Recently I utilized a crontab to run a weekly backup job.

This job, ran as a standard crontab user.

0 1 * * 0 /home/localadmin/BackupTask-Dest-Elements.ssh

The above backup job can be checked through /var/log/cron.log.

Tip – Enable Cron Logging in Debian

Enable Crontab logging to track when jobs and changes to crontab have been made.

The location of the cron log entries can be changed. This means you will have to edit the /etc/rsyslog.conf file.

vi /etc/rsyslog.conf

In the file, you will find the following line:

#cron.*                     -/var/log/cron

Uncomment the line (remove the #) and save the rsyslog..conf file.
Next you will have to restart the rsyslog daemon:

service rsyslog restart

After restarting the rsyslog daemon, crontab log entries will appear in the /var/log/cron.log file. 

Source: kinamo.be