Last updated November 6, 2026
General information, not tax or legal advice. The rules depend on your country and your situation, so check anything with a tax or legal consequence with your accountant.
You can bill travel time if the client agreed to it beforehand. The usual options are the full rate, a reduced rate, a fixed call-out fee, a zone charge or no charge at all. Put the method in your quote, show travel as its own invoice line, and split shared trips so nobody pays twice.
Can you charge for travel time?
Yes, you can charge for travel time when the client has agreed to it before the trip, in a quote, a contract or a published price list. An hour in the van or on a train is an hour you can't sell to anyone else, so plenty of field service, home service and construction businesses recover it, and so do consultants who visit clients.
What you can't safely do is surprise someone with it. A travel charge that first appears on the invoice turns a small sum into an argument about the whole bill.
Which way of charging for travel should you use?
The right method depends on how far you travel and how much that varies between jobs.
| Method | How it works | Suits | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full rate | Your normal hourly rate, door to door | Specialists with scarce hours | Clients resist paying expert rates for traffic |
| Reduced rate | A lower travel rate, often half | Consultants, mixed trips | You have a second rate to explain |
| Free zone, then charged | The first 30 minutes each way are included | Mostly local work with some long trips | You must say where the clock starts |
| Fixed call-out fee | One flat fee per visit | Trades, repairs, emergencies | Short trips subsidise long ones |
| Zone charge | A flat fee per distance band | A defined service area | You need a list or a map |
| Built into your rate | No travel line at all | Short local trips only | One long trip loses money |
A worked example: the same rate, six ways
Here's an invented example. A technician bills €60 an hour. One job is 45 minutes away, so 90 minutes of travel in total. Another is 10 minutes away, so 20 minutes in total.
| Method | Long trip (90 min) | Short trip (20 min) |
|---|---|---|
| Full rate, €60 an hour | €90.00 | €20.00 |
| Half rate, €30 an hour | €45.00 | €10.00 |
| First 30 minutes each way free, then €60 an hour | €30.00 | €0.00 |
| Fixed call-out fee of €40 | €40.00 | €40.00 |
| Zones: €15 up to 15 minutes away, €35 beyond | €35.00 | €15.00 |
| Built into the rate | €0.00 | €0.00 |
Now compare those figures with what the trip costs you. If an hour of the technician's time costs the business €30, the long trip costs €45 before you count the vehicle. The half rate only just covers that, and the free-zone, call-out and zone charges all fall short on this trip. The call-out and zone charges make some of it back on short trips. The guide to the charge-out rate shows how to work out that hourly cost.
The call-out fee also shows its trade-off: the customer ten minutes away pays €40 for a trip that would be €20 at full rate. That's fine if the fee is published and also covers parking, loading and the trip back, but be ready to say so.
How do you split one trip between several clients?
Split the trip between them, and never charge each client for the whole of it. One fair method shares the real travel time in proportion to what each client's trip would have taken alone.
Here's an invented example. A consultant visits three clients in one day, at €60 an hour. The real route takes 150 minutes.
| Client | Trip alone | Share of the real 150 minutes | At €60 an hour |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | 60 min | 37.5 min | €37.50 |
| B | 90 min | 56.25 min | €56.25 |
| C | 90 min | 56.25 min | €56.25 |
| Total | 240 min | 150 min | €150.00 |
Each client pays less than a trip of their own would cost, and you still recover all of it. Equal shares of €50 are simpler and fair enough when the clients are close together.
The same rule applies to working on the move. If you spend a train journey for client A drafting a report for client B, bill B for the drafting and don't charge A for those same minutes. An hour can only be sold once.
Wording for your quote and invoice
A clause for the quote or your terms:
Travel is charged at €30 per hour from our premises to your site and back, based on the standard route time rather than actual traffic. Where one trip serves several clients, we split the time between them. Travel appears as a separate line on your invoice.
A line for the invoice:
Travel time, 12 March 2026, to site and back: 1.50 hours at €30.00 per hour.
Standard route time is worth the extra words. It takes the traffic out of the discussion, and it means the client's bill doesn't depend on the day you happened to go.
Do you charge VAT on travel time and travel costs?
Usually yes. Travel time is generally part of the service you're supplying, so it takes the same VAT treatment as the work.
Travel costs you recharge are usually taxable as well. Article 78 of the VAT Directive includes incidental expenses such as transport costs charged to the customer in the taxable amount. HMRC's guidance on costs or disbursements passed to customers gives the example of an airline ticket you buy to visit a client: if you recharge it, you charge VAT, because the flight was for you. True disbursements are a narrow exception, and they're covered in VAT on reimbursable expenses and disbursements. Rules vary by country, so check yours.
The mistakes that get travel charges disputed
- Travel buried in the labour line. The hours look inflated, and the client starts checking all of them.
- Not saying where the trip starts. Your premises, your home and your last job give three different figures.
- Rounding each leg separately. Add the legs first, then apply your billing increment once.
- Charging for a trip the client had no say in, such as going back for a part you forgot. That one's yours.
Billing travel time in ERPFlow
Set up each travel charge as its own service, with its price: "Travel time" per hour, or "Call-out fee" as a flat amount. Add it to the quote, so the customer sees it before saying yes, and it carries over when you convert the quote to an invoice. Each line takes its own quantity, to two decimal places, and its own tax rate.
ERPFlow doesn't have a timer or timesheets today. Time tracking, including converting tracked time into invoices, is coming soon. A card's Time spent field can't mark time as travel, so the travel hours on an invoice are the figure you type.
Expenses record fuel and tickets with their receipts, but they aren't linked to customers or jobs, and there's no mileage tracking. Recharging a cost to a customer means adding a line to their invoice yourself.