This modul uses position data of the cars to determine expenses for your employees.

Common

Expenses will be payed if an employee must work outside of his working place. Also he cannot be at his principal residence. This time calls absence. The legislator published on yearly base lists with legal costs rates for each country. These rates are the basis of expenses calculation. For calculation are needed information about first working place or the principal residence for each employee.

Expenses are divided in:

1. Absence over 8 hours (arrival and departure)
2. Absence of 24 hours
3. over night

Expenses will be calculated according German law for companies which are located in Germany. The calculation runs over night and it calculates expenses until day before yesterday.

Configuration

You have to assign a first wrking place and a principal residence for your personnel to get calculated expenses automatically. In addition you can define further working places to interrupt absence. Create and provide of working place will be explained in chapter 'working places'. You have to edit personnel data to activate expenses. Click on 'Activate expenses calculation for this person'. Choose an already defined working place and assign a validation. Expenses will be calculated from now on.

There is a possibility to assign working place for several employees in one step. Check these employees under personnel. An assistant will pop up by clicking on this symbol Image Added to assign working places.

Expenses editor

After selection of a driver and a time period  expenses will be shown in a table. Each row contains expenses for a day. Days without expenses will be shown gray.
This table shows the follow:

• day of expensesstart and end of longest absences period of this day
• duration of absence
• cars which were used in this period
• expenses region, by click on this symbol Image Added it opens an overview with border crossings of this day
• expenses for meals and accommodation
• proportionally taxation rates  (tax free, tax flat rate and taxable) of expenses for meals
• calculation base by settings
• field for comments

Entries with *1 have a period which could be used for expenses. Hover shows detail information for this period.

Entries with *2 have an expenses day but no vehicle was used.

Entries with *3 means the tax data include a pro rata calendar month.

Entries with *4 means the calculation and output of tax data is a new function and is only supported for data from 01.01.2023.

Actions

Icon	Action
Image Added	Manual edit of this expense entry
Image Added	Delete this entry
Image Added	Daily based presentation of driven route. Blue parts are related to expenses.
Image Added	Shows manually changes of this entry
Image Added	List absence times
+	Add absence (in terms of absence management).

Edit entry

Manually changes can be made with inline editor. There can be added comments to the comment field. The type of absence determines the legal standard amount according to the selected country or region. Table will be updated after saving this entry.

Export of expenses

It can be exported the current view from expenses editor as PDF, Excel or CSV. The report center gives you possiblity to generate series and export them as HTML, PDF, Excel or CSV.
A generated report contains a conclusion of costs divided in total costs, meal and accommodation for the selected period. Furthermore you will get a list of all days with expenses. Over a checkbox you can additional show taxation values.

Legal Regulations for Germany

Types of Absences

Tax Information

The legal expenses are tax-free. For example, if an employee receives €14 for an absence of over 8 hours, neither the employee nor the employer is required to pay taxes on this amount.
However, if the company's expense rates exceed the legal rates, the excess is subject to taxation. For additional subsistence allowances up to twice the tax-free rate, a 25% flat tax applies. Anything exceeding this is fully taxable.

Total Reimbursement Procedure

Expenses are typically evaluated monthly, and the tax implications depend on the total expenses reimbursed over the period. Legal flat rates are compared to individual company rates, and any excess beyond the total legal allowance is taxable.

Example:

Interruption of absence 

Determines how long the vehicle may stay in the workplace without interrupting the absence in terms of expenses.

Default Values for New Work Locations

In the settings of the expense module, you can define values under "Work Locations" that will be assigned as default values when creating new work locations.

Expense Profiles

Overview

In the Expense module, you will find the tab Expense Profiles under Settings. This section provides an overview of all existing profiles.

The following profile is always available:

Profile "§ gesetzliches Standardprofil"

This profile contains all the statutory regulations and cannot be modified.

Customers who previously had company-wide settings will receive an additional profile:

Profile "individuelle Regelungen"

All previous settings have been transferred to this profile.
All drivers in your company have been assigned to this profile.
If you wish to continue using only this single expense profile, no further action is required.

Actions

Using the action menu, you can perform the following options for the profile:

• Edit: Opens a dialog to modify a specific expense profile -> see Create/Edit Expense Profile.
• Assign Employees: Provides a direct way to assign a profile to multiple people simultaneously. Alternatively, expense profiles can also be assigned to an individual via personnel management.
• View Profile Details: Opens a view displaying the latest applicable regulations and a history of the expense rates.
• Delete: The profile is deactivated. When deleting a profile, all current employee assignments will end on the day before deletion. From the day of deletion onward, these assignments will automatically be reallocated to the "§ Legal Standard Profile."
• Create New Profile: Opens a dialog to create a new expense profile -> see Create/Edit Profile.

Creating/Editing an Expense Profile

If you would like to create additional profiles, this can be done in the Expense Profiles tab by clicking on the Create New Profile button.

During the process, you can:

• Define rules for evaluating absences.
• Specify your expense rates using the selection fields: percentage, fixed amount, or country adjustments. If you wish to define additional country-specific rates, this can be done in the "Country Rates" tab.

When editing a profile, you can define the effective date for the changes. Retroactive adjustments can be applied up to three months back, always starting on the 1st of the month. Any expenses already calculated for individuals currently assigned to this profile will be deleted, and a recalculation will occur promptly.

Set Expense Rates

In the "Customization of Expense Rates" section, you can define individual expense rates based on:

• Percentage: The monetary values are based on a percentage of the statutory flat rates. For example, if "more than 8 hours of absence" is set to 50%, this absence is recorded with €7 for Germany (as of 2025).
• Fixed Amount: The monetary values for absences over 8 hours, 24-hour absences, and overnight stays can be set as fixed amounts and made uniform for all countries.
• Country Adjustments: Here, you can select a custom country list. You can find the setting for a country list under the tab "Country Rates" -> see Country Rates.

