Mileage tracking is a vital business tool for several reasons. It helps you manage your vehicle fleet, reduce fuel costs and meet your tax obligations.
Manual mileage logging can be a time-consuming process. It can also expose drivers and companies to IRS audits.
Accuracy
Accurately tracking business drives is an essential part of fleet management. It can reduce transport costs and ensure your company complies with tax obligations. But, it can also be time-consuming and complex to implement.
Previously, companies had to rely on pen and paper – or hastily-scribbled service station napkins – to track mileage for expense claims. This manual process was far too open to error and abuse.
Today, the latest generation of intelligent technologies makes it easier to track mileage for business drivers accurately. These apps use GPS technology to record each vehicle’s exact location and calculate the mileage.
The best business mileage trackers are 100% accurate, ensuring you don’t have to worry about overestimating your miles or guessing your expenses.
Another significant advantage is that these applications are fully automated, so employees don’t have to spend extra time calculating their mileage or remembering to write down the miles they travel when they get home. This frees up more time, so they can concentrate on the tasks that matter most to their businesses.
Some apps also allow mobile workers to customize their work hours, so they can only track trips that are considered business or personal. This can be especially helpful if your business has irregular hours and needs to follow a wide range of trips.
Using an app to log business mileage also makes it simpler and faster for your employees to submit reimbursements when the time comes. They can upload their data directly to your accountancy software, saving you time and money.
Efficiency
If your company relies on a mobile workforce, you need a way to track their business drive data efficiently. The right mileage tracker eliminates the manual, tedious task of adding and entering information into a digital logbook. Instead, employees can take their trips and submit them with a single click.
The time saved by removing this laborious process is substantial: according to a recent report, manual mileage logging adds an average of 21 administrative hours per employee annually. It seems like little, but multiply that number by a large company, and you’re looking at a significant time drain.
Another advantage of automatic mileage tracking apps is that it ensures accurate trip records. Most reputable mileage apps use GPS to automatically calculate the exact distance of every vehicle. This allows them to submit mileage for tax deductions and reimbursements accurately.
Many of these apps allow users to track expenses, too. These features can help your business avoid fraud and save you money in the long run.
Mileage fraud is a small business’s biggest challenge, especially when driving for work. It’s often caused by a simple rounding error, which can quickly add up over time.
That’s why having a mileage tracker that can automatically cross-reference all your team’s drives and verify that the information is correct is essential. A good mileage tracker can do this using OCR-enabled receipt capture technology, ensuring that your expenses and mileage records are always accurate.
Another benefit of using an automated mileage tracker is that it gives employees a more organized, efficient method to track their driving and submit it for reimbursements. This makes it much easier for administrators to review and approve trips and ensure all the necessary information is included, reducing the chances of fraud.
Compliance
Manual mileage tracking using paper logbooks or Excel spreadsheets could be more efficient and accurate and leave room for error. Even minor mistakes or overestimates can add up over time across a large company, which differs from the cost you want to pay.
The most significant advantage of automatic mileage tracking is that it removes the time-consuming and repetitive tasks associated with calculating the value of each trip. This enables managers to spend more time doing things that matter to the business, such as analyzing customer trends or scheduling more productive meetings.
While there are many benefits to automatically tracking your business drives, finding a solution that fits your needs and budget is the best route to success. Look for a software system that is easy to use, has a wide range of integration options, and can help you maximize your mileage deductions and reimbursements.
Time-Saving
Many businesses rely on employees to travel for their business, but they sometimes need to track the mileage they drive. Manually logging each trip can take up valuable time to be better spent growing the company.
With the right business mileage tracking app, you can eliminate manual logging and make it easier for your employees to meet IRS compliance requirements. It will also help streamline invoicing and accounting and reduce the extra accounting documents your drivers submit.
In addition to efficiency, mileage tracking is an excellent way to boost your tax savings. The best apps use accurate records to ensure you get the most tax-efficient deductions possible, so you can avoid the hassle of claiming the wrong mileage or fumbling through an IRS audit.
Another great benefit of automatic mileage tracking is that it saves you time. With various mobile-friendly business mileage trackers, you can find one that fits your needs and budget.
Reporting
Whether running a small business or managing a large fleet, accurate mileage tracking is critical to keeping costs down and meeting your tax obligations. However, manual mileage logs can be cumbersome and time-consuming – and often inaccurate – so it’s worth investing in automated solutions to make the process easier for your team.
Mileage tracking automation is a significant benefit for any mobile worker business. It saves employees a lot of time and makes it easy to spot trips that need to have the appropriate purpose recorded.
In addition to reducing the time and effort required for drivers, automated mileage trackers also remove an added administrative burden on the driver and the company. Instead of manually adding the necessary information, employees need to record the location, start and stop times, and odometer readings. Once they’ve submitted their trip, administrators have a much easier job approving it. They can quickly check that each driver has a valid reason for the journey and that they’re not recording personal trips or errands – a huge benefit for companies concerned about employee productivity.
