My Fight with MileageIQ

Last year I met with both my Business Advisor and my Accountant in one week. Both recommended that rather than tracking my company’s mileage in my current fashion that I download MileageIQ or any mileage tracking app and use that to track my drives and trips. I explained that I am a granola person and that I do not use my data on my phone and I never have location turned on so this app would not work for me. I occasionally researched apps to download and even tried a few but found that I kept running into the same issues.

I went on about my year and supported small, medium, and large business owners in their success. Every month I would sit down for hours at a time to track where I had been, compile my systems for tracking my mileage and get it all to my office manager to put into excel and send over to my administrative assistant to create the reports. My administrative assistant has been insistent the past few months that my mileage needed to be turned in and it is once again time to sit down and spend hours trying to compile all this data from my calendar, Google Maps, and quite frankly my memory.

They say that doctors make the best patients right?

I write this with a pain of concern that my clients will see that I am not a specimen of perfection and I too fall prey to the business owner pitfalls but there is also good news. I am a real person who also listens to my own advice and eventually when like many of our clients, my situation becomes painful enough, I make a change.

Right now my situation is not forcing me to make the change. I still have time to categorize and track my mileage but it is costing me time and possibly money.  So what did I do this week?

I downloaded MileageIQ, upped my data plan, and put a sticky note on my dash with the message written “Turn on our Data”. My location will remain on unless I am not traveling. And in the past week all I have had to do is swipe right or left and at the end of this month, my administrative assistant will have a detailed and categorized report of where I went and who I saw and how I got there with mileage totals. I will even have a personal report for my taxes with my medical appointments, drives for Pawssible that will be deducted for charity, and I can track what miles I am putting on what vehicles every year which will make purchasing a new car easier next year for our family. ​ So you won MileageIQ, I succumb to your tactics.

I also congratulate my team for encouraging me to live by the principles that we teach and being patient as I take my time in some of those areas. I never promised anyone that I was perfect. Many of the lessons that I am able to teach our clients come from personal pain and experience.

I will continue to shoot for progress over perfection.