Personnel Assignment

There is a specific action to assign persons to a profile. The assignment is made under "New Assignment." You can also select multiple people directly via the group selection. In the "Existing Assignments" section, you get an overview of which drivers have already been assigned to this profile.

Country Rates

There is an option to define individual expense rates for each country/region via the "Country Rates" settings section.

Overview

The overview displays all created lists for these country rates. For the past four years, the statutory guidelines are also shown.

Functions for Lists:

• Show List Values
  Opens the settings page for this list.
  Past lists cannot be edited. If changes are made to the current list, it will be copied (and deleted if necessary).

• Copy List
  Copies a list along with all its values.

• Delete List
  Deletes a list.

• Create New List
  Opens the settings page for a new list.
  The basis for a new list is always the statutory flat rates of the respective year and countries.

Settings

Each list consists of an identifier. When creating a new list, there is also the option to define whether it should cover all countries or only the modified ones. By default, you will receive a limited list with all countries whose settings deviate from the statutory rates. However, you can switch to a full view in which all countries/regions are listed and can be edited.

Settings "list coverage"

The difference if a list contains all countries or only the changed ones maybe trivial for the first time, but can have an great impact later.

If your list contains only the changed countries, for all unchanged the legal values are used. These are managed by YellowFox. Is a validity period of a list over the years and there are changes to to legal for the new year these values are used automatically.

A list containing all values do not use these changes, all values keep stable no matter if a legal value changed.

Change settings

You can set your own point of time you want to pay expenses for, for each country or region. Point on the timeline and just click on the point of time to set a new marker or you click on a marker and move it to left or right. To delete a marker you can click on it (all other are faded out) and click on the Image Added.

To deselect a marker, click a second time on it. Now all other markers are faded in again.

To change a value, click on it and fix it. If you change the value for the 24h marker, the value for "full day expenses" are set too.

Changes are marked red.

If you want to reset your changes, click on the action Image AddedAll your data for this country/region are set back to point of your last save. To go back to the legal settings, use the action Image Added

After saving the data, these settings are used for all calculations.

A log book documenting the periods with a vehicle routes and the reason for the trip. There are (distance traveled) and the purpose of travel registered place of departure, place of birth, driver, mileage at the beginning and end of the ride. It can be used for submission to the police, the tax office or in company.

Understanding

A logbook is always retroactively created for a specific period of time. Select the vehicle you want and you get to the main menu of the logbook. At the beginning is created, no vehicle a logbook. Therefore, you must follow the vehicle selection to create a new log book first. Click on the button "New logbook for vehicle XY". If you have only one vehicle in your vehicle pool, this is automatically selected. A logbook can be carried out only up to the time of the last mileage synchronization.

Create a new logbook

In the first step you will see the last known milage value from the portal and the last date of odometer synchronization. You can now continue with a new synchronization ("adjust mileage") or continoue without any milage setting ("continue without odometer synchronization"). If you want to continue without synchronization, you only able to go on, if the end date of the created logbook is before the last date of synchronization. If you continue with a synchronization, please enter the current odometer value of the vehicle, to synchronize the vehicle and the portal. Click on "adjust mileage". Please wait a moment, you will see a info, that the connection to vehicle will be evaluated and the synchronization is in progress. Immediately the box acknowleged the milage setting you are able to continue with step 2. This procedure can take a few minutes.

In the second step you have to select the timeframe for the logbook. To create a logbook for the month march for example you have to enter from 1.3.200X to 31.3.200X. The ending date has to be at least one day in the past. Logbooks can only be created up to "yesterday". It's also posible to hide short stops which undecut a selected maximum stop duration. On the other hand you have the opportunity to hide trips with a driven distance of 0 km.

If all information are correct, the logbook will now be created and displayed.

Driver name

If there was a driver in the car authentificated at the moment of "ignition off", the name of the driver will be preallocated.

Trip type

Depending on the switch/ state that was sended, the trip type will be preallocated correspondingly.

Existing trip type states:

• private trip
• home trip
• officially
• (2 custom logbook trip types)

Priority is: private trip, home trip, 2custom logbook trip types and the rest is preallocated as officially trip!

For the purpose custom types in the PDF edition no sums are formed!

Edit a logbook

Please choice a vehicle in main view, to display all logbook parts of this vehicle. If you never create a logbook before, you have to do this first. Click on "edit logbook" to open an existing logbook.

The portal will check every logbook of errors as soon as you open it. Errors will be displayed by an message and the corrsesponding entries will appear in red colour.

A possible error is for example a difference between the end milage of a tript and the start milage of the next trip. In this case you have to adapt the milage manually. Another error occurs when the portal regocnizes that the average velocity for a trip is below 5 kilmeter per hour. In this case it is in all probability that the vehicle submited insufficient data and the logbook could not create a valid entry.

Which information can be edited?

• type of the trip
• driver
• purpose of the trip
• driving destination
• milage/odometer
• time/date

On the one hand you can edit a logbook directly by a click on the explicit value. On the other hand you press the edit button to switch the trip into the edit-mode. On edit-mode you could change all available input fields. Every change will be logged by the system. By any change you find a submenu "further actions" with the following points:

History of changes

Any change that is made in the logbook may be automatically logged. For more information please call with confidence to our office staff.

Export

To finish a logbook, click in the main view on the "export logbook" button. Please select a year of issue and take a choice of the different options. Generate the PDF on pressing the "create PDF" button.

Logbook monitoring

The logbook monitoring gives a greaphically overview about the time period until last logbook entry. The length of a bar, means how much time the last logbook entry was ago.