How mileage is calculated

A journey’s amount is its qualifying distance multiplied by the rate that applies, where the rate depends on how far the person has already travelled this company year. That is why the order of sheets matters.

The distance

MileageSheet uses the driving distance between the places you entered, including any waypoints.
It rounds that to one decimal place, half up.
It adds your distance adjustment, a signed whole number, with a reason.
The result is the qualifying distance. It stays in the company’s unit, kilometres or miles, and is never converted.

The company year and the running total

Each person has a running total of distance for each vehicle kind (car or van, motorcycle, bicycle) within the company cumulative year. It starts at zero when a new year begins, or at a one-off opening mileage you entered for the first year.

You choose the month your company’s year starts when you sign up. It cannot be changed afterwards. Most Irish companies choose January and most UK companies choose April. See Company settings.
Each sheet’s closing total for a kind becomes the next sheet’s opening total.

The rate band

Rates come in bands. The first part of the year’s distance earns a higher rate, and distance beyond the top of a band earns the next rate. A journey that crosses a band is split, and each part shows its own distance, rate and amount. Band ends are inclusive: the next tenth of a unit uses the next band.

Which set of rates applies depends on:

the date of the trip, not the date it was entered;
the vehicle in effect on that date, its kind, powertrain and, for Ireland, its engine size;
the scheme the person is on. The Default scheme uses the official rates. A custom scheme uses your own bands.

A car or van, or a motorcycle, without an engine size cannot be priced. A vehicle provided by the employer is not priced, because the statutory rates apply to a privately available vehicle.

Irish and UK mileage rates

The Default scheme uses the official rates of the company’s country. You can see the rates in force on the scheme page.

Ireland (kilometres, euro). The Default scheme uses Revenue’s civil service motor travel rates. A car or van is priced by its engine size and by the distance bands within the company year. Motorcycles and bicycles have their own rates. Learn more at mileagesheet.ie.
United Kingdom (miles, pounds). The Default scheme uses HMRC’s approved mileage allowance payments. A car or van earns one rate up to 10,000 miles in the company year and a lower rate beyond that. Motorcycles and bicycles have a flat rate each. Learn more at mileagesheet.co.uk.

When an official rate changes, MileageSheet adds the new rate from its effective date. Sheets already processed are never repriced.

Provisional and final amounts

On a Draft sheet, amounts are provisional. If an earlier sheet’s total changes, later drafts are recalculated. If the official rates change, Draft mileage and subsistence are recalculated too, and you are told when one of your amounts changed.
When you submit, the sheet is calculated again from the previous sheet’s locked closing totals, and the result is stored with the revision.
After a sheet is Processed, its distance and amounts never change. A later change to the official rates does not reprice it, and neither does it reprice a Submitted, Approved or Expired sheet.

This is why a sheet can only be submitted once every earlier sheet in the year is Processed: the opening total for this month has to be final.

Subsistence and expenses

They are not part of the running total. A subsistence claim pays a fixed allowance from the rate table, depending on how long you were away. An expense repays the amount you entered. See Add a subsistence claim and Add an expense.