8 Best Mileage Apps for Realtors in 2023
For 2023, the standard mileage rate business deduction is $0.655 per mile.
I’d guess a half-busy agent easily drives 10,000 miles a year. That is $6550 in business deductions you lose if you aren’t tracking your mileage!
If you are a Realtor, you need to be tracking your miles.
Fortunately, there are lots of tools that make mileage tracking almost painless.
Best Mileage Apps
BEST OVERALL MILEAGE TRACKER
Hurdlr
FREE+. Hurdlr is a small business and real estate mileage tracker app that automatically tracks your miles, income, expenses, tax liability, and tax deductions all in real-time. Hurdlr ensures you are ready to make the most of your available deductions come tax time. They acquired their competitor Taxbo in 2021.
Hurdlr has the full range of features, including estimating tax deductions, tracking both income and expenses, tax prep, receipts, and more.
The free version is entirely usable, too. It is missing the convenience of automated mileage tracking and receipt syncing. But you can use those features manually if you like.
Hurdlr was originally designed for rideshare drivers for Uber and Lyft, but they have gone out of their way to appeal to real estate agents. When signing up, you can sign up as a real estate agent, including branding options for the major franchises.
It tracks your estimated tax savings in real time and estimates your tax liability if you use it to also track income.
It is also scalable to teams or businesses, allowing you to track multiple vehicles.
Only the premium version features the automatic tracking.
BEST APP FOR QUICKBOOKS USERS
QuickBooks
$15+/mo. QuickBooks Online is the Big Kahuna of business accounting. It has the full suite of accounting tools that you would ever need for your real estate business. If you are a small team or bigger, you are going to want to strongly consider QuickBooks as the real estate brokerage accounting software of choice.
You might think I’m being cheeky. Obviously Quickbooks is the best app for Quickbooks.
But I’m not!
Quickbooks is the complete accounting suite for small and medium businesses. If you are a team or brokerage, you very likely may be using their tools already.
Among their tools is a great mileage tracker app.
It is on the more expensive side of all these options. But combined with the power of being directly integrated into Quickbooks and it is a great choice for anyone who is all-in on Quickbooks.
OTHER MILEAGE APPS
Everlance
FREE+. This mileage app . You can easily claffisy different trips by category. The free version is good for 30 trips a month with some expense reporting and receipt capture. The basic plan starts at $5/mo.
MileIQ
FREE+. MileIQ is a mileage tracker owned by Microsoft. It automatically creates a mileage log when you are moving in a car, and you can quickly classify your trips as a business expense or personal. The free version is limited to 40 drives per month. It does not have expense tracking and the other tools of others, so it is best if you only need mileage tracking.
Shoeboxed
$18+/mo. Shoeboxed features mileage tracking as more of an afterthought. Their primary offering features robust receipt tracking, including integrations with Gmail, tracking expenses, and integrations with Quickbooks and Xero.
Stride
FREE+. Stride is an app built with the gig economy in mind. The company leverages the product to offer healthcare options for independent contractors. It is also one of the only apps that has automatic mileage tracking as part of the free plan.
Timeero
$4+/mo. Timeero is designed more for managers who are wanting to track mileage for employees. If you have W2 employees whom you want to compensate or expense for mileage, this might be a useful tool for monitoring their work mileage. It integrates with Quickbooks.
TripLog
FREE+. The free plan features only manual mileage tracking. The paid version at $4.99/mo opens up automatic mileage reporting and reports. The full software features a suite of tools like route planning for managing small service businesses.
Others
Important Features for Realtors in a Mileage App
Some features to look for in a mileage app for real estate:
- Automatic Mileage Tracking. Most are able to automatically track your trips. The app runs in the background on your phone throughout your day and begins recording a trip when it detects you are travelling at a car’s pace. At the end of each trip, you can manually swipe the trip into the personal or business trip categories (though sometimes it will get confused at a long stop at a traffic light, breaking up a single trip into multiple trips.
- Automatic Expense Categorization. Some apps are able to sync to your bank account and automatically match your receipts to bank transactions.
- Tax Preparation. Whether it is an easy export to send to your CPA, or just tracking expenses, some reporting tools are handy. Most have a P&L, driving log, and all your receipts.
Conclusion
Real estate agents can’t afford to let any business expense go unclaimed. Adding a mileage tracker from Day #1 will help keep you sane come tax time and pay not a dollar more than you owe.
Updated April 27, 2023; Originally published January 17, 2021
