Keeping track of mileage and business expenses for tax purposes can be a hassle for any self-employed person. Fortunately, there are a number of mobile apps that can help you gather and store your business receipts, and can simplify production of records required for tax preparation.
Why use an app?
There are a variety of apps on the market that help businesses and freelancers to record all of their deductible business expenses digitally. Many of these apps can also track working hours and generate expense reports, among other things. These programs can organize and control your expenses to help you become tax compliant and stay on budget throughout the year.
Aside from the benefit of not having to manage piles of paper receipts and having easy access to digital copies when you need to claim reimbursements, expense management software helps taxpayers become more efficient in general. The end result is usually a more productive individual and/or team than spends less time managing paperwork and more time growing the business!
Some Apps for Tracking Expenses
Here is a brief review of just a few apps that can help you track your business income, expenses, and mileage throughout the year:
- Quickbooks Self-Employed allows you to take snapshots of your business receipts, record business mileage, categorize income and expenses for Schedule C, and export records. It syncs with all major bank, PayPal, and credit card accounts.
- Mileage Log+, provides for easy mileage entry, quick access to frequent trips made, and generation of email reports in pdf or excel-compatible formats.
- MileIQ mobile app includes automatic mileage tracking of personal and business mileage. It also keeps a record of your previous trips and generates reports.
- BizXpense Tracker allows you to scan receipts, track your expenses and mileage, and generate reports. You can also track your work hours through this program.
- Expensify is another program that tracks business and travel expenses, scans receipts and creates reports. Expensify integrates with QuickBooks and allows you to reimburse directly to a checking account.
- Shoeboxed has numerous features including scanning and organizing receipts, tracking mileage and creating expense reports. It also integrates with Quickbooks.
- FreshBooks allows you to track work time and expenses, scan receipts, create invoices and accept payments via the app. The program syncs with other mileage tracking and finance apps, and features a separate login for your accountant to download the information they need to prepare your tax returns.
- GoDaddy Bookkeeping tracks business expenses (including mileage), produces tax reports, tracks customer purchases, and links up to bank and credit card accounts, PayPal, eBay, Amazon, etc.
Some of these apps are free, others are not. Remember that the cost of the app itself is deductible as a business expense!