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Guideby Gair

How to Track Miles for Work in the UK (Without Spreadsheets)

If you drive for work in the UK and you're not tracking your miles, you're leaving money on the table. The Approved Mileage Allowance Payment (AMAP) lets self-employed drivers claim 45p per mile for the first 10,000 business miles in a tax year - 25p per mile after that. For a typical full-time delivery driver, that's £5,000 to £8,000 in deductions every year. For tradespeople driving between jobs, it's often £2,000-£4,000. Even part-time gig workers and PAYE employees who drive occasionally for work can save hundreds.

This guide covers how to actually do it - what HMRC requires, what counts as a business mile, and the practical options for tracking. Spoiler: spreadsheets are the wrong answer.

What HMRC requires

To claim mileage relief on Self Assessment (or as a PAYE employee filing Mileage Allowance Relief), HMRC requires a contemporaneous record of every business journey. That means a record made at or near the time of the trip, not reconstructed from memory in January.

Each entry needs:

  • The date of the journey
  • The start and end location
  • The business purpose of the trip
  • The distance driven

HMRC's official guidance (Helpsheet HS222) is clear that "estimates" of business mileage are not acceptable. If you get audited and your records don't survive scrutiny, the deduction is disallowed - and any tax saving you claimed becomes owed back, often with interest and penalties.

The current AMAP rates

  • Cars and vans: 45p per mile for the first 10,000 business miles per tax year, then 25p per mile
  • Motorbikes: 24p per mile (flat rate, no threshold)
  • Bicycles: 20p per mile (flat rate)
  • Passenger payment: additional 5p per mile per business passenger you're carrying on the same trip

The UK tax year runs from 6 April to 5 April, so your 10,000-mile threshold resets each April, not each January.

What counts as a business mile?

This is the part most people get wrong. A business mile is one driven wholly and exclusively for business purposes. Examples:

  • A self-employed plumber driving from one job to another
  • A gig delivery driver from accepting an Uber Eats order until completing the drop-off
  • A PAYE employee visiting a client site (where their normal workplace is the office)
  • An accountant driving to a CPD course

What does not count:

  • Your commute from home to your normal workplace - this is "ordinary commuting" and is never claimable
  • Any private journey, even in a vehicle used mostly for business
  • For most self-employed drivers, the journey from home to your first job of the day (HMRC generally treats this as commuting unless you have no fixed workplace, which is the case for many gig drivers)

Our full guide on what counts as business mileage walks through the edge cases.

Why spreadsheets fail

The most common approach to mileage tracking is "I'll just write it down" - usually a notebook or a spreadsheet filled in at the end of the week. There are three problems with this:

1. It's not contemporaneous. Filling in a spreadsheet on Sunday for the week's trips is exactly what HMRC's "contemporaneous record" rule was written to exclude. If you're investigated, HMRC will ask for the source - did you write this down at the time? Maps Timeline or Apple Maps don't count either, because they don't show the business purpose.

2. It's wrong. Mileage estimated from memory is consistently wrong - usually 15-30% lower than reality, because you forget detours, return-to-depot legs, and short between-job trips. That's £500-£2,000 in deductions every year.

3. It's miserable. Sitting down on Sunday to reconstruct Monday's miles for the next 52 Sundays of your life is a tax on your time. Most people give up by week 6 and either don't claim or claim a guess.

What actually works

A purpose-built mileage tracker app. The good ones run in the background using GPS, detect when you start and stop driving automatically, let you tag each trip as business or personal (or auto-classify based on your work schedule), apply the HMRC rate to your vehicle, and produce a Self Assessment-ready PDF at tax-year end.

Specifically you want:

  • Background GPS tracking - no taps per trip, no remembering to open the app
  • HMRC AMAP rates built in with the UK tax year (6 April to 5 April) and the 10,000-mile threshold applied automatically
  • Per-trip classification with the option to auto-classify based on saved locations or work schedule
  • Self Assessment export in a format HMRC accepts (per-trip detail + summary + attestation)
  • Offline-first tracking so tunnels, basements and rural blackspots don't lose data
  • Built for the UK - American apps use IRS rates and the 1-Jan tax year, which is the wrong answer for you

MileClear is built for this

MileClear is a free UK mileage tracker built around HMRC's AMAP rates and the 6-April tax year. Background GPS captures every drive, you classify each trip with a tap (or set Auto-Classify Rules so you never need to), and the Self Assessment PDF is ready when you are. Free forever for the tracking - Pro (£4.99/mo) only covers the tax-export PDF, business insights, and a few power-user extras.

It works for self-employed sole traders, gig delivery drivers, and PAYE employees claiming Mileage Allowance Relief.

Bottom line

If you drive any miles for work in the UK, tracking them properly is one of the highest-value pieces of admin you can do. AMAP is a real, claimable deduction. The records you keep this tax year are the difference between £0 and £4,000+ in your pocket - depending on your mileage and tax band.

Don't do it in a spreadsheet. Let a purpose-built tracker do it for you - automatically, contemporaneously, and free. Install MileClear on the App Store.