By Scott A. Carta
In our workers’ compensation practices we are constantly on the road traveling from district to district. Most of us are reimbursed for mileage to offset gas and wear and tear on our cars. If you are like me and do not document your mileage on a contemporaneous basis, you end up spending a good amount of time calculating it at the end of the month. Well, there is a solution called MileIQ. It is a free app that automatically tracks your mileage. All you need to do is make sure “Drive Detection” is set to active.
Very simply, it refers to your travels as “drives”. Once you complete a drive, it shows up in the app. The mileage is automatically calculated based on GPS. At this time, you can add a note into the drive to document a client reference or any other pertinent information. There is also a spot to input parking charges and tolls. Then, you either swipe it to the left to categorize it as “personal” or to the right for “business”.
The drives are labeled initially as just going from one town to another. For example, the first time I used it from home to the Hartford Workers’ Compensation office, it came up as Cromwell to Hartford. You can edit the names of these locations, for example, Home to HWC, and going forward that is how the locations will appear. You can also edit the number of miles for any particular drive, if, for example, you made a pit stop and want to take some miles off. Unfortunately, this cannot be accomplished via the app. You need to go to your “dashboard” which is found at www.mileiq.com. If you need to manually add a drive for whatever reason you can also do that on the dashboard.
When it is time to submit your mileage for reimbursement, all you need to do is click the “send report” button and it will be sent to your email. The report lists the date range and itemizes each drive by: date and time, reason (including references in notes), locations, distance, mileage value, parking costs, and tolls. The report totals the miles, value, parking, and tolls and provides a total overall reimbursement value. If you need to customize a report to include a particular date range, that can be done on the dashboard.
I have been using this app for several months now and it has worked very well and has saved me a lot of time. This can also be a useful tool for claimants who are tracking mileage for medical treatment. As noted above, the app is free and the service is free for up to 40 drives per month. The cost at this time for unlimited drives is $5.99 per month or $59.99 for year.
Editors’ note: Scott A. Carta is a member of the law firm of Leighton, Katz & Drapeau in Rockville, CT. He is also on the Board of Editors for Compensation Quarterly and is a Board-Certified Workers’ Compensation Specialist.
