Overall, QuickBooks Online provides a pretty solid way to track time, though there is room for improvement. If you make use of the mobile app and scan your receipts, this extends your ability to track down to the very minute. However, if you have a lot of expenses with cash transactions, you can't fully trust the program to track these correctly without some additional help. For tracking mileage, QuickBooks has some interesting options available in its own tool set, as well as a few third party tools that can sync with QuickBooks and help enhance your mileage tracking experience even more.
A simple swipe enables mileage tracking
With small business owners and staff having little to no time left to spend on administrative matters, one of the key advantages of the new QuickBooks Online Mileage Tracker is its built-in automation. The mobile QuickBooks Online app uses GPS, cell towers and Wi-Fi to triangulate a user’s location, providing pinpoint accuracy and automatically recording the miles driven for any business-related trip.
“This is a huge benefit for users who don’t want to manually add their information into QuickBooks Online,” explains Evett. “For example, with only a simple swipe – a typical smartphone gesture all of us are very familiar with – QuickBooks Online can keep a very clear record of business mileage you can claim on your taxes.”
Let’s say your client provides home and commercial contractor services, with the need to visit multiple job sites in person. If the contractor travels between San Diego and Los Angeles, they simply navigate to the mileage tab on the mobile app to track a trip. They can also save a customized name to a specific address as a “favorite,” making it easier to remember which trips are business and which are personal.
QuickBooks Self-Employed
It’s also worth noting that if a QuickBooks Self-Employed user finds that they need to switch to QuickBooks Online, then the miles that they entered into QuickBooks Self-Employed will carry over.
“Intuit continues to add the technology and features I need to run my business all in one place,” says Heather Satterley ofSatterley Training & Consulting. “The new mileage tracking feature in QuickBooks Online offers the same great functionality found in QuickBooks Self-Employed and MileIQ, but it's now right inside my QuickBooks Online account!"
Manually adding mileage
Manually entering mileage is also available if clients are tapping into QuickBooks Online on their desktop via the Mac or PC app, or over the internet. Users click on “mileage’ on the navigation bar, put in the beginning and end locations, and miles driven, then classify the trip as personal or business. QuickBooks instantly shows the dollar amount based on current IRS mileage rates (always updated) and what the tax deduction would be. For example, on a trip of 3.9 miles between point A and point B, the tax deduction would be $2.26.
“While $2.26 may seem insignificant to the user, we know that multiple trips can add up to big deductions come tax time,” says Evett. “QuickBooks Online generates a mileage report that can be reviewed and easily put into tax preparation software. That saves time for the user in not having to keep manual logs, while automating the workflow for the accountant.”
Qbo Mileage 2
Next steps for mileage tracking
Currently, only the master administrator for a QuickBooks Online account has access to mileage tracking, but Evett reports that this will soon change. In addition, the development team is adding on features for Android and iPhone users to enhance the feature, such as location-based rules a user can set to classify the same frequent trips as business.
“Location-based rules will be great for the user who hasn’t checked the app in quite some time because no work will need to be done to record older trips,” says Evett. “We want to make mileage tracking one of the most useful features in QuickBooks Online, not only for the accountant, but for their clients as well.”
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Conclusion
Time-tracking is an essential part of the job for employees. If time-tracking isn't done properly, it can cause discrepancies in your checklists and make your GL entries inaccurate. Time-tracking not only benefits you as an employer, but also benefits the employee - tracking their time helps them see where they're spending their time on, and lets you see where you need to hire more help to improve productivity. QuickBooks does support time-tracking for its users, but its native time-tracker lacks a lot of the features that dedicated time-tracker extensions have. In this article, we'll take a look at two different options available to QuickBooks Online users who want to keep better track of their employees' timesheets.