Company cars: drivers, monthly entries and the private use benefit
A company car is a vehicle, a driver, a monthly reading and a tax benefit that someone has to work out. HR FLARE keeps all four in one place and passes the benefit to payroll.
How do you keep track of company cars in an HR tool?
Add each car with its price, fuel type and lease details, assign it to a driver with a handover date, and let the driver enter the odometer, photo and costs once a month. The private use benefit is calculated from rules your company controls and goes to the payroll report as a line.
In short
- Company cars is an add-on module. It is off until an owner, admin or HR switches it on, and it does not need the Equipment module.
- Drivers enter the odometer with a photo, fuel and charging costs and damage once a month. They get a reminder on the last day.
- The benefit is a percentage of the list price. Germany is pre-filled, every other country sets its own number.
The car, the driver and the history
Each car records plate, make, model, first registration, purchase date, fuel type, list price, CO2 value and electric range, whether it is owned, leased or a company car, the lease end, whether private use is allowed, a monthly fuel budget and a yearly kilometre allowance.
A car is assigned to one holder at a time. Handing it over keeps the history, and the handover can carry the driver’s commute distance. Other employees can be added as additional drivers: they see the car and can enter a month for it, but they get no benefit.
What the driver enters each month
One entry per car and month, for the current month or up to 24 months back.
| Entry | What it holds | Good to know |
|---|---|---|
| Odometer | The reading and, by default, a photo of it | A reading can never be lower than an earlier month. Companies can switch the photo requirement off. |
| Fuel and charging | Amount, day and receipt | A cost the driver paid personally can be reimbursed and becomes a payroll line. |
| Damage | What happened, the day and an optional photo | Visible to the driver and to owner, admin and HR. |
Photos and receipts sit in a private store that only the person and owner, admin and HR can open.
How the private use benefit is worked out
The benefit for one driver and one month is:
list price × (percentage + commute kilometres × commute rate) ÷ 100 × days held ÷ days in the month
The percentages are rule values, not constants in the software. Your company chooses them, and every change is dated and logged.
- Germany: the official values are pre-filled. That is 1 percent of the list price, 0.25 percent for qualifying electric cars within the price cap, 0.5 percent for qualifying plug-in hybrids, and 0.03 percent of the list price per commute kilometre. The price cap depends on the purchase date, and each pre-filled value shows its source.
- Every other country: there is no pre-filled value. The company enters one percentage, and the benefit is the list price times that percentage. Until a percentage is set, the page says so and the payroll line carries no amount.
A pool car with private use switched off gives no benefit. Only the holder has a benefit, and the holder sees their own amount.
Reminders, budgets and imports
- Month end reminder. The driver is reminded on the last day if the car has no entry yet.
- Escalation. A few days after the month ends (five by default) owner, admin and HR get one notice with the number of cars still missing an entry.
- Budget alert. When a car’s costs go above its monthly fuel budget, owner, admin and HR are told. The driver is not.
- Mileage forecast. From the monthly readings HR FLARE projects the next three months and, for a lease with an allowance, the reading at the lease end. It is labelled as an estimate.
- CSV imports. Load fuel card transactions or old odometer and cost history. You say which column holds what, run a dry run that shows each row as ready, duplicate or error, and only then commit. Duplicates are skipped, so importing the same file twice adds nothing. There is no connection to a card provider, only your file.
Into payroll, and who sees what
With the payroll report module on, the benefit becomes one line per driver, car and month, and reimbursable costs become another. A late receipt or a changed price turns into a correction in the next open month. Card imports are not reimbursable, because the company already paid them.
Owner, admin and HR see every car and every benefit. The holder and additional drivers see their own car. Managers and colleagues see neither costs nor benefits.
Frequently asked questions
Does HR FLARE work out the company car benefit?
Do drivers have to enter something every month?
Can I import fuel card data?
Is the car benefit private?
Do I need the Equipment module?
Keep reading
Stop collecting odometer photos in a chat group
One place for the car, the driver, the monthly entry and the benefit. Free up to 5 employees, no credit card.