Mileage Tracking

Driving to and from work facilities is one of the largest tax deductions available to relief healthcare professionals. Unlike employees who commute to the same office every day, relief workers travel to different locations as part of the job -- and that mileage is deductible. ReliefBooks makes it easy to track.

Setting your home address

To calculate distances accurately, you need to tell ReliefBooks where you live.

1. Go to Account Settings.
2. Open the Mileage tab.
3. Enter your home address.
4. Click Save.

ReliefBooks uses this address as the starting point when calculating how far each facility is from your home.

Facility distance

When you add a facility's address in ReliefBooks, the app can calculate the driving distance from your home to that facility. This distance is stored with the facility record and used to estimate mileage for every shift you work there.

If you update your home address or a facility's address later, the distance recalculates automatically.

Mileage rate

By default, ReliefBooks uses the standard IRS mileage rate for the current tax year. If you're in a jurisdiction that uses a different rate, or if you prefer to track at a custom rate:

1. Go to Account Settings.
2. Open the Mileage tab.
3. Enter your preferred rate per mile (or per kilometer).
4. Click Save.

The rate you set here is used to calculate the dollar value of your mileage deductions.

How mileage expenses work

Mileage is tracked as a special type of expense in ReliefBooks. When you work a shift at a facility, the round-trip driving distance to that facility can be recorded as a mileage expense. This expense uses the facility distance you've already set up, multiplied by two for the round trip, and valued at your configured mileage rate.

Mileage expenses appear alongside your other expenses on the Expenses page. You can review, edit, or delete them just like any other expense.

Mileage and tax deductions

Your total mileage adds up over the course of the year and shows up on the Taxes page as a deduction. For many relief workers, this is one of the most significant write-offs available -- it's not unusual for annual mileage deductions to reach thousands of dollars.

Keeping accurate mileage records throughout the year means you're always ready if the IRS asks for documentation. ReliefBooks gives you that paper trail automatically.