I always had suspicions some clients could be inflating business miles. Perhaps a rather covet way of significantly reducing one's taxes.
We used to get clients just pluck a mileage figure from thin air even though we tell them to keep a track and give them an expense sheet to complete. Now do we we just accept the figure or insist of a detail breakdown including dates and customers. If we go back to them asking for dates and customers we know they may "innocently" just make it up or provide their best guess. How would you deal with this especially as it is a HMRC requirement to have detailed mileage records. Have you had an investigation whereeas HMRC looked at business miles ?
We have been looking at mileage apps like MileIQ, Triplog Mileage etc to reduce potential fraud especially the later as it integrates with Quickbooks and Xero. Actually when we mentioned mileage apps to our clients reponse was mixed some were keen and some were not which was surprisingly as it would save them a lot of time as well if they have to write each journey down. Some thought it was fine to write it down in their diary a month later (when they probably cannot remember where they have been) whereas I thought they would be jumping up and down with joy so they can spend time doing something more interesting like....
In addition a mileage app will save my time too as no need to enter a journal or split miles between 0.45p / 0.25p. There is a small cost around £3-£4 a month.
Would be interested in your thoughts.
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We give our clients TripCatcher (£1.49pcm) which integrates with Xero.
Uptake is 50/50 is say. App works well and has some useful features (auto enter recurring journeys, manually enter ‘favourites’)
I believe that mileIQ is now ‘free’ as part of an office 365 subscription.
If your clients are happy with Microsoft knowing their every movement and have office 365 it costs nothing for them to experiment with it {:-)
Yes its handy if clients have the office 365 subscription which I not sure if many of my clients have the subscription.
I don't think MileIQ integrates with Xero or quickbooks. Integration is useful as just means time and hassle especially if there are multiple employees.
The problem with mileage apps is still the same. You have to get the client to keep the records.
Having said that, some clients cope better with a mileage app than paper.
As an aside, I had a guy in last week, asked him about private mileage. "Hardly any", he said, "say 5%". We worked out he did 24000 miles a year. What's his private miles ? "I went to Surrey to see my daugher." OK, that's 500 miles. "Twice". 1000. "Oh, I play squash - 30 miles round trip" How often ? "Twice a week for 40 weeks." OK - we're already up to 3400 miles. We eventually settled on a third.