MileWiz - the complete guide

Transcription

1 MileWiz - the complete guide Introduction Each year, each country s tax agency specifies the rates for tax deductions for driving. The rules vary from country to country. MileWiz currently supports the laws in USA, Canada, UK, Australia, Ireland and Germany. While the rules vary, there are some things in common. Most governments reimburse people who drive for business, charity or other non-personal activities. This means that if you re a sales person, or a freelancer, or anything else that requires driving for business, the government will reduce your taxes if you provide proof of these trips. Here s where MileWiz comes to help. Just install MileWiz, and it will start monitoring when you drive. Absolutely automatically! There is no need to press start/stop buttons. MileWiz will allow you to categorize your drives with a single swipe, merge them with a pinch gesture or set rules for auto-categorization. At the end of the year, you just export all your drives, write down the total distance driven for tax-riemburstable reasons, attach the MileWiz log to your tax return, and that s it! Overview MileWiz can automatically detect when you drive, even if it's not running. It doesn't need you to turn it on, push buttons, record, stop recording, etc. All you have to do is take your iphone with you when you drive. Many of you may believe that it's not possible and be genuinely surprised after installing the app. That's one of the reasons why MileWiz gives you for free 20 trips per month - to prove that it just works. Once you install MileWiz you will see a message like this:

2 That is how the app requests your permission to monitor your location and speed at all times, so it can detect when you drive. Please, note that the app cannot function without this permission. Where do I start? The first time you install MileWiz you will see a 6 page guide within the app itself. This

3 guide goes through the most common and basic features that you'd need to know in order to operate the app. This includes information on how to access the applications main menu. It's common to refer to this button as to the "hamburger" button. It is located on the top left corner as illustrated on the screenshot above.

4 The main menu provides access to all features and sections within the app. This includes access: your recorded trips list of drivers list of vehicles reports settings the SYNCbits cloud feature quick button to activate or de-activate auto-tracking The first time you open the menu, it will likely look like that. It is recommended to start here - visit all sections and explore the app capabilities. You may learn how to use it's features during this initial exploration.

5 Automatic tracking Automatic tracking is a feature that relies heavily on your iphone device's location information. Tracking the location allows the app to detect when you are idling on the same location and when you are in motion. If you are in motion, then your speed also plays a role into the process. If the speed is low, the app will consider that you are walking, but if the speed is high, the app will consider that you are driving and record

6 the movement. Additionally, if the speed is too high (>250 mph) the app will consider that you are in an airplane and will not record the movement. The algorithm is searching for the fine balance between accurate readings of your locations (and recording your trips accurately) and the battery life of your device. Doing GPS readings consumes a lot of battery life and the more precise readings we make, the more power is used. If you already used the app to record a trip that you made, you may have noticed that in some cases the app may show that your location was just off of the highway, instead of exactly on the highway. A number of factors may play a role into this situation: the map may be slightly inaccurate bad weather affects the accuracy of GPS readings in order to preserve battery, the app may have decided to take a cell tower reading, which is less accurate, but requires less power MileWiz doesn't just show you the location at the beginning and at the end of your trip. It shows you the entire trip and calculates the trip knowing exactly which locations you have been to during the trip. You can also view your trip on a full size map and zoom into it for further details.

7 Merge and Categorize If you drive in rush hour, you may often find your self in traffic. Staying at the same location for more than 5 minutes will lead the app to considering that your trip has ended. It may so happen that you are waiting too long to make a turn on a particularly overloaded intersection; or even exiting the highway on a road with too much traffic.

8 To make it more convenient for you, MileWiz allows you to quickly merge subsequent trips into one trip. You can just use the pinching gesture - using 2 fingers (thumb and index), put each finger on a trip, then move the fingers closer together. The background of both trips will turn green and if you release the touch, the trips will be merged to one trip. Categorization and Tax Deductions

9 Another action you can quickly perform from the list of your trips is categorization. You can set up a default category for swiping to the left and a default category for swiping to the right. This option will satisfy the most common case where you either drive to attend business or for any personal reasons. In case your situation is different, you can setup the categories differently. By default MileWiz includes a list of the categories recognized in your country and includes the proper tax deductions for those categories. Additionally, the app includes a personal category, which doesn't have any tax deductions. Normally, you will not need to change anything about the list of categories. However, it may be the case that you country is not yet supported by the app. In that case, MileWiz creates by default a Personal and a Business category, neither of which has default tax deduction. You can set the deduction yourself and add new categories. Currently, MileWiz supports the following countries: United States Canada United Kingdom Ireland Germany Australia If your country is not among the supported ones, that doesn't mean that the app will not automatically detect your trips - it will detect the trips, it will just not create automatically a default set of categories. In case you are a tax payer in a country that provides deductions for driving, please contact us at hello@milewiz.com and we will make an effort to add support for your country in the next update. Based on the trip length, category and on the category's tax deduction scheme, the app will give you an estimate of how much you will be able to claim off of your taxes.

10 Manual tracking Manual tracking is a feature added for your convenience. If you simply forgot your iphone device at home and went for a business meeting, that doesn't mean you can't take advantage of the tax benefits for driving. Just record your trip manually when you get back home.

11 You can do that if you go to the main menu, then select Trips. When this section opens you will see a big green plus button on the bottom. Press this button to create a trip manually. All you have to do is select From and To date and time and From and To location. The form for creating a trip manually is the same as the one for editing an auto-detected trip. You can specify: additional description Client Category Tags Driver Vehicle Additional expenses, such as Toll, Parking and Gas that may also be deductible.

12 Multiple Drivers You may need to handle multiple drivers and keep all the information at the same place. If you use SYNCbits to synchronize and backup your data, please note that you can set different default driver for each device separately.

13 A convenient feature here is that you can set working hours per driver. Setting working hours allows MileWiz to auto-categorize the trips that it auto-detects and saves you even more time. You can set the working hours to be as versatile as you want them to be.

14 Multiple Vehicles You may need to handle more than one vehicle. If you have more than one vehicle in your family you may need provide separate lists of trips for each vehicle to claim tax deductions. Additionally, for example in Australia, different vehicles may have different tax

15 deductions depending on engine size. Estimations Based on the information about the length of your trips, the categories you selected and deductions for the current year, MileWiz can give you an estimate about how much you can claim off of your taxes. The calculations are rather simple - if you drive 30 miles per day on average, 250 days per year, with rate per mile you will be able to claim about $4,312.5 of your taxes. The given rate is for the United States, rates in other countries vary. Reports MileWiz allows you to generate a report by any parameter you need to. You can filter trips by category, driver, vehicle, tag, client, period or you may not filter them at all. You are free to choose depending you on the purpose of your report. Additionally you can export the report to CSV so you can easily attach it to your tax return documents or send it to your account for review.

16 Settings Via Settings you can: General - manage your regional settings (using miles or kilometers, currency, etc) Categories - create, edit and delete categories Clients - if this information is important for you, you can also keep track of which

17 trip was made to service which client Tags - you can have any number of tags and you will create them from here SYNCbits - use this menu to sign in, sign up and sign out of SYNCbits (a free cloud service that allows you synchronize data across devices) Import from CSV - if you kept track of your trips with any other software you can export them in a CSV file and import them in MoneyWiz Driving Plan - this is where you can manage your subscription; in order to use the auto-tracking feature for more than 20 drives per month, you must be subscribed for the unlimited driving plan (either monthly or yearly) About & Help - this menu contains our contact address, in case you have any further questions for us.

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