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You sneaky Intuit, you. Over the past few weeks, Intuit has quietly rolled out the new mileage tracking feature on all versions of their more advanced Quickbooks Online versions. It should have happened a long time ago, but better late than never. Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like in your browser:

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Many of my clients who are just starting out in real estate have been wary of moving from Quickbooks Self-Employed to the more robust versions of Quickbooks Online simply because the automatic mileage tracking feature in Self-Employed hasn’t been available in the more robust and more expensive versions.

It’s an incredibly useful feature for real estate agents who drive for business nearly every day, and can get a huge tax deduction for that mileage. It was a no-brainer that it should be available on the higher-end versions of Intuit’s popular products.

Now that the mileage tracking feature is available on the more robust versions, my advice to any agent starting out in real estate and wanting to get a solid handle on their accounting is to bypass Self-Employed, and start using Quickbooks Online Simple Start or Essentials. That way, the agent can use the MREA Chart of Accounts from day one, scale their books up to more advanced tiers of Quickbooks as their business grows (which isn’t possible with Self-Employed), and get the mileage tracking they need all in one place.

Another thing to keep in mind is that while you’ll be able to enter trips manually in your Quickbooks account, you’ll want to download the Quickbooks App on your phone and allow it to track your mileage automatically.

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