How to Track your Business Mileage

 Mileage Matters

We’re going to cut to the chase here: mileage deductions are one of the most frequently missed deductions on business tax returns. It’s not a small deduction either, Intuit reports that mileage deductions average out to over $600 per self-employed subscriber.

That’s money you could be saving on taxes every single year. 

Mileage Tracking Apps

Quickbooks Online offers a plethora of apps you can use to make your experience better. Here we’ve got a list of the best software apps that you can use to track your business mileage!

Quickbooks Online Self Employed

If you are a sole proprietor and use a Schedule C for your small business, then you should consider using Quickbooks Self-Employed. It’s mobile phone app allows you to record your mileage and directly populate your tax forms through Intuit’s Turbotax software.

Mileage tracking doesn’t cost any extra on top of the Self-Employed subscription. Intuit offers a bundle package that gives you Turbotax with Self Employed. Since both are Intuit products, you can link them for quick and painless data transfer.

 MileIQ

MileIQ is designed to track your mileage and store the information on their cloud servers. This allows you to access your information from your mobile devices or your personal computer. The application also runs in the background, and does not require you to start or stop the mileage tracking. Yes, this means that MileIQ records all of your drives, but it also allows you to differentiate between personal and business trips.

Like many modern programs, MileIQ offers tiered pricing plans, including a free option. Their free version only offers a limited number of trip recordings though, so if you do a lot of driving, you’ll either need to pay for a subscription or consider a different option. If you or your company has a Microsoft Office Business subscription, good news, you already have access to MileIQ, which is fully integrated with Microsoft’s Business premium subscription.

MileIQ also offers a small set of reports on your mileage and trips. Depending on the nature of your small business, you may find these travel-specific reports to be of use.

Expensify

Expensify is an application that is designed for recording business trips and expenses for expense reports. It boasts multiple ways to set up and record mileage, including a phone app and the use of in-browser resources.

The phone application allows you to use your phone’s gps to record trips. You can use the browser option to import trip data via online maps. It also allows you to enter odometer readings, closely resembling the “old way” of recording your business trips, but with automated calculations!

They offer tiered pricing that includes a free option. Be careful when choosing, as the tiers limit the number of times you can use certain features. If you don’t need to record daily business trips, then you can get away with their free version, but if you are making multiple trips in a day, you’ll have to weigh the added cost of a higher tiered subscription.

Triplog

Triplog is a mileage tracking app that is designed to help you track your trip expenses. It has full QBO integration for easy data transfer. They offer the most options when it comes to recording your information including different ways for the user to interact with the program itself. This is something of note that we want to point out to you, because each person remembers things differently, and each business needs different information! Triplog offers the most customization in how your choose to record, and is probable the best option for the price.

Like Expensify , it offers more than just mileage tracking, and you can tie receipts to business trips and categorize different trips as well. Unlike the other options we’ve presented to you, Triplog can take advantage of your car bluetooth, saving power and data on your mobile device. If you spend a lot of time in your car, we strongly recommend that you give Triplog a look to see if they can make your life easier.

Milebug

Ok! We’re sneaking in one app that doesn’t actually integrate with QBO! Milebug is a GPS mileage tracking application that is designed for IRS compliant mileage tracking. It allows you to add custom categories, frequent trips, and edit prior logs. You can use the app on mobile devices and tablets, and even backup your saved data to the application’s cloud storage. All data exports in a CSV file, which you can load into Excel.

The app has a one time cost of 3 dollars, and after that it’s yours. While it doesn’t directly integrate with QBO, the application itself is lightweight and extremely useful. You can track multiple vehicles for multiple businesses (or personal trips), you just have to set it up first.

IRS Compliance

The IRS requires you to record certain information about your business trips so that you may deduct them. The following is pulled directly from an IRS publication regarding the correct way to keep mileage logs for your deductions:

“In order to keep track of the business miles, you should keep a logbook in your vehicle and record the date, the miles, and the purpose of the trip for all business travel. You should also record your odometer readings at the beginning and end of the year so you will have the total miles driven.”

Recap

Remember that your business miles mean business tax savings! Mileage is one of the most overlooked business deductions and can save you serious cash on your tax return. It’s also one of the easiest things to forget to record on a regular basis.

Thankfully there are multiple different ways to record your miles for your small business deductions, and we’ve outlined our favorite four options for you!

Quickbooks Self Employed offers a great package for sole proprietors, but we know there are so many other small business out there that are more than one person! Milebug is the most user friendly and economical option. MileIQ offers you a straightforward mileage tracker with multiple options for accessing your data. Triplog and Expensify are more robust mileage tracking applications with added features for recording related business trip expenses.

We Hope to See You Soon!

There are more than just mileage tracking apps out there to help you keep track of all things small business! Come see us next week when we talk all things time-related! From tracking employee work to billing clients, there’s a ton of options available to you. We’re going to tackle the best time tracking applications for your small business!

Disclaimer This article presents general information and is not intended to be tax or legal advice.  Refer to IRS publications and discuss possible tax deductions with your tax preparer.