Thanks to Vehicare for sponsoring BrettTerpstra.com this week! This turned out to be the app I always needed for my car. No remembering to keep a log of maintenance, just scan your invoices and it keeps track of everything for you. Brilliant.

I’ll let the developer take it from here:

Hi, I’m Pascal, an indie developer in Quebec. For years, my car’s entire service history lived in a folder in the glovebox: every invoice my garage ever handed me, folded in thirds. When were the brakes last done? What has this car cost me this year? It was all in there, and getting it out meant unfolding paper in the driveway.

I tried the maintenance log apps. I typed in two oil changes, then stopped, and I suspect I’m not the only one. A log is only worth something when it’s complete, and keeping it complete means copying every invoice into it by hand, forever. Someone at the garage already typed all of it once.

So I built Vehicare, for iPhone, iPad and Mac. It turns the invoice your mechanic hands you into a complete service history, without typing a word.

  • Share the invoice. The PDF they emailed you, a photo of the paper copy, or a scan, from Mail, Files or Photos, or dragged onto the window.
  • It reads itself. Vehicare fills in the visit: the garage, the date, the odometer, every job and what it cost. You look it over, fix anything it got wrong, and save. The original invoice stays attached.
  • It works out what’s next. It knows what was actually done and how much you actually drive, so it says when the next oil change or brake fluid service is due, and reminds you. There’s no schedule to set up.
  • Any car, any garage. Not just the dealer’s work on one brand. When you sell the car, export its whole history as a PDF for the buyer.

I do my paperwork on a Mac, so Vehicare is a real Mac app, not a phone app in a window: a table of visits you can sort, an inspector with the original invoice, Finder and the Services menu, and Continuity Camera for paper invoices. It has Shortcuts actions too, and Siri, Spotlight and widgets. Ask Siri how much you’ve spent on the car this year.

Your data lives in your own iCloud account. There’s no account to create, and no analytics or trackers. I never see your invoices, unless you send me one it read wrong.

It’s free for your first vehicle, invoice reading included, with no time limit. One payment ($19.99) adds every other vehicle, PDF and CSV export, and removes the one small card for another indie app. No subscription, ever.

It needs a device that runs Apple Intelligence: an iPhone 15 Pro or later, or an iPad or Mac with Apple silicon, on 26.4 or later.

Take the last invoice out of your glovebox and give it a try. Vehicare is on the App Store, and there’s more at vehicare.app.