Vehicle Mileage Reimbursement Plans

Many companies use mileage logging solutions to:

• Streamline and reduce manual effort in reporting mileage
• Control costs of vehicle reimbursement plans.
• Collect metrics on resource utilization and customer service in the field

Unless vehicle plans are managed properly, the impact to the bottom line can be significant:

• Disgruntled employees feel they are not compensated fairly or are taxed too much
• Inefficient manual expense logs procedure lead to productivity loss
• Company expense reports may be open to abuse and cost overrun
• Company may overpay taxes on employee benefits

The key to an effective vehicle mileage reimbursement plan is to keep accurate and complete mileage logs and to streamline the reporting and consolidation of this information.

In general, company vehicle programs come in three categories:

• Employee owned vehicles – An employee uses his personal vehicle to conduct company business. In this case, the company often reimburses the employee for vehicle expenses. This is done in the form of a fixed monthly vehicle allowance or a vehicle per-mile rate. The challenge is to determine what portion of the vehicle expenses are related to the company. A mileage log is used to determine what percentage of overall driving was done for business. Click here to find out how Milo helps companies streamline and control costs of mileage reimbursement plans.

 

• Company executive fleet vehicle – Company leased vehicles that are provided to sales staff and executives to conduct business on behalf of the company. In general, the IRS treats such a vehicle as a taxable benefit. So, unless proper procedures are followed, the employee has to pay taxes on the use of the vehicle. Click here to find out how Milo is used to ensure that executive leased vehicles are not inappropriately taxed as a benefit.

 

• Company service fleet vehicles – Company vans and trucks that are used primarily to deliver company services and are often parked on the company premises. A mileage log is often used in this case as a simple way to collect a stop report that shows what customers were services and how long the service call took. The mileage log is also used as proof that the vehicle is used primarily to conduct business and not as a personal benefit to individual employees. Click here to find out how Milo helps companies track mobile resources in the field.

 

The Best Way to Log and Track Mileage

Your company and its employees may already have tried keeping a mileage log but found:

• The hassle of entering trip details manually into a paper log was just too onerous
• Collecting the logs is frustrating as people are reluctant to maintain them on an on-going basis
• Your accounting department found the mountain of paperwork time-consuming and prone to errors.

The ultimate mileage logging solution would do it all for you:

• Eliminate manual logging and reduce the effort in reporting and processing vehicle expense reports. That includes automatically recording each trip, automatically separating commute from business trips, recording trip distances and destinations, and even determining the business purpose of each trip.
• Centrally manage mileage logs for all employees
• Prevent abuse of vehicle expense report by identifying irregular trip destinations, distances, and times
• Protect employee privacy and reduce concerns about Big Brother tracking by only reporting business trips and only when the employee has reviewed and confirmed the log
• Generate business-meaningful reports
• Generate summary mileage reports for payroll purposes

Check our - Milo™ complete solution for Mileage Reimbursement!