Mileage Tracker — Methodology Handbook

The Mileage Tracker is a log of the trips you drive for work and a calculator of what they are worth under your country's rules. You describe each vehicle once — which country's published rate it follows, or your own rate, and what an employer pays you back if anyone does — and then log trips, save the routes you drive again, and add an odometer reading now and then. Every trip is priced at the official rate in force on the day you drove it, the tax year's total builds up as you go, and the log flags the trips a tax office would question before anyone else does. This handbook explains what the tracker stores, how every figure is computed, which official rules it follows, and what it deliberately does not do.

👉 Open the tracker: calculatorai.app/mileage-tracker

A record and an estimate, not tax advice. The tracker applies the published standard rates described below to the trips you log. Whether you may use the standard rate, which trips count as business, and how the figure goes on your return depend on your situation — your tax adviser or the tax office decides. What the tracker guarantees is that the log carries what those rules ask for and that the arithmetic is right.

Who it is for

Anyone who drives for work and needs a proper record of it: the self-employed (rideshare and delivery drivers, real-estate agents, photographers, tradespeople, consultants, home-care workers), employees whose employer pays them per mile or kilometre, and anyone a tax office has asked for a mileage log. It works for one car or a small fleet, in miles or kilometres, in any currency.

The one idea everything follows from

A trip stores only what happened — the value is worked out from the rules. A trip is a vehicle, a date, where you went from and to, the distance, what kind of trip it was and why you made it. What it is worth is computed every time from the vehicle's rules at the rate that applied on that date. When a tax office publishes a new rate, the trips driven after it are priced at it and the ones before keep theirs; when you move a vehicle to different rules, its trips follow at once, with nothing to re-enter.

Vehicles — where the rules live

A vehicle carries:

Name, look, make & model, plate, kind (car, van, truck, motorcycle, bicycle) and fuel.
Rates & rules — the country whose published rate its trips are priced at, or Custom rate with your own figure and currency. The rules fix the unit (miles or km) and the currency.
Employer pays — what an employer or a client pays you back per mile or km, if anyone does. The tracker compares it with the official rate.
Fiscal horsepower — France only; the barème band depends on it, for cars and motorcycles alike.
In use for work since — a reminder of the first year the car was used for business (in the US the standard rate has to be chosen in that first year).

A vehicle can be archived when it is sold: it keeps its trips but leaves the list for new ones. Every vehicle keeps its own rules, so one log can hold a car priced at the IRS rate and a van priced at an employer's own rate.

Trips — what you log

A trip is:

Vehicle and date — your own calendar date.
From and to — places as you name them ("Home", "Acme office", an address).
From and To — start typing and pick from the suggestions: cities and addresses first, then businesses and landmarks, each marked with what it is; your saved places come first. Free text works too. With both ends picked, the distance by road fills itself in ("By the map: 17 miles · view the route"); a distance you type is never overwritten.
Distance — as you read it, or filled from the map (above and below). Tick Round trip and the distance is one way; the tracker counts it there and back.
Type — business, medical, charity, military move, commute or personal. Personal trips are worth nothing, but logging them keeps the odometer check honest.
Business purpose and client — what the trip was for. The IRS and most tax offices ask for the purpose on every trip you claim.
Parking and tolls — claimable on top of the mileage rate where the rules allow it.
Odometer readings (optional) — with both and no distance typed, the distance is the difference.
Already paid back — an employer or a client has reimbursed this trip.

The form shows what the trip is worth before you save, at that vehicle's rate on that date. A trip dated in the future is kept but counts nothing until the day comes.

Measure on the map

View the route under the distance (or Measure on the map in the route form, and in the trip form before both ends are picked) opens the map — on a computer a wide window with the map beside the addresses. Type where you started and where you went — an address, a place or a business — and pick each from the suggestions; add up to three stops in between. The tracker finds the driving route, shows it on the map with the distance by road (one way, in the vehicle's miles or kilometres) and roughly how long it takes. Use this distance fills in the distance and the From and To fields; you still check them and save.

It is free on every plan. Each person has a daily allowance (200 address searches, 60 routes and 80 map pictures a day), and if the map service is unavailable the window says so — type the distance as usual. The distance is the usual driving route, not the road you actually took, so a detour or a toll-free route can make your real trip longer.

Receipts on a trip

At the bottom of the trip form, Receipts takes a photo or a PDF of a parking, toll or fuel receipt — up to five per trip. They are private to your log (in a shared log, to its members), listed in the PDF report and kept in My files. A receipt picked while logging a new trip is attached the moment you save it.

