This blog was originally published on 21st November 2023, and has since been updated.
If you regularly reimburse, approve, or verify mileage expenses, you understand the significance of having a dependable mileage tracker app for tax deductions and reimbursements. With so many mileage tracking apps on the market, how do you find the right one for you or your company?
If you're thinking about switching to a business mileage tracker app or upgrading from your manual tracking methods, this article evaluates and reviews the best mileage apps for 2024.
The Best Mileage Tracking Apps in 2024
Here’s a comparison of the best mileage tracker apps for the year 2024.
1. Fyle - Best mileage tracker app for businesses
- Fyle's mileage tracker allows employees to duplicate or automate a recurring mileage tracking expense submission in case employees repeatedly use the same route (eg: home to office and back).
- Your employees can log multi-stop mileage expenses. Fyle automatically calculates the distance and amount for easy and quick submissions.
- Thanks to the new auto-commute deduction feature, employees can add their home and work locations to their profiles. Fyle will automatically calculate one-way and two-way distances, preventing overpayment due to personal commute distances.
- Fyle works directly with credit card networks like Visa and Mastercard, and American Express for real-time credit card feeds and also integrates with major accounting software for easy data sync.
This makes Fyle the best app for tracking mileage for businesses in 2024.
Pricing:
Growth: $11.99 per active user*/month, billed annually | Business: $14.99 per active user*/month, billed annually
(*An active user is a user who submits at least one expense per month.)
Quick and trusted ratings & reviews:
G2 Reviews (Ratings: 4.6/5) | Capterra Reviews (Ratings: 4.5/5)
2. TripLog - Business mileage tracker for business
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TripLog is a good choice for SMB mileage tracking with remote or traveling employees and self-employed individuals to keep tabs on mileage and other expenses.
It’s an automated business mileage tracker with route planning, frequent trip rules, and tax-compliant data reporting. It also tracks personal and business mileage separately.
Features:
- Multiple ways to track mileage - manual, automatic, car Bluetooth, USB Beacon, and USB mileage tracking device.
- It integrates with ADP, QuickBooks Online, Sage Intacct, Xero, Salesforce, and more.
Pricing:
Lite: Free | Premium: $5.99 /user/month
Quick and trusted ratings & reviews:
G2 Review (Ratings: 4.7/5) | Capterra Review (Ratings: 4/5)
3. Hurdlr - Great app to track miles
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Hurdlr is a mileage tracking app for entrepreneurs, independent contractors, and rideshare drivers. Alongside automatic personal and business mileage tracking, it has a neat tax estimator that helps you estimate your tax obligations ahead of time.
It also creates tax-compliant mileage and expense reports and reminds you of upcoming tax deadlines, making taxes easier.
Features:
- It tracks expenses and tax deductions for your business.
- It connects bank accounts to Hurdlr for basic income tracking.
- Automatically identifies repeating trips and tags them.
- Users can maintain different categories and mileage for multiple businesses.
Pricing:
Free plan: Perfect for part-timers | Premium: $8.34/month | Pro: $16.67/month
Quick and trusted ratings & reviews:
G2 Review (Ratings: 4.4/5) | Capterra Review (Ratings: 4.2/5)
4. MileIQ - A great mileage tracking software for SMBs
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MileIQ is a good mileage tracking app for individuals or SMBs using only paper-based systems. The app runs quietly in the background, automatically collecting accurate mile logs and classifying them into categories.
It also saves frequently used routes and automatically compiles accurate reports of weekly and monthly miles traveled. If you’re looking for an app to track miles only, look no further.
Features:
- Set work hours so MileIQ can track business and personal trips separately.
- Add custom mileage rates depending on business use cases.
- Speed up the classification of specific routes by marking them in advance.
Pricing:
Trial: 40 free drives | Unlimited: $59.99/year
Quick and trusted ratings & reviews:
G2 Review (Ratings: 4.1/5) | Fit Small Business Review (3.7/5)
5. SherpaShare - Business mileage tracker app
SherpaShare is a custom-designed mileage tracker app for individuals or businesses that offer taxi, ride-sharing, or delivery services. It automatically tracks vehicle miles without manually showing the start and stop for trips.
Features:
- Real-time record of your earnings and profits on an hourly basis.
- Chat with other drivers and access heatmaps showing where other drivers are active.
- SherpaShare's online dashboard improves your driving efficiency.
Pricing:
Monthly: $5.99/month | Annual: $4.99/month
Quick and trusted ratings & reviews:
Play Store review (Ratings: 4/5) | App Store review (Ratings: 4.1/5)
Review Methodology
We evaluated the tools below according to the following criteria:
- Mileage tracking capabilities: We looked at tools that provided a straightforward mileage tracking experience that's accurate and packed with features that make the tracking experience seamless.
- User-friendliness: Our priority was to choose the best app to track miles that’s easy to use for even the least tech-savvy user.
- Additional capabilities: We also focused on the other general features each business mileage app provided, like automatic mileage tracking, expense reporting, approval workflows, credit card reconciliations, reimbursements, and good customer support.
- Pricing: We looked at the starting plans, most expensive plans, and tools that included free trials.
- Integrations: We looked at mileage tracking software with integrations to accounting software, and other apps (Gmail, Slack, Outlook, Teams.)
