Mileage Expense Tracker – Why did we create it and why free?

In this blog I would like to give a little bit of the drive and the motivation behind creating the Mileage Expense Tracker.

Well those of you who have visited our site and signed up for the MET know that it is a free and useful tool to keep your mileage expenses and record your business trips. By doing so you cannot save 15% or more on your car insurance, but you can save a lot of money on your taxes. 

However, I must admit, my drive for creating a tool such as MET was not about saving money.

Here is the story.

When I was working as an independent consultant (making a lot of money for my standards) my accountant Ken always asked for my business miles. Honestly, I never kept a good record of them (none to be exact). Therefore, I never claimed any of my business mileage expenses.

I was busy making money, right?

No, I was wrong and stupid.

Once you make money you may as well keep as much of it as you can.

None of the reasons so far explain the reason for the creation of Web2Expense – Mileage Expense Tracker. The reason was my accountant’s small black leather covered notebook.

Every year in February I go and see my accountant Ken; he is a CPA by the way.

For some reason, every year Ken takes out (from his shirt pocket) his small black leather covered pocket notebook and waves at me and asks “Semih, did you bring the record of your business miles with you?” And as you may have guessed it by now my answer was always ‘no’. I always said “Ken I have not kept a record of my business miles.” He shakes his head, adjusts his glasses again and returns back to the other pages that I kept very neatly for my taxes throughout the year. I always felt like a kid who did not do his or her homework. Though I always wanted to shout back at him and say “Ken don’t treat me like a kid I am 48 years old and I always keep excellent records for all my other expenses.”, I never did.

Well I hated that and I intended to change it. Therefore, I asked our lead developer Hakan how much effort it would take to create a mini version of Web2Expense – Travel Expense Report Management Software. When I heard the amount of energy required to do so, I jumped on the project. I want to have something better than the small, black, leather-covered notebook. Well, we did.

Here it is, now you know, the real story behind the Web2Expense – Mileage Expense Tracker.

Why free?

This software is free and can save you a large sum of money.  In my case, I could have used some of that money that went to IRS for my son’s college tuition.

Semih

P.S. For the next year I am planning to send my mileage expenses to Ken as a spreadsheet attachment. You can do the same because now you can export to Excel (One of my friend’s suggested the feature).