Saved places

Rates & settings → Saved places: find an address once on the map, give it a name ("Home", "Studio", "Client office"), and it is offered first in every From and To and in the map window. Under a picked address, Save this place does the same in one tap. In a shared log the places belong to the log, so everyone who logs trips there uses the same list.

The rates — which rules are built in

Each vehicle follows one of these sets of published rules. Figures come from the tax offices' own pages.

United States — IRS standard mileage rate. 72.5¢ a mile for business from 1 January 2026 and 76¢ from 1 July 2026; medical and active-duty military moving miles 20.5¢, then 23.5¢; charity 14¢ (fixed by law). Parking and tolls on those trips count on top. For the self-employed (Schedule C) — since 2018 an employee can no longer deduct unreimbursed miles.
United Kingdom — HMRC mileage allowance payments (AMAP). 45p a mile (55p from the 2026/27 tax year) for the first 10,000 business miles in a tax year (6 April – 5 April), 25p after; 24p by motorcycle, 20p by bicycle. What an employer can pay tax-free — paid less, you can claim the gap as Mileage Allowance Relief.
Canada — CRA reasonable allowance. 73¢ a km for the first 5,000 km in 2026, 67¢ after (4¢ more in the territories). This is the limit of a tax-free allowance from an employer; the self-employed deduct actual car costs times the business share instead — and this log is the proof of that share.
Australia — ATO cents per kilometre. 88c a km in 2024–26 and 91c from 1 July 2026, for up to 5,000 work kilometres per car in an income year (1 July – 30 June) and nothing beyond.
Germany. Business trips 0.30 € a km (0.20 € by motorcycle). The commute counts one way, once a day: 0.38 € from the first kilometre since 2026.
France — barème kilométrique. The annual scale by fiscal horsepower, +20% for an electric vehicle, applied to the year's business kilometres and spread over the trips by distance — the car scale for cars and vans, the two-wheeler scale for motorcycles. A bicycle has no barème and counts nothing; a moped (≤ 50 cm³) has its own scale, so give it your own rate. Without the fiscal horsepower the trips are not priced and the log asks for it.
Spain. 0.26 € a km — the limit of a tax-free allowance an employer may pay for business trips in your own car.
Custom rate — any other country, or what your employer or client actually pays you.

Where a tier depends on how far you have already driven — the UK's 10,000 miles, Canada's 5,000 km — it is counted for the person across their vehicles; Australia's 5,000 km and France's scale are counted per vehicle. Trips are taken in date order. When a trip is dated after the last published rate, it is priced at the latest one and marked as an estimate until the new figure is out.

Make it yours — every rule is a setting

The countries above are starting points, not locks. Whatever language you read this page in, any of them can be picked, and everything can be changed:

Your own rates. Open a vehicle → Customize these rates: the country's rules as of today become the vehicle's own, and every figure is editable — the rate for each trip type, the steps ("0.45 up to 10,000 miles, then 0.25"), the first day of the tax year, whether steps count per driver or per vehicle, which types add parking and tolls on top, and whether the figure is a deduction, a tax-free allowance or just a value. Or choose Custom rate and start from nothing — one rate for business, or a full set of your own rules, in your own unit and currency.
Your own trip types. Rates & settings → Trip types: rename or hide the built-in types and add your own — a delivery run, a site visit, a home visit. Each type is priced as one of the built-ins under a country's rules (a vehicle with its own rules can give it its own rate), and you choose whether an employer pays it back. A type is never deleted; hiding it keeps its trips.
How you drive for work decides what the money figure means — see below.

What counts under which rules

Business trips count everywhere. Medical, charity and military-move trips count only under the US rules; the commute counts only under Germany's. A trip of a kind that does not count is still logged — it simply adds nothing — and the form says so.

"How do you drive for work?"

In Rates & settings you choose:

Self-employed or my own business — the headline is the deduction you claim.
Employee — my employer pays per mile — the headline is what can be paid to you tax-free, and the tracker compares it with what you are actually paid: above the rate, the excess is usually taxable pay; below it, the UK lets you claim the gap (Mileage Allowance Relief), while in the US an employee can no longer deduct it.
Both — your own business and an employer or client who pays you per mile: the deduction headline, plus the comparison with what you are paid back.
Just a log — not for tax — a company car, a fleet, volunteering: distances and destinations only; the page shows no money figures.

The words follow the law, not just your choice: under the Canadian and Spanish rates the figure is always called a tax-free allowance (those rates are what an employer may pay, not a deduction for the self-employed); under HMRC it is an allowance for an employee and a deduction for the self-employed, who use the same rates as simplified expenses.

