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For accountants
The mileage app to recommend to your self-employed clients
You already know how this goes. A self-employed client claims a big vehicle deduction, then in April hands you a number they clearly reverse-engineered from their gas receipts and a hopeful memory. You either talk them down to something defensible or spend unbillable hours cleaning it up. The fix is upstream: get them keeping a real log during the year. Here is what a defensible log needs, and a simple app worth pointing clients to.
The shoebox log is a liability, theirs and yours
A mileage claim with no contemporaneous record is one of the easier things for the CRA or IRS to challenge. When the log is a reconstruction, the deduction is exposed, the client is unhappy, and the reflection lands partly on you. The clients who need it most, the agents, contractors, gig drivers, and consultants who live in their cars, are usually the least likely to have kept anything. A tracker that runs itself removes the excuse.
What makes a log defensible
Both tax authorities want essentially the same thing: a record kept at the time, not after the fact.
- United States (IRS): per business trip, the mileage, date, destination, and business purpose, plus odometer readings at the start and end of the year. Kept close to when the trip happened. (Publication 463.)
- Canada (CRA): a full-year logbook with date, destination, purpose, and kilometres, plus start and end-of-year odometer, or the simplified three-month sample method once a base-year log exists. The log substantiates the business-use percentage applied to actual vehicle costs on the T2125.
An app that captures each trip automatically, with date, distance, and purpose, and exports it in that form is doing exactly the substantiation work your client will otherwise fail to do.
Why on-device matters for your clients, and for you
Most mileage apps are cloud services. To use them, your client creates an account, and from then on a running map of everywhere they drive lives on a vendor's server. For clients who are privacy-minded, or who drive to sensitive places, that is a real hesitation, and it is often why they never adopt a tracker at all.
PocketMile is built the other way. There is no account, and trips stay on the client's own iPhone and iCloud. The App Store lists it as Data Not Collected. For you, that means recommending a tool that keeps your client's data in your client's hands, which is an easy recommendation to stand behind.
What to hand a client
PocketMile logs every drive on its own using GPS and motion, sorts business from personal once the client pairs their work car, and exports a clean log for the CRA or the IRS in kilometres or miles, plus a PDF summary. It is $2.99 a month after a 7-day free trial, iPhone and iPad. You can point a client to it in one sentence: "Install this, pair your car, and drive. Send me the export at year end."
Accountants and bookkeepers: if you would like to offer PocketMile to your self-employed clients, get in touch at support@pocketmile.app. We are happy to set up client offer codes and talk through what the export looks like in your workflow.
This article is general information for professionals and is not tax advice for any specific taxpayer. Always apply the current CRA and IRS rules to the client's facts.
Give your clients a log that keeps itself
PocketMile auto-tracks every drive and exports a CRA and IRS-ready log, with no account and nothing sent to a server. $2.99/month after a 7-day free trial.
Download on the App Store