Tech Geek

I keep track of lots of expenses and I generally do pretty well at it. I save receipts so I can meticulously match them up with my credit cards online, so I can turn them in for reimbursement, and so I can track them for tax purposes. I yell and stomp my feet whenever my wife forgets to give me a receipt from the grocery store. I could tell you how much we spent buying salt for our water softener. But tracking mileage for reimbursement purposes drives me nuts. I've tried everything, from the little red book calendar to programs on my Palm, but after a few weeks, I'm back to ignoring the miles again. This may not work any better, but I've got two new things to try!

I used to use an application called Quickmile on my Palm IIIc. It worked for tracking reimbursable miles and fuel economy. But when I upgraded to a laptop with Windows Vista, it stopped working. I found it really odd that I couldn't find anything to replace it, and maybe if my Palm was newer it would work with Vista, but I was stuck. I also found that there were times that I didn't have my Palm with me and so the trip didn't get logged. Before I knew it, two weeks had passed! So I wanted something that was with me all the time and let me only enter data once. I also needed a way to review and recreate trips that had happened in the past.

The first thing I discovered, and have been using for awhile, was Mileage Calculator, a mash-up that uses Google Calendar and Google Maps to calculate your mileage. You enter in a default starting address, the XML Private Link to your Google Calendar, and a date range. It gives you a list of all the items and you can delete those that don't have mileage. If you put everything into your calendar (and use Google Calendar), it could be a good solution. I have used it to review and make sure I'm not missing something else. It's easy for me, since I already synchronize my Palm with Google Calendar and almost any trip I take is reflected there. I suppose I could even create a new calendar called Mileage and then track my trips that way. I decided that I didn't like the amount of review work necessary with this method, since there are lots of things on my calendar that don't require any driving. I did like the idea of using Google Maps to calculate mileage for trips I had already taken and have used that to recreate mileage figures after the fact.

For all sorts of reimbursement purposes, Xpenser seems like a good fit and it is my current tool. It is designed to allow you to enter an expense and forget it. The tool allows you to interact with it in a variety of ways. You can send expenses via e-mail, IM (Yahoo, MSN, or AOL), SMS text message, direct message on Twitter, or (my favorite) Jott. Once you set up an account, click on the keywords tab and turn on mileage tracking and enter the reimbursement rate provided by your congregation or employer. Now if I run into town to meet someone at the coffee shop, I reset my trip odometer at the beginning of the trip and when I get back to church I send a message that is as simple as mileage 4 coffee with high schooler. My expense report will have a new line: 5/5/2008 - mileage - 2.02 - (4.0 miles at 0.51) coffee with high schooler. (Even though it says 0.51, it calculates correctly on .505.) At the end of the month, I print out the report and give it to the treasurer and set the status on Xpense to submitted.

P.S. - For tracking fuel economy, another simple tool is MyMileMarker.com. You let it know whenever you fill up and whenever you get an oil change. It tells you how many miles per gallon you're getting.

P.P.S. - If you are tracking mileage for the IRS and not for reimbursement purposes, you need to be careful to record odometer readings and not just trip distance. You should probably stick to the notebook!