Add an odometer reading at the start of the tax year and another one now (Vehicles & odometer → Add reading). Between two readings the tracker compares how far the odometer moved with how far the log says you drove:

the distance that is not in the log is treated as personal driving;
the business share is business distance divided by everything the odometer moved — the figure a tax inspector asks for when a car is used both ways;
a log that holds more than the odometer moved points to a typo or a missing reading.

A reading counts as taken at the start of its day.

Standard rate or actual costs?

Each vehicle card in Vehicles & odometer has Costs & method: add what the vehicle cost in the tax year — fuel or charging, repairs and service, insurance, registration and taxes, loan interest, lease payments, depreciation (the figure your adviser worked out — the tracker does not compute depreciation schedules), a garage or parking pass. The card then puts the two methods side by side for the year:

Standard rate — your business trips at the rate on their dates;
Actual costs × business share — the year's costs times the share of driving that was business. The share comes from two odometer readings when they bracket the year (unlogged driving counts as personal); without them, from the log, which assumes every trip is in it.

Medical, charity and moving miles are outside this comparison, and so are parking and tolls — they count under both methods. In the US, IRS Publication 463 adds one rule worth knowing: to keep both methods open, use the standard rate in the vehicle's first year of business use; actual costs with MACRS depreciation in that first year rule the standard rate out for that vehicle. Outside the US the comparison is for information — your country's rules decide which method you may use. A cost can be sent on to the Expenses tracker with one tap.

A log that holds up — "Needs attention"

Every trip is checked the way an auditor would read it. The tracker flags a trip with no business purpose, no destination, no distance, a future date, odometer readings that differ from the distance by more than 5%, or one that looks like a duplicate. The Overview counts them; "Show these trips" opens exactly those, so you can fix each one.

Routes — the trips you drive again

Save a trip you make regularly — the office, a regular client, the warehouse run — as a route. "Log today" adds it with one tap. Give a route the weekdays it repeats on and the Overview asks about the days in the last two weeks with nothing logged: Log it adds the trip, Didn't drive hides that day for good. A route never logs a trip by itself, and it can be paused.

How to — step by step

Add a vehicle: Vehicles & odometer → Add vehicle → name, look, kind → Rates & rules (your country, or Custom with your own rate) → Employer pays, if anyone does → Save.
Log a trip: Log trip → vehicle, date, type, from, to, distance (or Measure on the map → start, destination → Use this distance), Round trip if there and back, business purpose, parking and tolls → check what it is worth → Save. Shortcuts: "Same as last time" in the menu, the copy icon on a row ("Log again today"), a route's "Log today".
Save a route: Routes → Add route → the trip's details and, if it repeats, its weekdays → Save.
Check the odometer: Vehicles & odometer → Add reading — once at the start of the tax year, once now.
Fix the flagged trips: Overview → Needs attention → Show these trips → open each → fill in what is missing → Save.
Record what was paid back: tick the trips → Mark as paid back.
Switch between self-employed and employee: Rates & settings → How do you drive for work?

The assistant

The site assistant knows your log: this tax year's total per set of rules, last year, this month, each vehicle's rate and odometer check, the routes you have not logged and the trips that need attention. It also fills the forms for you — say "log 24 miles to the client yesterday, meeting, $12 parking", "I drove to the airport and back, 31 miles each way", "the trip on Friday was 18 miles, not 15", "delete yesterday's trip to the gym" or "add my work van, I get 45p a mile" — and the right form opens filled in. Nothing is saved until you press Save, and a delete asks first. From the chat on any other page, it shows a one-tap card that opens the trip form here.

Import from a photo (Pro)

Import → From a photo or screenshot reads a page of a paper mileage log, another app's trip list, a maps timeline of your drives, or a photo of the dashboard odometer. Every trip on it — date, from, to, distance, type, purpose, odometer readings — and any odometer reading lands in a review sheet: pick the vehicle, fix a distance, untick a row, then Save. Trips already in your log are skipped. The picture is kept in My files. You can also drop the picture into the assistant's chat; it opens the same review sheet.

Importing and exporting

Import from a CSV takes a log you kept in Excel or Google Sheets, or one exported from another mileage app. You match the columns (a date and a distance, or both odometer readings, are required), pick a vehicle for rows that name none, and import; rows already in the log are skipped. Export offers two things, both free on every plan, always:

a PDF report — for a tax office (every trip with its date, places, purpose and distance, the rate it was priced at, the rates applied with their dates, totals by trip type and the odometer at both ends of the period) or as an employer claim (business trips only — by default only those not yet paid back — with lines for signatures). Pick the period (this or last tax year, this or last month, or your own dates) and one vehicle or all; each vehicle is reported in its own currency, and totals are given per currency;
everything as CSV — every vehicle, trip, route and odometer reading.

