature lines.
Clients & entities
Vehicles
Branding and details
How this works
Address-based, not background GPS. You enter a start and end address — typed with autocomplete, or captured with one tap from your device's current location. Browsers cannot reliably track a vehicle in the background, and a log built from continuous GPS traces is harder to defend than dated entries with named business purposes.
Distances are routed. Driving distance comes from the road router of whichever provider you set up under Address & routing provider. If routing is unavailable, Road Companion falls back to a straight-line estimate ×1.2 and marks the trip estimated everywhere, including the PDF. You can always override with odometer miles.
Your data never leaves this device, except for optional backup to cloud storage of your choice. Everything lives in this browser's own on-device storage. There is no account, no server, no analytics. The only thing sent outside the browser is the address text you type, which goes to your chosen map provider so it can be looked up, and optional cloud backups you initiate. Road Companion is designed for a single phone — export a backup file regularly, and if you switch phones, paste that backup into the restore box on the new device to bring your log with you.
Records the IRS expects. Date, mileage, destination, and business purpose per trip, plus beginning and ending odometer readings per vehicle per year, kept contemporaneously.
Save to your Home Screen
Road Companion is a web app — it runs in your browser, not from an app store. You can save it to your Home Screen so it looks and feels like a regular app, with its own icon and full-screen view. It still works offline after you do this.
- Open this page in Safari. (It must be Safari — Chrome and other browsers on iPhone cannot save to the Home Screen.)
- Tap the Share button at the bottom of the screen — it looks like a square with an arrow pointing up.
- Scroll down the list of options and tap Add to Home Screen.
- The name defaults to "Road Companion" — you can change it if you like. Tap Add.
- You'll see the Road Companion icon on your Home Screen. Tap it to open the app full-screen, without the Safari address bar.
- Open this page in Chrome.
- Tap the three-dot menu in the top-right corner of Chrome.
- Tap Add to Home screen (or Install app on some phones).
- Tap Install or Add. The name defaults to "Road Companion".
- You'll see the Road Companion icon on your Home screen. Tap it to open the app full-screen, without the Chrome address bar.
If Chrome shows a prompt at the bottom of the screen saying "Add Road Companion to your Home screen" before you open the menu, you can tap that directly and skip the menu.
Address & routing provider
Road Companion looks up addresses and driving distances from an outside map service. Pick which one, and paste the key it gives you. Setting this up takes about three minutes and does not cost anything.
Terms & disclaimer
Backups
Auto-backup — a different thing, on this device only. Road Companion silently saves a copy of your log to this device's own storage roughly once a day when you open the app. If you ever lose your data on this same device (a browser clear, an accidental reset), tap Restore from today's auto-backup above. It never leaves the device, so it can't help you move to a new phone — use Save a backup for that.
Standard mileage rates
The 76¢ rate expires December 31 of the current tax year. The IRS normally publishes the following year's rate in late December, so add a row here effective January 1 of the next year as soon as it's released. Until you do, Road Companion will refuse to value a trip in a year with no rate on file rather than quietly apply a stale rate.
IRS standard mileage rates| Category | Effective from | Through | Rate ($/mi) |
|---|
Danger zone
Deletes every trip, client, vehicle, saved place and setting stored on this device. Export a backup first.