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Mileage Tracking Feature

Now Available in QuickBooks Online
THE DAYS OF clients giving you dog-eared pages with
unintelligible scrawls of mileage driven for business is now a
thing of the past. Manual, written logs are neither effective
for automated workflow, nor are they necessarily accurate,
especially if a client forgets to record their mileage right
away and guesstimates it at a much later time.
The mileage tracking feature -
which allows your clients to track
their mileage, simply and easily while
on the go -- is now available in QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Online
Advanced. Previously only available
in QuickBooks Self-Employed, this
feature is available in the United
States and will soon be available in
Canada, the United Kingdom and
Australia.
Chantal Evett, a product manager
who oversees the mileage tracking
feature, says Intuit heard loud and
clear from its small business customers, and from accountants who
work with them, that this feature
was needed in QuickBooks Online.
She explained that many small business owners wanted the ability to
track mileage, but they needed the

higher-level functionality of QuickBooks Online versus QuickBooks
Self-Employed, which is designed for
businesses of one.
"Mileage deduction can be one
of the biggest deductions that a selfemployed or small business owner
can claim to reduce their tax bill,"
says Evett. "Now that mileage tracking
is available in QuickBooks Online, our
hope is that it's easier than ever for
small business owners to manage their
mileage and get bigger deductions,
allowing them to hopefully keep more
money in their pockets at tax time."

A SIMPLE SWIPE ENABLES
MILEAGE TRACKING
With small business owners and staff
having little to no time left to spend
on administrative matters, one of the
key advantages of the new
mileage tracker is its builtin automation. The mobile
QuickBooks Online app
uses GPS, cell towers and
Wi-Fi to triangulate a user's
location, providing pinpoint
accuracy and automatically
recording the miles driven
for any business-related
trip.
"This is a huge benefit
for users who don't want to
manually add their information into QuickBooks
Online," explains Evett. "For

example, with only a simple swipe - a
typical smartphone gesture all of us
are very familiar with - QuickBooks
Online can keep a very clear record
of business mileage you can claim on
your taxes."
Let's say your client provides
home and commercial contractor services, with the need to visit multiple
job sites in person. If the contractor
travels between San Diego and Los
Angeles, the contractor simply navigates to the mileage tab on the mobile
app to track a trip. The contractor
can also save a customized name to
a specific address as a "favorite," making it easier to remember which trips
are business and which are personal.
It's also worth noting that if a
QuickBooks Self-Employed user
finds a need to switch to QuickBooks
Online, then the miles entered into
QuickBooks Self-Employed will carry
over.
"Intuit continues to add the
technology and features I need to
run my business all in one place," says
Heather Satterley of Satterley Training & Consulting. "The new mileage
tracking feature in QuickBooks Online
offers the same great functionality
found in QuickBooks Self-Employed
and MileIQ, but it's now right inside
my QuickBooks Online account!"

MANUALLY ADDING
MILEAGE
Manually entering mileage is also
available if clients are tapping into
QuickBooks Online on their desktop
via the Mac or PC app, or over the
internet. Users click on "mileage'
on the navigation bar, put in the
beginning and end locations, and
miles driven, then classify the trip
as personal or business. QuickBooks

OCTOBER 2019 ■

instantly shows the dollar amount
based on current IRS mileage rates
(always updated) and what the tax
deduction would be. For example, on
a trip of 3.9 miles between point A
and point B, the tax deduction would
be $2.26.
"While $2.26 may seem insignificant to the user, we know that
multiple trips can add up to big
deductions come tax time," says
Evett. "QuickBooks Online generates
a mileage report that can be reviewed
and easily put into tax preparation
software. That saves time for the user
in not having to keep manual logs,
while automating the workflow for
the accountant."

NEXT STEPS FOR MILEAGE
TRACKING
Currently, only the master administrator for a QuickBooks Online
account has access to mileage tracking, but Evett reports that this will
soon change. In addition, the development team is adding on features for
Android and iPhone users to enhance
the feature, such as location-based
rules a user can set to classify the
same frequent trips as business.
"Location-based rules will be great
for the user who hasn't checked the
app in quite some time because no
work will need to be done to record
older trips," says Evett. "We want to
make mileage tracking one of the
most useful features in QuickBooks
Online, not only for the accountants,
but for their clients as well." ■
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