(Update: This blog was originally shared in 2015 and as of 2019 it is STILL my favorite mileage tracker app! And it has tracked almost 95,000 business miles, which translates to over $50,000 dollars worth of deductions for me! That’s money in my pocket! Here is a MileIQ Referral Link where you can get 20% off an annual subscription!)

There are few things I hate less than staying on top of the large amounts of paperwork it takes to run a small business. And it’s an area where, if there’s room to procrastinate, then I will procrastinate.

So me keeping a handwritten log of my business mileage was a joke. I cover a lot of country as a photographer. And by a lot I mean YOU HAVE NO IDEA!

I really had no idea either.

While I knew it was a good idea, try as I might, I couldn’t keep track of my business miles! I would promise myself to make a note of it at the next gas station. But all memory gets erased when I gotta go to the little girls room after 4 hours of driving and coffee. Then five days later when I’m pulling back into the ranch at 12:43 AM with my eyelids propped open with toothpicks, the ONLY thing I’m thinking about is making sure I don’t run into a black cow (trust me, they are practically invisible at night).

Then MileIQ entered my life one app browsing day!

It was love at first worktrip!

This faithful little friend does all that it claims! I haven’t the slightest clue how it works, but oh glory be to taxes it does all the work!

It doesn’t matter how bad I have to go to the bathroom, my mileage is ALWAY logged and in a way far more accurate than any chicken-scratch efforts I’ve had before!

Take a peek at how much I drove JUST for photography last month (Oct 2015)…and what I can potentially deduct from taxes! And I’m all about those deductions! Because I have a home office, every mile I drive from the ranch to photoshoots, client meetings, trips to the post office (thats 75-ish miles right there), etc etc can all be effortlessly tracked and deducted!

Pro tip: Categorize your drives monthly. If you let it go a few months you’ll start to forget what trips to town were for mailing packages to clients vs running to grab a jug of milk.

Here is a MileIQ Referral Link where you can get 20% off an annual subscription!