How to Track Mileage in QuickBooks Online
What doesn’t work well
I have tried using the QuickBooks Online (QBO) app on my new Android phone to record trips. Unfortunately, there were a few issues.
It didn’t always record my return trips. I had to log into QBO on the web and manually record the trip.
The app requires you to turn off battery optimization, which I don’t want to do. It also requires location access at any time versus only when using the app. I don’t want to do that either.
You can’t select an actual customer that you met with for the business purpose of the trip.
The miles recorded are inaccurate.
There are no mileage reports.
What I do that is easier and accurate
Before I leave to visit a client, I reset the B Trip odometer to zero in my car.
After I return, I make note of the total miles for the trip or just snap a photo of the odometer reading.
I have created a Mileage service item in QBO with a cost of $0.585, the current IRS mileage rate for 2022.
I create a Bill with myself as the Vendor, the date of the trip as the Bill date, the Mileage item under Item details with the total miles from the trip entered for QTY, and the Customer.
Periodically, I create a Bill Payment and reimburse myself for the business use of my personal car.
Is this the end of QuickBooks Desktop?
It is at least for pricing.
The deadline for purchasing QuickBooks Desktop Pro, Premier, Mac, and Accountant editions for 2021 is December 10, 2021. These one-time licenses will be supported through May 2024, after which they will become sunsetted.
Starting with QuickBooks Desktop 2022 products, an annual subscription will be required. There is no monthly option to pay, but if canceled before the end of the subscription, a pro-rated refund will be provided.
I have been seeing changes in QuickBooks Desktop that are closely resembling QuickBooks Online. For example, there is now a third version of Bank Feeds called Advanced Mode that was implemented in the Desktop 2021 PC versions that looks very similar and functions like the Banking page in QuickBooks Online. It is almost as if Desktop is becoming a hybrid of Windows programming with embedded web pages. This is probably signaling a true end to desktop sometime in the future.
Important Feature Missing in QuickBooks Online
QuickBooks Online comes in different versions. The plans currently available are Simple Start, Essentials, Plus, and Advanced. It is important to choose the right one for your business, and to not miss out on very important features.
While they all track income and expenses and have reports you can run, there are limitations to reporting in the Simple Start and Essentials versions. For accuracy in bookkeeping, I always want to drill down on the total expenses in the Profit & Loss report. Then, I want to be able to Group by Name.
Why is this important? For one, it shows you each vendor and list of transactions for each one so that you can verify that the categorization of checks and expenses is consistent, as applicable. It also shows you transactions at the bottom that don’t have a payee (vendor). All transactions should have a name, even if it a generic one. For example, I like to have a vendor Restaurants so that I can categorize all charges to many different restaurants without cluttering up the vendor list, especially for one-off places that won’t be visited again.
This report grouping makes it so much easier to verify directly from the financial statements instead of going through each vendor to look at the transactions. And this feature is only available in the Plus and Advanced versions, which is why I never set up my clients in the Essentials plan, and never with Simple Start.