Car Ownership Cost Tracker
This car ownership cost tracker adds fuel, insurance, tax, servicing, repairs and depreciation into one figure and tells you what your car really costs per mile and per month.
Fuel is the cost you notice, because you hand it over at a pump forty times a year. Depreciation and servicing are bigger and you never see either of them as a number, so most people carry a rough idea of what their car costs and it is wrong by thousands. This file adds up every receipt and the money the car quietly loses while it sits on the drive.
What is in it
- Nine tabs: Setup, Fuel Log, Running Costs, Standing Costs, The True Cost, Keep or Replace, Year by Year, Month by Month and Dashboard.
- Fuel Log — every fill-up with the distance covered, the economy you actually got and the fuel cost per mile, worked out from the pump rather than from the brochure.
- Running Costs — servicing, tyres, repairs, MOT and parking across ten categories; Standing Costs — insurance, road tax, breakdown cover and permits, spread across the months they actually cover.
- The True Cost — everything above plus depreciation, broken down per mile, per month and per year.
- Keep or Replace — a three-year comparison of keeping the car you have against replacing it.
- Year by Year and Month by Month — receipts grouped by calendar year with a cost per mile for each, and a 24-month view that shows how lumpy the big bills really are. Four charts on the Dashboard build themselves as you type.
Who it is for
Anyone who wants a number instead of a feeling: drivers deciding whether to keep a car or change it, anyone claiming mileage, and households working out whether a second car earns its place. It is equally useful before you buy, as a way of testing whether the running costs of a car you are looking at are survivable.
The worked example
The example car is a 2019 Golf, followed for three and a half years. Everything it cost over that time comes to $21,034. Fuel accounts for $5,616 of it — and depreciation, the cost nobody keeps a receipt for, accounts for $8,600, more than the fuel and the servicing put together.
Divided out, that is 57 cents a mile, and $307 a month parked. Those two figures are what make a keep-or-replace decision answerable rather than a matter of mood, and the Keep or Replace tab carries them three years forward against the cost of changing the car.
How it works
Compatible with Microsoft Excel 2016 or newer on Windows or Mac, Google Sheets, and LibreOffice. No macros, no add-ons, no account to create, nothing to install.
The download has two workbooks: one with the example above already filled in, so you can see what every column expects, and the same file completely blank for your own figures. A plain-English guide comes as a PDF. Buy it on Etsy — $9
Sold through my Etsy shop, ThePlainLedger, so the download, the payment and the buyer protection are all handled by Etsy.
Questions people actually ask
How do I find out what my car actually costs per mile?
You log fill-ups, running costs and standing costs, enter what you paid for the car and what it is worth now, and The True Cost tab divides the lot by your mileage. In the worked example a 2019 Golf comes out at 57 cents a mile and $307 a month over three and a half years. Depreciation is included, which is the part a fuel app can never show you.
Is it worth it if I only do a few thousand miles a year?
Low mileage is exactly the case where this file changes your mind, because standing costs and depreciation do not fall when you drive less. The $307 a month figure in the example is what the car costs parked, before it moves. That is the number that decides whether a second car in the household earns its place.
I have not kept any receipts. Can I still use it?
Yes — start from today and enter forward; the per-mile figure gets sharper each month rather than needing a full history to work. Insurance, road tax and servicing dates come off your existing paperwork, and the purchase price and current value are enough to start the depreciation estimate. The filled workbook shows a complete three-and-a-half-year example so you can see what each column expects.
Will it open in Google Sheets?
Yes — it is built as .xlsx and every formula works in Google Sheets once you upload the file and open it with Sheets. Excel 2016 or newer runs it on Windows and Mac, and LibreOffice opens it too. There are no macros, no add-ons and nothing to install.
Does it connect to my bank or my car?
No — it connects to nothing at all. There is no bank feed, no fuel card import and no link to the car's own computer; you type the fill-ups and the bills in yourself and the file stays on your computer or Drive. It is a cost record, not a service booking system and not accounting software.
Need it built around your business?
This file assumes one car, one driver and ordinary private ownership. If you run a small fleet, share a car between a household and a business, or need the mileage split between private and claimable, I can rebuild the same per-mile arithmetic around how the car is actually used.
All other templates are listed on the Excel & Google Sheets Templates page.