Keeping Track of Travel Mileage as a Small Business

Do you struggle with keeping track of your Travel Mileage at your small business or startup? Do you find keeping track of your mileage to be a tedious task? I do. At the end of every year, I go through my calendar, note all the business events that I drove to, calculate the mileage using Google Maps, add up the miles on an excel spreadsheet (and I don’t drive nearly as much as many of you), and after multiplying by the allotted mileage reimbursement, I have entered a tidy business expense.  

My Search for a Better Way to Track Mileage

This year I was determined to find a better way. I searched online for a book to enter my trips as I took them. I went to Office Max and looked at the variety of product offerings. This one had all the features that I wanted. After I put what I considered the perfect tool into my car, I proceeded to never use it.

Then I looked for an app. I successfully use many apps. Why not use one for tracking my miles? I came across TripLog, which was highly rated. Intuit considers it the #1 Mileage Tracking GPS Mobile App. I added the app to my phone but found it too confusing to use.  

Finally, I asked my fellow QuickBooks Advisors for a solution. The app MileIQ was recommended. I signed up for the free version. Immediately I was impressed because the app knew when I was on the move. It logged my miles automatically. Within a couple weeks I signed up for the upgrade that costs me $4.99 a month.

Here’s how it works. As long as I have my phone, the app runs in the background logging all my trips. At the end of each week, I get a reminder email to categorize my trips. Going to the online site, I click the purpose one at a time or as a group (see below):

I was even able to load my prior trips this year (7 months of them) easily. MileIQ is a great solution to alleviate a tedious task and frees me up to focus on more valuable ones instead. If you need help finding great solutions to free up some of your time, contact BudgetEase.