Inspections, home visits, site calls, the run to the print shop. It's real money and real tax, and it lives on the back of an envelope until the day somebody asks you to justify it — and then the envelope is a problem.
GPS tracking is the wrong shape for this work. It drains the battery, it watches you on a Sunday, it needs background location forever, and it produces an estimate you still have to correct by hand.
Expense tools want a receipt nobody gave you. Spreadsheets work right up until the month you forget, and then they're a weekend. Meanwhile every reimbursement form and every auditor asks for the same four things, and almost no software records them.
Two odometer readings and a route are a claim. A GPS trace is a guess with a map on it.
And you can overwrite the opening reading — you had personal miles in between, which is the normal case and not an error.
The meeting had a place, so the route is already filled in — and the drive can start a timer with it if the driving is the work.
A .csv with a header row, a total row, and the odometer span on every line — because that's the column that gets questioned.
On the 1st, with the file already made and a task on your Today. That is the whole feature, and it's the reason you'll get paid.
That last one is why the odometer span sits on every row rather than in a detail view. A total is an assertion; a span is arithmetic anyone can check.
The rate is yours to set — the current federal figure by default, and different per client or per vehicle if that's your situation.
It does something automatically. It also records the school run, guesses at the route when signal drops, and wants your location in the background forever — which is a lot of surveillance to accept for a number you still have to correct by hand.
Two numbers, typed while parked, give you a figure nobody will argue with. And if you forget, the report on the 1st finds it anyway — which is the part automation was supposed to solve and didn't.
No background location, ever. It knows where you drove because you told it, and only about the trips you chose to log.
Start it before you pull away, put the phone down, then one big target and the closing reading when you arrive. Nothing in here needs your attention while the car is moving.
There is no manager view and no automatic export. You produce a sheet and you send it. That's deliberate.
Every trip records which one, and the report slices by vehicle — which most reimbursement forms require and most apps can't do.
Yes, per client and per vehicle. The default is the current federal rate, and changing it never rewrites a trip you already logged.
Normal. A trip needs a date, a vehicle and two readings — the project is optional, and plenty of driving belongs to nobody but you.
It keeps what you typed and shows a save queue. Nothing needs signal, because nothing is being measured — you're the sensor.
Two numbers, parked, engine off. On the first of the month the report will come and find you — whether or not you ever open the desk again.