Free Resources
Practical tips, downloadable spreadsheets and quick calculators built by the Hawkeye team. Free for anyone to use, and updated as the rules change. Jump to whichever tool you need below.
Index
Tool 01 - Tip
If you use your car for work, the logbook method usually puts more deduction in your pocket than the cents-per-kilometre method — but only if your logbook actually meets the ATO requirements. Here is the short version of what they want to see.
Keep a continuous 12-week logbook representative of your work driving — valid for up to five income years (start fresh if your pattern changes materially). Each trip needs: date, start/end odometer, kilometres, and a specific purpose ("client meeting at 123 Smith St" beats "work"). Also record the odometer on day one, the last day of the period, and at the start and end of each income year you rely on it.
Business kilometres ÷ total kilometres over your 12 weeks. That percentage is applied to your eligible vehicle expenses for the year — fuel, servicing, registration, insurance, depreciation, interest on a car loan. Keep every receipt: the logbook gives you the percentage, the receipts give you the dollars.
3,200 business km out of 8,000 total = 40% business use. If you spent $7,500 running the car, $3,000 is deductible.
Travel between two workplaces; travel from your normal workplace to a client, supplier or worksite and back; travel to an alternative workplace before going to your normal one; and travel between home and work where you must carry bulky tools that can’t be stored at work. Ordinary home-to-work commuting does not count.
Recommended Tool
Tracking trips manually is a chore. CarSavvy is a mobile logbook app that does it automatically — tracks every trip, captures expenses by AI-powered receipt scan, and produces an ATO-compliant report. See more on our Our Partners page.
Source: ATO — Logbook method.
Tool 02 - Free Download
A simple, branded spreadsheet you can use across the financial year to log every deductible expense as it happens — so you arrive at your tax appointment with everything in one place and nothing forgotten.
The spreadsheet is a single sheet structured around the ATO deduction codes D1 through D5, which is exactly how the categories appear on your tax return. Six columns:
A running total updates at the bottom of the sheet, and the spreadsheet also produces subtotals broken out by D1–D5 so you can see at a glance where the bulk of your deductions sit. Bring the workbook to your appointment (or email it ahead) and we will work through it with you to make sure every legitimate deduction is captured.
The single biggest reason individuals over-pay tax is not aggressive planning — it is forgotten receipts. A $40 subscription paid monthly is $480 a year. Two or three subscriptions like that, plus a few small purchases scattered across the year, can be the difference between a refund and a bill.
The spreadsheet is not magic. It is just a structured place to write things down as they happen. The discipline of recording each expense once, when the receipt is in front of you, is what makes the difference at tax time.
Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, Apple Numbers, or any spreadsheet program will open it.
No macros, no external links, no embedded objects — safe to open in any version of Excel. Served over HTTPS.
Tool 03 - Calculator
A ballpark estimate of income tax plus Medicare levy on a gross income, using the official ATO resident individual brackets for the last three financial years. This calculator ignores tax offsets, deductions, dependents, study loans and the low-income Medicare exemption — so the figure it returns is typically a touch higher than what you actually pay once your return is prepared properly.
Resident individual rates, excluding Medicare levy. Source: Australian Taxation Office.
This calculator is a guide only and does not constitute tax advice. Actual tax payable depends on deductions, offsets, dependents, study loans, residency status and other factors not modelled here. Confirm any figure with a registered tax agent before relying on it.