Since its introduction in 2013 MileIQ has become a firm favorite with users and finance departments everywhere, so much so that Microsoft purchased the product in November 2015 and has now included it in its in their Office365 Business Premium subscription
So what does it do and why's it so good?.
It's an IOS and Android app that uses the device's GPS sensor to detect when and where you start a journey and tracks how far you’ve traveled making recording you mileage a much less time consuming job. So far so good you say, but there are dozens of similar apps that do the same job, and yes there are, but the level of manual intervention and the lack of decent reporting has always put me off.
With MileIQ, you signup with your Office365 credentials, install it on your phone and away you go. After every journey, it pops up a notification and displays your journeys details ,then you simply swipe left for a personal trip and right for a business journey, swipe left or right slowly and you can add a purpose for the journey - Job done, then at the end of the month MileIQ emails you a completed mileage report ready for sign-off by finance.
So instead of spending hours fiddling with spreadsheets and trying to remember when and why I made a journey, I simple press Forward in my email client and email off my completed report to the finance department.
I'm sold, show me more
Signup with your Office365 credentials, and then reply to the email verification and you ready to go.
Once you're logged in you can run through the tutorial or go straight to settings work your way through the options, start off by clicking Vehicles and Odometer and add a new vehicle
Add you cars particulars, you can add multiple vehicles if required
Use the metric system?, change it here, along with mileage rates
With Auto-classify enabled MileIQ starts to learn your common journeys and will auto classify them as business or personal
Enable Working hours and any journeys outside of your chosen working hours will auto classify as personal journeys
Custom purposes allow to you to classify journeys, add as many as you like.
When you've finished setup and install the app, jump in the car and complete a journey
soon after your journey is complete your phone will phone up a notification displaying the journey
That's it, a few swipes a day and you'll get a fully populated driving expenditure report emailed to you every month ready for submitting.
All that sounds great, but..
If you're a business premium user there are no buts, if you're a enterprise Office365 customer your subscription doesn't include MileIQ. Yes that's right, you pay more but get less, hopefully Microsoft will soon see the injustice in this and include it in its enterprise subscription.
If you are an enterprise customer or just want to use the app without an Office subscription there is a paid option available, its not particularly cheap at £44.99 per year or £4.49 a month. Having said that, we are enterprise customers and still feel its worth the money.
Making the Most of your Office365 Subscription