- Customer reviews: While assessing reviews, we considered reviews from G2, Capterra, and more. If unavailable, we looked at Play Store and App Store reviews. Reviews had to average 3.5 or above to be on our list of best mileage tracking apps for 2024.
Also Read:
FAQs around mileage tracking
How to deduct business mileage?
If you want to claim business mileage deduction on your taxes, recording your vehicle expenses on Schedule C, Part II, Line 9 is essential. To complete Part IV, you also need to provide your vehicle details, as mentioned by DriversNote:
- From which year did you start using your vehicle for business?
- How many miles have you driven your vehicle for business, commute, and other reasons?
- Do you use your vehicle during off-duty hours and for personal use?
- Do you have any supporting evidence for your mileage tax deductions?
You can calculate your deductions using the standard mileage rate, a fixed amount per mile, or the actual expenses, including fuel, maintenance, and depreciation.
What counts as mileage for taxes?
As per the IRS, when an employee uses their vehicle for business between two places of permanent or temporary work, meets clients, or even goes for customer visits, accounts for miles for tax deductions.
Remember that the mileage here needs to be “a necessity” to be a write-off. For instance, if you drive 10 miles to pick up a product from a vendor and 10 miles back to your office, you can deduct 20 miles in total.
But however, if you take an extra 15-mile detour on the way back to meet a friend or have lunch at your favorite restaurant, the extra mileage can’t be deducted. You are only allowed to deduct the 20 miles you traveled for your business.
An easy way for traveling employees and businesses to track miles is by using a mile tracking app to automate and streamline the entire process.
What is the standard mileage rate for 2024?
The standard mileage rates for business travel starting January 1st 2024 are as follows:
- 67 cents per mile driven for business use
- 21 cents per mile driven for medical purposes for qualified members of the Armed Forces on duty
- 14 cents per mile driven in service of charitable organizations
Why should businesses use a mileage tracker app?
An efficient business mileage tracking app automates the entire process with little manual intervention, helping employees and businesses stay on top of their finances.
Additionally, it also:
- Seamlessly facilitate mileage and expense reimbursements
- Accurately records mileage for tax deductions
- Provides real-time insight into business and travel expenses
- Enables Finance teams with a centralized dashboard to get expense insights
- Eliminates the chance for fraudulent or overstated expenses and costly mistakes
Automated business mileage trackers also help eliminate non-compliant or fraudulent claims, keeping businesses in an audit-ready state at all times. In fact, they can help reduce reimbursement cycles by up to 5x.
What are mileage tracking apps?
Mileage tracking apps help businesses and individuals accurately record and manage their vehicle's mileage. They often use GPS technology to automatically track and record the distance traveled, making it easier to calculate mileage expenses for tax deductions, reimbursement, or cost management.
These mileage trackers sometimes also come with business expense tracking features, making them a powerful tool to manage employee mileage and business expenses.
What should an ideal mileage tracker app do?
The ideal mileage tracker app should:
- Allow users to:
- Track miles automatically using GPS
- Log and track business mileage and expenses
- Automatically categorize trips as personal or business
- Report bulk mileage expenses in a single step
- Automate the submission of recurring mileage expenses
- Allow finance teams to:
- Configure mileage rates based on various vehicle types and employees
- Accurately record readings and automate mileage tracking
- Ensure compliance with IRS-compliant mileage reports
- Integrate the mileage app tracker with existing accounting software
How do mileage tracker apps work?
Mileage tracker applications use GPS technology or Google Maps on a mobile device to keep track of a user's travel and record it. They log a journey's starting and ending points and calculate the distance covered.
For business or tax purposes, users can enter trip information, such as the client or purpose of travel. These mileage apps also save this data, making exporting reports for small business expense tracking, tax deductions, or reimbursement easy.
What are some features that a business mileage tracking app should have?
The best mileage tracking app should automatically track mileage via GPS and allow users to organize trips as either business or personal.
Here are some other features a great mileage tracking app needs to have:
- Mileage tracking automation: The app should use GPS to track mileage, calculate the length of the journey, and save the data automatically.
- Classification of trips: You should be able to classify trips as business or personal, depending on the nature of the journey.
- Data reports: The tools must have easy export functionality to simplify tracking and reporting the mileage log.
- Expense reimbursements: Users can submit mileage and expense reports for reimbursement right from the mileage tracking apps.
- Accounting integrations: The application should be able to integrate directly with accounting software to sync mileage log and expense data easily.
Is there a free mileage app for taxes?
Yes, there are tools like Stride, a mile tracker app that's free to use. But you will likely lose out on some mile tracker features that may seem like little at first but add up to be very frustrating over time. For example, a free mileage app tracker might only offer a limited number of free tracking every month, or they may be unable to export IRS-compliant reports. Choosing a paid app to track miles is always better. It might cost a few dollars, but it comes with unlimited mileage tracking and other useful features that make it much more reliable and convenient.
Choose the best mileage tracker app for your business
Mileage tracking can get very messy very quickly unless you do it right from day zero of the financial year. Therefore, it’s best to use a simple yet powerful business mileage tracking app for businesses like Fyle to do all the heavy lifting and simplify the mundane, frustrating, and compliance-riddled tasks of tracking business expenses and mileage.