Where your trips go next

Trips → Send (for the whole list you are looking at, or for the trips you ticked) opens a filled form in another tool, for you to check and save — nothing is created behind your back:

Invoice a client — the Invoice Generator with one line per trip (distance × that trip's rate) and parking and tolls on one line; a long list is grouped by month and rate.
Expense report for an employer — the Expense Report generator with the same lines; trips already paid back are left out.
Parking & tolls → Expenses — a review sheet of expense rows in the Expenses tracker.
Mileage → P&L — one line of travel cost in the Business P&L Tracker.

Trips in different currencies are never added into one document. The Overview also points to the calculators where these figures help — fuel cost, EV savings and, for US self-employed drivers, self-employment tax. A worked shift in the Shift & Hours Tracker can log the drive to it, and the Fuel Cost calculator can send a trip here.

Reminders, the workspace and the weekly email

Workspace calendar — each vehicle's tax-year end, the day to take an odometer reading, and the regular-route days of the last week with nothing logged, with a one-tap Log trip. The morning summary mentions them too.
A push the morning after a regular route's day with nothing logged: log it or mark it as not driven.
Weekly email — a line with this tax year's figure and what is not yet paid back.
Monthly email — on the 1st, at your summary hour: last month's trips, the distance driven for work, what it is worth at the rate (a deduction, a tax-free allowance or a value — none for a plain log, and each currency on its own line), parking and tolls, and any trip still missing something a tax office asks for, with a button that opens the PDF report on that month. It comes only for months with trips in your personal log — a shared log is not mailed — and is switched off in Rates & settings, in Account → Preferences, or from the link in the email.
Workspace tile — the tax year's figure (labelled as what it is: a deduction, a tax-free allowance or a value), this month, routes not logged and trips that need attention, with quick buttons to log a trip or add a vehicle.

Multi-currency

Each vehicle's rules carry their own currency; parking and tolls are in the trip's currency. Every amount on the page is shown in the currency picked at the top of the page, converted at today's exchange rate, and the page says so once. The published rate itself is always shown in the law's own currency.

Deleting and restoring

Delete a trip, a route, a reading or a vehicle and it goes to Recently deleted for 30 days, where it can be restored or deleted for good. A deleted vehicle takes its trips with it and brings them back together.

Shared mileage logs

A shared mileage log is a separate log kept together — a couple with a family car, a small business with a driver, or you and your accountant. Create one from the log switcher, invite people by email and give each a role:

Owner — everything, including deleting the log; can hand ownership over before leaving.
Admin — everything inside: adds, changes and archives vehicles and their rules, the log's settings, members.
Editor — logs, edits and deletes trips, routes and odometer readings; cannot change a vehicle's rules.
Viewer — sees everything and exports; changes nothing.

Everybody pays for themselves: whoever writes into a shared log needs their own Pro (an invited newcomer gets the free 30-day trial); without it they keep reading — nothing is hidden or deleted. A viewer never needs Pro, and exporting the whole log is free for every member. Each trip shows who added it. Tiers counted per person (the UK's 10,000 miles, Canada's 5,000 km) are counted per driver — and per log: your personal log and a shared one each count only their own trips, so if you drive for work in both, you may reach the step sooner than either log shows. Your personal log is never visible to the people you share with, and shared figures are never added into your personal ones.

The page opens with an example log — a US freelance photographer with one car, about a year of trips, a studio route on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a medical visit, food-bank volunteering and a couple of personal errands — so every feature has something to show. Saving anything asks you to sign up; your own log starts empty, and the examples disappear by themselves when you add your own trips.

Free and Pro

The whole log is free with no limits: vehicles, trips, history, every country's rules, your own rates and trip types, routes and repeats, the odometer and log checks, the employer comparison, CSV import and export, and the assistant filling the forms. Pro adds import from a photo and shared mileage logs.

Privacy

Your log is private to your account, encrypted in transit and at rest, never sold and never used to train AI. A picture you import is kept in your own files; you can delete it at any time.

What the tracker does not do

No GPS trip detection or phone app yet. Both are in development for the mobile app. Today the tracker does not follow your phone or detect trips by itself, and nothing runs in the background — you log trips by hand, from a route, a CSV or a photo.
No depreciation schedule. The actual-cost comparison takes the year's depreciation as you enter it; it does not compute MACRS or any other schedule.
No tax return. It does not file anything or give tax advice; it keeps the record and does the arithmetic.
No employee deduction in the US. Since 2018 a US employee cannot deduct unreimbursed miles — the tracker shows the official-rate value and the comparison with what you are paid instead.