QuickBooks 2005: The Missing Manual

Tracking Mileage

If you charge your customers for mileage, keeping track of the billable miles you drive is important. But all business-related mileage is tax-deductible, so tracking non-bill-able mileage is important too. Customers and the IRS alike want records of the miles you drive, and QuickBooks can help you produce that documentation.

Note

The mileage tracking feature in QuickBooks tracks only the miles you drive using company vehicles, not other vehicle expenses, such as fuel or tolls.

Nor do you use QuickBooks mileage tracking to record miles driven by employees, vendors, or subcontractors. These miles go straight to an expense account. For example, if a vendor bills you for mileage, when you enter the bill in QuickBooks (page 266), you assign that charge to an expense account, such as Travel-Mileage. Likewise, when you write a check (page 293) to reimburse an employee for mileage driven, you assign that employee reimbursement to the expense account for mileage.

Adding a Vehicle

To track mileage for a company vehicle, you must first add it to the QuickBooks Vehicle List.

The Enter Vehicle Mileage dialog box presents all the mileage-related features you need, as you can see in Figure 17-11. To open this dialog box, choose Company→ Enter Vehicle Mileage.

Figure 17-11. Top: To open the Vehicle List window, in the Enter Vehicle Mileage dialog box icon bar, click Vehicle List. From ...