Travel time: how to record it without inventing rules

Echipa HR 365 · reviewed 2026-09-15 · 5 min read

Most arguments about travel arise because three different situations are treated as one: the ordinary commute, the trip to a client during the working day, and the trip that takes a whole day or more. Each is recorded differently, and the rule has to be written before the first trip rather than negotiated after it.

The three situations

The case that produces every argument

The third row: the person leaves home in the morning and drives straight to a client instead of going via the office. Both positions are reasonable. They say they left earlier than usual and drove an extra hour for the company; the company says they would have made a journey to work anyway.

There is no obvious answer, which is exactly why one has to be chosen and written down. The rule most commonly used in practice is the difference: you record the time that exceeds the usual journey to the office. It is easy to explain, both sides experience it as fair, and it can be calculated without argument.

The difference rule, applied

1. Agreed once — each person’s usual journey time to the office — declared and recorded
2. On each direct trip — compare it with the actual time to the client
3. Record — only the difference, if it is positive
4. If it is shorter — nothing is deducted — the rule works in one direction only, otherwise it becomes impossible to accept

The last point looks like an inconsistency and is in fact what makes the rule work. A symmetrical rule — one that would deduct working time when the client is closer than the office — is formally logical and will be experienced as petty, so it will generate exactly the conflicts you were trying to avoid.

Trips lasting several days

Here the question is no longer about hours but about what “available” means. Someone in another town for work is not working 24 hours a day, but neither are they free in the ordinary sense — they are not at home and cannot do what they would have done on a normal evening.

• Write down explicitly which hours count as work on a day away, and how they are recorded.
• Treat the departure day and the return day separately — they are almost always asymmetrical.
• Set the rule for a weekend spent between two periods away before the case arises.
• State who decides whether they travel home between stages, and on what basis.

The third point catches organisations out on their first long trip and is the most unpleasant to negotiate retroactively, because the person is already there and the discussion happens by phone, on a Saturday.

How it appears in the timesheet

In practice, travel needs a marker of its own, distinct from an ordinary working day. The reason is that at the end of the month you want to answer two different questions: how many hours they worked, and how many days they were away — the second being what expense claims depend on and, often, the workload conversation too.

If trips are recorded as ordinary hours, that information is lost entirely: three months later you cannot say who travelled ten times and who never did — precisely the figure that matters when somebody tells you they are worn out by the driving.

Who establishes the “usual” journey time?

It is declared by the employee and recorded at hiring, or when the rule is introduced. It is not worth verifying — the stakes are small, and a rule that distrusts the declaration creates more administration than it saves.

What if one person drives the company car and another is a passenger?

Many organisations make the distinction, because driving for four hours is not the same as sitting in the passenger seat. If you make it, write it down — otherwise it becomes an individual negotiation every time.

Should I record mileage too?

If there is a reimbursement, yes, but separately from the timesheet. They are two different questions — one about time, one about cost — and mixing them complicates both.

Where to start

Write the rule for the third row of the table — the morning drive straight to a client — and communicate it before the next trip. It is the only case that produces arguments regularly and the only one fully resolved by three lines of text.