Many small business owners in Kenya use a personal vehicle for business purposes, whether making deliveries, visiting clients, or transporting stock, but few track the associated costs carefully enough to claim them accurately.
A simple mileage log, recording the date, purpose, and distance of each business trip, provides the basis for calculating what portion of total vehicle costs, fuel, maintenance, and insurance, can reasonably be attributed to business use.
Where a vehicle is used for both personal and business purposes, only the business-use proportion of costs should be claimed as a business expense, and KRA may request evidence supporting this allocation during a review.
Businesses with dedicated delivery or company vehicles should track running costs by vehicle where multiple vehicles are used, revealing which vehicles are becoming costly to maintain and may be due for replacement.
Recording fuel receipts, maintenance invoices, and mileage logs digitally, through a service such as paperlesskenya.co.ke, makes it far easier to substantiate vehicle-related expense claims and identify rising maintenance costs before they become a significant burden.
Businesses that operate a small fleet should also consider whether a simple GPS or tracking system, beyond just supporting security, could provide more accurate mileage data than manual logs, though the cost of such a system should be weighed against the genuine value it adds for a business of that particular size. Reviewing vehicle-related costs against distance traveled periodically also helps identify whether a specific vehicle has become disproportionately expensive to maintain relative to its usage, informing timely replacement decisions rather than continuing to invest in an increasingly costly asset.
Consistent, disciplined tracking of vehicle costs meaningfully protects a business from the kind of creeping expense that goes unnoticed until it becomes significant.
Disciplined tracking of vehicle costs consistently protects a business from the kind of creeping expense that goes unnoticed until significant.
This steady, unglamorous work is, more often than not, exactly what separates a business that merely survives from one that genuinely thrives over the years ahead.
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