I have been a paid subscriber to Mile IQ (a mileage tracking app) for about 3 years. So far it has been the worst customer support of any app I have dealt with. You go to their help section and ask a question and within seconds you get a canned response which is of no help. You answer their questions and they reply someone will be with you shortly. One- and one-half hours later you finally realize you have teen taken in. I hate that.

Can anyone on here recommend a millage tracking app that is useful and somewhat easy to use. Not looking for a lot of bells and whistles, just something that runs in the background so I don’t have to remember to turn it on and off every time I get in or out of the car. Just want to track miles, make a mileage report and know how many miles I have driver each year. Something simple like that.

Update

I could not find any way of calling this MILE IQ business. All I could do was send emails which I had been doing for a few days.

Then I called my credit card company (VISA) and talked to them about the situation. I ask if they had any record on my credit card statements where I had a recurring charge for MILEIQ on my statements. They found the charges and gave me the amounts and dates of charges. Amount was as I remembered them, but the months of the charge I did not remember. That’s OK. Anyway VISA was very helpful and gave me a phone number of how to call MILE IQ.

I called the number and got this canned response, “Send us an email and we will get back to you shortly”. I called several times and tried all departments. Same thing “send an email”.

Mile IQ advertising looks good but service when you need it did not help me. I left a message at each department and if I get no help then VISA said I could call back and they would step in.

So again, I ask if anyone on here has a mileage tracking app that is simple and easy to use

Mike -

This would be a good example of "all calls going to voicemail" not working out.

I ran into a similar situation dealing with TDOT, trying to find information on my CDL. By the time they called back it was too late. Lady said they were short of help and tuff luck.

We do the same as 6x6 and have two mileage logs - one for each of us. Then it all gets put onto Excel at tax time.

I hate doing it. We've talked about just not doing it at all. But when you're past age 59-1/2 you can gradually move 401k funds to your Roth to pay down taxes, so we need all the expenses we can get in order to move as much 401k $ as possible without going into the next tax bracket.

To me, it is the most trying aspect of landlording. I'd rather deal with ANY other landlord problem we've faced than to deal with entering all of that detail onto Excel every year.

wait you don't need to put every mile entry in a spreadsheet,

just tally the pages in the trip book and enter that total on your 1040 or give it to your accountant. If you ever get audited show them the trip book.

To be somewhat fair to the MileIQ company .

When my tax person called and wanted to know how many miles I had driven in 2020 I just went to their site and looked at the App screen. It showed a little over 14,000 miles. Good enough.

And now their program will get turned off for every little thing you do and miles are not tracked. A week or so ago I did the paper and pencil thing and I traveled a little over 900 miles. The MileIQ app didn’t even show any trip.

Can’t trust it

if this multiple post sorry about that. I hit submit and waited 3 minutes. nothing happened so I went back up and looked at my post. I had forgotten to put in my name so guess it didn't send. corrected that. now lets see how many times it gets posted

I have an excel spreadsheet with the properties listed as categories. I use to put the mileage, purpose, etc in from my iphone but a few years back all of a sudden the file was blank. I freaked. I "always" have where I'm going in my calendar as well (appointments) and at the time I had only lost about 3 months (frustrating but I immediately logged them in). I'm sure I missed a few things that may have been "last minute" but whatever.

Since then, I put notebooks in my vehicles and log in the info needed. I "try" (but don't do it lol) to input at the end of the month into my excel spreadsheet so at tax time I'm not doing it... but all good either way.

I track for the purposes of business only though... (various businesses, properties, etc) but as the others kind of stated above... I don't track "every mile" as they want because I don't track my personal. Obviously, whatever isn't logged is considered personal for me. So why track it?

Maybe its been to long ago. If you've only got a few property's is it really worth all this work? How much has the tracking actually benefitted you on your tax return? Its a lot of work for not much return? If I'm wrong please straighten me out. With actual numbers if you can.

MYOB

I wouldn't answer your question for just anybody. However a while back you gave me some information that helped me out very well.

So - here goes. Not everything of course.

Last count I had a few properties (little over 63). Some with dwelling units (government word for living quarters) and some just empty land.

I also have a small car lot. Not big but gets me by.

Also did over the road hauling. You know Pickup truck and goose neck trailer. Lots of miles, lots of expenses.

Note that the properties are spread out over Southern Missouri from the West side of the state to the East side of the state. I cross this state like a yo-yo. Seven different counties. Lots of miles. I know there are those on here that say don’t get anything more than a close distance to where you live. Well, somehow, I didn’t follow that line of thought. All are paid for.

By being able to give my tax person the miles and expenses it helped reduce my tax a little over 5K. Not big money for some of you on here but it made me happy.

I have always refrained from mentioning any of these stats as some people here then say “what you bragging for”. Not bragging but you ask.

I respect Robert J (Ca) but he once brought me into reality by telling me one of his properties is worth several of mine. And he is right.

We have four Class B SFH's & do most repairs and new installations (HVAC, water heaters, other service calls, etc., ourselves). So we are small and want to keep it that way, but the miles add up since we are hands-on, in addition to day job.

My CPA says that it saves us about $500 on taxes (maybe a little more with the higher gas prices). My other half says we can make more $ with day job in the amount of time it takes to deal with entering to Excel & calculating the total.

We were about to give it up when we realized we had most of 2022 already in our mileage logs. And then we also thought that the more we can reduce 2022 taxable income to increase the amount of pre-tax 401k funds moved to Roth, without going into the next tax bracket, was worth it for at least one more year (especially since we almost have the 2022 mileage logs complete).

I have 2 mileiq accounts. At first you could track 2 people at the same time with one account but then they changed that. We both have androids and you have to make sure that the battery saving or battery optimization is off for mileiq otherwise it will not record trips.

I found that battery optimization can turn right back on again after a android operating system update.

As far as their support goes I have used it through email and I prefer using chat for support so you can see the transcript. I've never been thrilled with phone support because if they farm out their support overseas you run the risk of support people asking ridiculous questions "did you power the phone off and on again?"

I stopped calculating each trip after my job closed down.

Now I just include all mileage for this vehicle. If the family goes somewhere we take her vehicle because it's nicer and I don't like driving.

Figured I am on the clock 24/7 so any driving I do is work related somehow anyway.

We also have an extensive list with mileage from our home to each rental house, to a few Home Depots and Lowes locations, RE Michel, Sherwin Williams, etc., and the miles between each of the rental houses.

We both work together on houses so we always take two vehicles; one of us may be going to Home Depot while the other is headed to Sherwin Williams, etc. And then there are many multi-leg trips where one mileage entry might includes as many as seven stops, for example.