Business vs personal mileage — how to categorize your drives

When you record a drive, MileLedger asks whether it was a business or personal trip. This simple label has a significant downstream effect: business drives appear in business mileage reports and are included when calculating the total distance and estimated value of your work-related travel.

Accurate categorization ensures that your Reports tab, CSV exports, and PDF reports (Premium) reflect only genuine business mileage — giving you a reliable record for reimbursements, expense claims, or tax purposes.

When adding a drive manually, you'll find a Business / Personal toggle. Choose Business if the drive was for work purposes, or Personal for private travel.

If you use automatic mileage tracking, MileLedger may suggest a category from **Smart Routes**, **Saved Places**, or **Work Hours**. Confirm from the drive detail or Home → Needs you. You can change any drive’s category anytime.

**Saved Places** (More → Saved Places) match one location — useful for home, office, or client sites.

**Smart Routes** (More → Smart Routes) match a repeated path A→B (or any start → destination).

**Work Hours** (More → Work Hours) suggest a category for leftover drives that did not match a route or place.

See **Saved Places vs Smart Routes** for a full comparison.

Expenses can also be categorized as business or personal. Use the Business categorization for work-related spending such as client meals, work supplies, fuel for business vehicles, and parking during client visits. Personal expenses — such as fuel for a personal road trip — should be marked Personal.

Only business-categorized expenses appear in business reports. Keeping categorizations accurate is especially important if you share personal and business spending across the same accounts.

Business mileage generally includes driving to visit clients or customers, travel between job sites, trips to pick up work supplies or equipment, and other driving that is directly related to your work or business.

The definition of what qualifies as deductible business mileage varies by country, tax authority, and your specific employment or business structure. MileLedger does not determine whether a trip is tax-deductible — it simply records what you categorize.

In many jurisdictions, driving from your home to your primary workplace (commuting) is not deductible as a business expense — even if you use the same car for business travel. However, the rules are nuanced and depend on your specific situation, such as whether you have a home office or travel between multiple work locations.

MileLedger does not enforce any rules about commuting or tax deductibility. You choose how to categorize your commute based on your own judgment and, ideally, advice from a qualified tax professional. If you want to track commuting drives separately, consider adding a note (e.g. 'Commute') to those trips so they're easy to identify in your records.

You can change the categorization of any drive or expense at any time. In the Drives tab, tap a drive to open its detail view and tap Edit. Change the Business/Personal field and save. The same applies to expenses in the Expenses tab.

It is good practice to review your drive categorizations regularly — for example at the end of each week — rather than waiting until tax season.

In the Reports tab, you can filter by Business or Personal (or view both). Business reports show totals for business-categorized drives, the estimated value based on your configured mileage rate, and business-categorized expenses. This view is the one most relevant for reimbursements and tax record-keeping.

When you export to CSV or PDF, you can typically choose whether to include all drives or only business drives. Check the export options for your chosen format.