Self Employed
MileIQ Alternatives for Your Mileage Tracking
We believe that MileIQ is the best way to track your mileage for taxes. But, we understand that some of you may want to look for MileIQ alternatives. Here are some of the other methods to track your mileage.
MileIQ alternative: Paper mileage log
A paper mileage log is what most people would use before MileIQ. The major advantage of this is that it's very cheap to get started. You can buy a paper mileage log for a few pounds.
Unfortunately, a paper mileage log has some disadvantages. Most importantly, you have to remember to write down every single drive. This doesn't sound that hard but things come up when you're driving. You could be late for an appointment, there could be a good song on the radio or you could just forget.
The problem is that your miles are worth a lot of money when it comes to tax claims. You could go back and recreate trips in your log but that's even more work and it may not be accurate. The last thing you want when facing an HMRC audit is inaccurate records.
It's also easy to lose your paper mileage log. Not only will you lose your records for this tax year, but future years as well.
MileIQ alternative: Spreadsheet
A digital spreadsheet helps to mitigate the risk of losing your paper mileage log. It's also relatively inexpensive to get started. But again, you have to remember to manually log your miles every single time. In fact, you may even have to do double duty: logging in a paper mileage log and then again in front of a computer.
