The Differences between SureMileage and GPS-Based Mileage Tracking

More than half of employers in a recent survey said they are concerned by a lack of visibility into their travel and entertainment spending, and a look at many of the available tools for mileage reimbursement shows why. GPS-based mileage tracking tools are designed to be easy for employees, not accurate for employers. They track miles, not expenses.

SureMileage solves the accuracy and visibility challenges surrounding travel and entertainment expense management by using a different approach. It’s not a tracking application; it’s a reimbursement system. Rather than measuring the miles that were driven, it calculates the expenses to be reimbursed.

SureMileage, from CompanyMileage, is different from GPS-based systems in six key respects. Yes, six. Let’s review them.

1. Point-to-point mileage reimbursement is based on optimal route, not actual driving.
With SureMileage, employees report their starting point and destination and the system calculates the driving distance between them. For the employer and employee, there is accountability. If the employee needs to drive by an alternate method – say there is an accident on the planned route – he or she must report the change through either the online portal or mobile app. There employees have a place to report the difference, but they cannot make changes themselves. If they deviate, there’s a record as to why.

2. Personal mileage is excluded.
Let’s say there’s a meeting at 11 a.m. in a downtown high-rise. The employee drives downtown, stops for coffee before the meeting and meets a friend for lunch afterward before driving back to the office. His GPS-based mileage tracker records 24.1 miles driven.

With point-to-point reimbursement, side trips like these are eliminated from the reimbursement equation. So instead of 24.1 miles, this trip downtown actually involved 14.6 miles of actual business-related travel. The difference saves the company more than $5 on this one trip.

GPS vs CompanyMileage
3. Home commutes are deducted.
Most of us don’t get paid to drive to work. But a mobile salesperson or healthcare worker often claims for reimbursement trips from home to their first appointment of the day. They do the same thing at the end of the day when they return home.

SureMileage automatically calculates a mobile employee’s distance to work and deducts that home-to-work amount. It might not seem like a lot of money. But like most unmonitored expenses, it adds up. If an employee is reimbursed for a 5-mile drive to work, that’s almost $3. Now multiply that by a hundred employees.

Why should an employer pay almost $300 a day for employees to drive to work? GPS-based systems miss that expense, but it’s automatically deducted with SureMileage.

4. An integrated address book improves accuracy.
For accuracy in reimbursement, employers need to know where employees are going, not where they went. SureMileage has an integrated address book – corporate and personal – and every location is given a name. To add a new location, employees can add it to the app and it will automatically populate.

So while GPS is a reactive, CompanyMileage is proactive. It calculates the travel needed for business purposes and the expense that needs to be reimbursed. The address book keeps everyone’s eyes on the road.

5. Approval and reimbursement solutions are included.
Once travel data goes into SureMileage, it becomes a travel and expense reimbursement solution. Supervisors can review and approve expenses and send them to Accounting for reimbursement. It’s an end-to-end solution that solves a business problem.

6. An integrated module tracks travel-related expenses.
If you’re using a GPS system, you still need something else to track other expenses. Included in our software is a module called SureExpense. It helps reimburse employees for those other expenses, such as tolls, parking, hotels and buying the client coffee. It’s in the same application as SureMileage and uses the same approval and audit system.