Mileage log for outside sales reps

Twenty, thirty thousand miles a year

An outside rep covering a region drives more than almost anyone. Twenty-five thousand business miles in a year is common, and a large territory pushes past that. At the 2026 IRS rate of 72.5 cents a mile, 25,000 miles is worth $18,125 — as a deduction or as a tax-free reimbursement. Numbers that size are not worth reconstructing from memory in April.

First, an honest word about how you are paid

This is where sales reps get burned, so read it carefully. If you are a W-2 employee, you can no longer deduct unreimbursed business mileage on your federal return. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act suspended the miscellaneous itemized deduction that used to allow it. For you, a mileage log is not a deduction — it is the record that gets you reimbursed by your employer, tax-free, at the standard rate. A clean, dated log is what an expense policy asks for and what payroll can pay against without hesitation.

If you are a 1099 independent rep, the miles are yours to deduct on Schedule C, at the standard rate or by actual expenses. Either way, the log is the same document — only its destination changes.

The commute still applies to you

Home to a regular office is a commute, never deductible and never reimbursable as business mileage. But office to a client, client to client, and client back to the office are all business miles. If your home is your base of operations, the first drive out can count too. The full breakdown is on the business miles vs commuting page.

How Kilevo builds it

You book client visits in your calendar. Kilevo reads that calendar — Google, Outlook or an ICS feed from your CRM — and turns every appointment that has an address into a round trip from your home or office. The account name in the appointment title becomes the business purpose. A week of territory driving becomes a week of logged trips, without typing a single address twice.

At month-end or year-end it exports a PDF report with the date, destination and purpose on every line — the four things the IRS and most expense policies both want to see.

What it will not do

There is no GPS and no phone app tracking your drives. Kilevo reads a calendar, nothing else. A canceled visit you left on the calendar becomes a trip you should delete; a phone-only sales call with no address becomes zero miles. If your visits do not live in a calendar, Kilevo has nothing to read. When a client address is missing its city, Kilevo picks the closest match to your home, flags it, and one click confirms it for every visit with the same title.

Whether you deduct or get reimbursed, confirm your own case with a tax professional or your employer's policy — Kilevo keeps the record, not the ruling. Independent reps can read the Schedule C mileage page first. Then open a free account and import a month of visits to see it work. Paid plans add the nightly sync a full territory needs.