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Overview

Small business owners/operators (and their employees) who spend any amount of time driving for their business have found that tracking mileage is both important and unbearable. The benefits of tracking mileage, both in order to maximize tax deductions as well as for employee reimbursements, are immense, but the requirement to document each drive is very cumbersome. Tight provides multiple mechanisms for automatically tracking your users’ mileage, removing the need for them to keep a manual mileage log, and adding a daily use case to your product. With over 1 billion miles tracked to date and 1 million miles tracked per day, Tight’s mileage tracking is robust, mature, and proven. And, it’s all automatically tied into Tight tax estimates and Tight tax reporting.

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Use cases

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Business owner/operators

Business owners can reduce their taxable income by tracking and reporting the mileage they drove for business purposes; this is commonly known as the mileage tax deduction. For example, real estate agents can generally deduct mileage driven while taking buyer clients to see homes for sale; general contractors can generally deduct the mileage driven when going to the client’s site. This type of business mileage, when reported correctly, can lower the tax liability for the business.

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Employee reimbursement

Some employers reimburse their employees for work-related mileage driven in their personal vehicle. For example, an individual employed by a consulting firm (i.e. a consultant) might drive their personal vehicle to visit a client, and the employer may offer reimbursement for that mileage driven. In order for the consultant to easily track that mileage and submit it to their employer, the consultant likely uses an automated mileage tracker. Additionally, proper documentation allows the firm itself to deduct the expenses associated with that mileage reimbursement.

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Tracking methods

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Automatic mileage tracking

Automatic mileage tracking is best for users whose daily driving is predominantly for business purposes. Tight’s mobile mileage tracking SDK automatically detects when the user is driving, without requiring input from the user.
If your product stores addresses (e.g. job sites, client locations, properties under supervision, etc.), you can programmatically push those into Tight so that any drives containing one of these locations are automatically marked as business drives.
The route they drove (including start and end addresses), distance driven, and deduction/reimbursement amount are tracked without the user needing to remember to do anything. They simply need to enable automatic mileage tracking once inside your mobile app. Simply implement the Tight iOS mileage tracking SDK, Android mileage tracking SDK, and/or React Native mileage tracking component once, and rest assured that annual OS updates (including permissioning and device-specific changes) will be taken care of for you.

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Semi-automatic mileage tracking

Semi-automatic mileage tracking is best for users whose daily driving is an even mix of business and personal driving. Tight’s mobile mileage tracking SDK allows your user to press a start (and stop) button to track specific drives. The route they drove (including start and end addresses), distance driven, and deduction/reimbursement amount are tracked at the touch of a button, without the user needing to input anything other than pressing start and stop.

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Manual mileage tracking

Manual mileage tracking is best for users who rarely drive for business purposes. Tight’s web-based mileage tracking dashboard allows your users to input the start and end address of a business drive, at which point the route is back-calculated, along with the distance driven, and deduction/reimbursement amount. The user can input any additional notes and/or assign the drive to a specific client, for powerful client-specific reporting and/or for reimbursement from the client.