Employee Mileage Logs with Forms and Approvals in Folderit

An employee mileage log should let Finance answer a few ordinary questions: who made the journey, which vehicle they used, why they travelled and who reviewed the entry. In Folderit, you can collect those details in an eForm, keep each journey as a searchable record and route it through a configured approval process.

This setup suits a company that wants staff to enter business journeys and managers to review them. It uses entered trip data. Distance calculations, reimbursement rates and payment processing belong in the calculation or accounting process your organisation chooses.

Choose one journey per record or one record per period

For a company driving diary, start with one journey per record when you need to find, correct or approve individual trips. Employee, vehicle and journey date can then be separate columns in the folder. A manager can review a disputed trip without holding up every other entry for the month.

A weekly or monthly record with a Table field is another option. It reduces the number of records, but the workflow concerns the whole record. Choose it when the period is the unit you actually review. Check how you will retrieve and report individual table rows before committing to that design.

The example below uses one record per journey and kilometres throughout. Use a single distance unit for each process, or add a required unit field if both miles and kilometres are needed.

Build the trip form

Open Admin tools → Form templates, select +Template and create a form named Business journey. Add the following fields. The labels are a suggested starting point; your company can adapt them.

For employees who are not Folderit users, choose an appropriate employee identifier and submission arrangement separately. Do not assume a User field or permission setting creates a public submission portal.

Folderit’s eForms guide explains the field types and required-field settings. Forms do not autosave, so keep the first submission short enough to complete in one sitting.

Adapt the log to your reporting requirements

Agree the recordkeeping requirements with the person who handles your company’s expenses before rolling out the form. In the United States, the IRS Publication 463 recordkeeping guidance includes an example daily mileage log with dates, destinations, business purposes, odometer readings and distance. In the United Kingdom, HMRC’s guidance on employees’ travel-expense records discusses mileage details for business journeys in an employee’s own car or a company car.

Those are jurisdiction-specific references. Choose the required fields, distance unit, reimbursement policy and retention period for your organisation; an approval workflow does not determine whether a journey qualifies for tax relief.

Give records useful names and columns

Set a record name pattern using the actual field slugs shown for your form. If the slugs are journey-date and vehicle-reference, a pattern such as Journey {journey-date} — {vehicle-reference} makes entries easier to recognise. Display naming and automatic record numbering are separate settings.

Create a Business journeys folder, then use Columns to show Employee, Vehicle reference, Journey date, Distance in km and Exception. Users create a record by opening the folder, choosing Business journey from the arrow beside Upload, completing the form and submitting it.

Use the same vehicle reference across journey records and your asset register, so colleagues can find the vehicle’s ownership and supporting documents without changing its identity when the driver changes.

Use the employee and date fields when searching for a month’s entries. A monthly distance total is a separate reporting calculation; displaying a numeric field does not by itself calculate a sum.

Route exceptions for an additional check

For a small team, a fixed operations reviewer is a straightforward starting point. Configure a Workflow Designer automation for newly created Business journey records in the intended folder scope. Restrict the starting point by form type and location so unrelated records do not enter the process.

Add a Condition step that checks whether Exception equals None. Connect its true path to the normal approval. Connect the false path to an additional review before approval. Because Exception is required, an empty value should not be mistaken for a normal trip.

1. Employee submitsTrip details become a record.
2. Condition checks the entryExceptions take an additional review path.
3. Reviewer decidesThe decision stays with the journey record.

If Finance needs to add information first, use a Fill fields task. Show the journey details for reference, but make only Finance note editable for that task. Place it before the approval stage. Configure recipients explicitly; adding a Manager field to the form does not itself route the workflow.

A rejected journey needs a defined next step. Decide who corrects the entry and how it returns for review. If you add a workflow deadline, remember that Due by is informational; the separate Timeout setting determines whether an automation takes a timeout route. The Workflow Designer guide covers these settings.

Try the process with three sample journeys

These fictional examples give you a small acceptance check before rollout.

Also sign in as an ordinary employee to check which journeys they can see and edit. An Employee field describes a record; it does not create an access restriction. Use the appropriate folder and item permissions, and test them with the roles involved.

Keep the first rollout to one team. Once its entries can be submitted, corrected, approved and retrieved reliably, reuse the design for other teams. The form can support your recordkeeping process; any jurisdiction-specific tax fields, mileage rates or retention requirements need to be determined separately.

To set up the example, start with Folderit form templates, then configure the approval process your reviewers will use.