# What is your opinion of Quickbooks Self Employed Mileage Tracker?



## JK7 (Jul 4, 2018)

I just just installed it and started testing it tonight. On two consecutive trips, it registered 2.4 and 3.5 miles respectively. My odometer read 6.5 miles for the two consecutive trips. 

That's an error of 0.6 miles on about 6 miles of driving (10% error). It worries me that could seriously add up if I were put in thousands of miles. Maybe I should just use my trip-meter each time I go out driving Uber and then input manually? Or is the QB app close enough? or maybe there is better app I ought to use instead?


----------



## doyousensehumor (Apr 13, 2015)

I should probably test its accuracy myself. My mileage is so high, it maxes out the deduction anyway. So shorting myself a few miles not too big of a deal. 

QB is expensive, but it allows a bank link, and automatically files all transactions as income and expense. At any time I can see actual profit. Which is pretty neat. And it's a straight transfer to TurboTax. 

As a sole mileage tracker, I would think there's a better dedicated mileage tracker, but I haven't looked for one.


----------



## JK7 (Jul 4, 2018)

I compared QB to my odometer for last night. Odometer read 89 compared to 84 for QB. So far, I have found QB to be short by an error factor of > 5%. Maybe, it is because rideshare involves a lot of driving into parking lots and little maneuvers that add up over the course of a day?


----------



## FLKeys (Dec 27, 2018)

Nothing beats paper and pen in my opinion. During down time I transfer it to a spread sheet. I just don't record start and end mileage, I track every drive including starting point and destination. 

Looking at my final 2018 trip log and I have 2230 entries for 867 trips. Taking in consideration for the most part every trip is 2 entries (rarely I do pick someone up where I am dropping someone off) I have an additional 496 entries for moves I made to relocate or return home. I record the miles returning home because I have the app on looking for additional trips and often will also leave it on for a good 1/2 hour once I return home before I turn it off for the night. I use that time to finalize my trip logs and record my earnings for the day.


----------



## doyousensehumor (Apr 13, 2015)

JK7 said:


> I compared QB to my odometer for last night. Odometer read 89 compared to 84 for QB. So far, I have found QB to be short by an error factor of > 5%. Maybe, it is because rideshare involves a lot of driving into parking lots and little maneuvers that add up over the course of a day?


Alright wrote down start and end odo miles and did a shift.

176 miles per the odometer.
171.22 miles according to qb.
97.28% miles reported.

Most odometers read a little fast. 3% is about what mine is. I've had many cars where I've gone one tire size bigger and then the odometer is exact.
Tires are smaller in diameter as they wear. Mine or about halfway through.
I would say, at least for me, QuickBooks is dead nuts accurate for actual miles traveled.

Are you in an area with poor GPS location such as tall skyscrapers or parking garages? 5% might be good enough to get the job done.

Also and my phone settings with Android I disabled battery save mode for QuickBooks. I also have an app that increases GPS accuracy. You might try that.



FLKeys said:


> Nothing beats paper and pen in my opinion. During down time I transfer it to a spread sheet. I just don't record start and end mileage, I track every drive including starting point and destination.
> 
> Looking at my final 2018 trip log and I have 2230 entries for 867 trips. Taking in consideration for the most part every trip is 2 entries (rarely I do pick someone up where I am dropping someone off) I have an additional 496 entries for moves I made to relocate or return home. I record the miles returning home because I have the app on looking for additional trips and often will also leave it on for a good 1/2 hour once I return home before I turn it off for the night. I use that time to finalize my trip logs and record my earnings for the day.


This is right. That would be the proper way to do it. But I guess I'm lazy. The app doing it for me is more reliable than I am.
Plus I thought I read somewhere where the IRS is trying to dispute mileage logs. But honestly what the IRS will accept is not my area of specialty.


----------



## peteyvavs (Nov 18, 2015)

The people who work for the IRS are future Lyft drivers, they don’t even qualify for Uber.


----------



## JK7 (Jul 4, 2018)

doyousensehumor said:


> Alright wrote down start and end odo miles and did a shift.
> 
> 176 miles per the odometer.
> 171.22 miles according to qb.
> ...


I do go through downtown quite a lot and there are skyscrapers and I enter the occasional parking garage.

Yesterday was the first major test I tried for QB and it worked well. I logged 259 miles, which matched the 259 on the odometer. I can't complain about that!


----------



## Sippi (Aug 22, 2018)

I've been using MileIQ on a kind of "trial" basis for the last 6 months and I did really like it because it would start tracking as soon as it connected to my car, and would send me little notifications that it had tracked a trip and asks me to categorize it. And I can kind of sort the rides pretty good between actual rides and "Transit Miles" (that's what I've been calling miles driven to get customers and what not.

But I recently got QB self employed and the cost of it came with the mileage tracker. I've been kind of trying to decide whether I like MileIQ enough to pay extra when QB (which I'm using for business transactions anyway) serves the same purpose. Hoping to find more feedback on here =/


----------



## gUUBER (Apr 26, 2019)

I have been driving with uberEATS since the end of January and have used QB the whole time. I run into an issue though, the app does not always log individual deliveries. This is actually a majority of the time. I end up logging one or two giant trips by the end of my night. Has anyone else worked with Eats and had this issue? I assume I am going to have to do a lot of personal audits to correct this, or just ditch it altogether.


----------



## Norm22 (Feb 10, 2018)

Been using QB for about a year, works really well at categorizing stuff. I was a beta tester for their mileage app after it started losing things or making me re-enter stuff. Works pretty well. Even though I am diligent. I have two cars I use and 3 last year so the numbers Uber and Lyft compiled were actually higher. That surprised me as I only thought they were tracking on app miles and I was tracking commute or maintenance / car wash type trips too. Go figure, this year that beta _is_ their tracker. So far it is dead nuts.


----------



## 142605 (Mar 4, 2018)

JK7 said:


> I just just installed it and started testing it tonight. On two consecutive trips, it registered 2.4 and 3.5 miles respectively. My odometer read 6.5 miles for the two consecutive trips.
> 
> That's an error of 0.6 miles on about 6 miles of driving (10% error). It worries me that could seriously add up if I were put in thousands of miles. Maybe I should just use my trip-meter each time I go out driving Uber and then input manually? Or is the QB app close enough? or maybe there is better app I ought to use instead?


Horrible! I hate this app because it doesn't connect to Uber to get info and it doesn't connect to the Uber Debit card to get transaction data.


----------



## JK7 (Jul 4, 2018)

So, I have had problems with the mileage tracker, too. Over several months, I found it to very short. I was missing hundreds and hundreds of miles. So, now I am spending extra time each day to make sure I am getting credited for all my deductible mileage. Some days, that requires me to manually add another trip to make up the difference from my odometer.

Does anybody have a better solution? I wish I didn't need to verify my miles at the end of every day. Is there a tracker I can trust and that will synch up with QB Self-Employed?


----------



## 142605 (Mar 4, 2018)

I use Stride. I’m betting most drivers don’t track at all.


----------



## Norm22 (Feb 10, 2018)

it won't do individual trips unless you are stationary for a while and even the it lumps them together. I don't see the problem as all are deductible as a year long number anyway.


----------

