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My wife needs to record work trips in her car to make expense claims.
Can anyone recommend a good way to do this? I'm expecting she would use an app on her (Android) phone, so was hoping for a recommendation of something easy to use. The trips tend to be quite short (~5 miles) and there are a couple per day.
[She can't cycle instead of driving because she needs to arrive smart and with a big bag of kit.]
Buy her a notepad to leave in the car, write it down how many miles she's driven before she gets out at the end of each journey.
Transfer details to whatever expenses form she has to complete.
Remember to remind her she'll need to have receipts for fuel that cover enough miles.
As above, a notebook. It doesn't need to be any more complicated.
Start a new one for each tax year, and hang on to it until all tax returns etc. are done.
I've only needed to submit evidence once in 6 years, and I do lots of expensed miles.
But as a caveat, if the mileage is reimbursed at anything other than AMAP rates, you can expect a greater degree of scrutiny to take account of the discrepancy.
there's a button next to the odometer on most cars so you can zero the trip...?
Is that too complex?
The only apps I can think of are Colornote which is just a notepad, and Camera. Take a picture of the mileometer.
We just use google maps quoting address-to-address, seems to be good for our internal teams and hmrc.
there's a button next to the odometer on most cars so you can zero the trip...?
Is that too complex
That's not a record. Imagine handing the odometer to the HMRC.
Just use a cloud based excel sheet.
My wife works for the NHS and they have an app which records their mileage when visiting patients. It's not that reliable so they end up recording trips with the trip meter and a pen & paper anyway.
My Android phone has a super secret* tracking system that logs where I go.
At the end of the month, I just login and click on all the journeys destinations and it gives me distance, time, method of travel the whole nine yards. Simples.**
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* https://www.google.com/maps/timeline
** If a tad scary
Given smartphone memory sizes, i just take a photo of the dash at start & end of journey...very simple and gives me all info i need and easy to refer back to at later date when i sit down and do my mileage expenses
Google the directions from A to B, note millage. That goes on my expenses. I'd usually be Googling it pre trip anyway.
Though I'm self employed so I'm paying the expenses anyway 😀 , but I still have to keep track of the mileage. It doesn't have to be deadly accurate, just enough that if it was audited for some reason it seems plausible (they'll just google it anyway).
matt_outandabout - MemberÂ
* https://www.google.com/maps/timeline
It's good, but if GPS is turned off it will straight line between cell tower points or triangulated points. For a rough idea where you were travelling it's okay, but mileage will be way off. Can often show you in places you definitely weren't. GPS on though and it will be far better.
I used to stick where I was going in Outlook's calendar. At claim time, go back through it all using Google Maps to calculate distances.
That said, I didn't do a lot of business miles. If I was out every day I'd probably have been more fastidious in noting the odometer / trip each day, but for half a dozen journeys a month I couldn't be arsed.