PDF export
A single total proves nothing. If the IRS asks, what you hand over is the detail: every trip, its date, its purpose, and the rate applied.
What the PDF contains
| Section | Content |
|---|---|
| Summary | Miles and allowance per vehicle, year-to-date total, rate applied |
| Reimbursements | What you have already been paid, and what is still owed |
| Trip detail | Date, start, destination, vehicle, miles, business purpose |
| Attachments | Your toll and parking receipts, merged into the same file |
The IRS does not accept a round number scribbled at year-end. Publication 463 asks for a record made at or near the time of the drive, showing the date, the mileage and the business purpose of each trip. That is exactly what this document is: a log built from your calendar as the year went by, not reconstructed in April.
The rate is shown, not just the result
Each trip is priced at the IRS standard mileage rate for its year — $0.725 per mile for business use in 2026 — and the rate is printed alongside the total, not hidden behind it. Anyone reading the log can see how the deduction was reached.
The rate used for each year is the one published on the standard mileage rate page. A 2024 trip stays priced at the 2024 rate, even when you open the log today.
Drive more than one vehicle in the year? The summary breaks miles and allowance down per vehicle, then totals them. Each vehicle keeps its own running mileage, which matters if you switch cars partway through the year.
Receipts live in the same file
A toll photographed on your phone, a parking stub scanned at your desk: each one is attached to the trip it belongs to and merged at the end of the PDF, preceded by the trip's date, route and amount.
You do not send a PDF plus a folder of loose photos. You send one document. Until then the files sit on a private disk, outside the public web root, reachable only through a signed-in request that checks you own them.
What to keep, and for how long, is covered on the supporting documents page.
Annual or monthly
The annual report covers the full year, January 1 through December 31. That is the one a tax preparer works from, and the one to keep with your return.
The monthly report adds the month's delta next to the year-to-date total: how many miles you drove this month, and where that leaves your running total. It is the one to hand a reimbursing employer each month.
What you have already been paid
If your employer reimburses you at a mileage rate, record each payment. The report then shows the running total against what the standard mileage rate entitles you to, and the balance still owed — so a shortfall, or an overpayment, is visible rather than buried in a spreadsheet.
On a Team plan, the manager's export bundles a semicolon-separated summary CSV, ready for Excel, and one PDF per employee into a single ZIP. See team management.
Excluded trips are not in it
A commute, a personal errand, any trip you have excluded: it stays out of the totals. The standard mileage rate covers business driving only, and the log reflects that. What is in the document is only what you are prepared to stand behind.
