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Free Mileage Log Sheets Download any of the free mileage log sheets below. They are in Excel or OpenOffice formats. We also give good instructions on how to use them. Are you an spread sheet expert? The reason we ask is that we have been in the business of mileage logs for well over a decade and have challenged dozens of spread sheet experts to make a mileage log. These experts all ran into the same fundamental problem which we explain below, but first lets go over some simple basics which you can skip if you are an expert.:) Making the 365 Dates The first thing to think about are the dates. You can, of course, just type them in.
Use Schedule A (Form 1040) to figure your itemized deductions. In most cases, your federal income tax will be less if you take the larger of your itemized deductions or your standard deduction.
But then you might as well just use a word processor. So start by entering January 1st of whatever year you need your mileage log for in the first Date cell. Then if you click in the next date cell and enter the formula =A1 + 1 then copy the cell and highlight the next 364 (363 on a leap year) cells and paste, then you can quickly get all the days of the year in the first column. Totaling the Miles The SUM formula adds things up and requires a range of cells. The 'C' below stands for column 'C' assuming that is the column your miles are in. Move to cell C36 and type in this formula.
(Remember to subtract and move up one if it's leap year.) =SUM(C2:C367) So what is the fundamental problem? If you make row per day, then you end up editing and re-editing each row and adding the miles for a day each time in your head. If you avoid that problem and try to copy/paste a row then it will mess up your Date formulas. I explain this in exquisite detail at the bottom of the page. Explain the Fundamental Problem in Exquisite Detail If you follow the steps above, each day of the year will be a row. But the hard part is the purposes; these are the reasons you believe your driving is a legitimate tax deduction.
Those pesky purposes are the supporting details of your mileage log that validate it; that give you permission to save thousands of dollars on your taxes. Most of us have dozens or even hundreds of these purposes. So let's start with a very repetitive purpose like 'Wells Fargo - Banking' and assume you drive there once a week and it's 8 to 12 miles depending on where you leave from. You would type that into the Purpose field of the first day and enter the miles, then copy/paste that into the next day (assuming it's a week later) and so on about 50 to 52 times.
Entering the miles each time. BTW: In MileageWIZ™ you could log these 50 trips in about 30 seconds and our can show you how. But now let's say you have another purpose 'Office Supplies - Costco' and you go there once a week also. The problem occurs when you go to Wells Fargo and Costco on the SAME DAY!
![Template Template](https://www.mileiq.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/IRS-Reporting-Requirements-for-Mileage-Deduction.jpg)
Now you have to ADD 'Costco' to the cell that has Wells Fargo in it. But the miles have to change, so you do a quick addition in your head and update the miles. And as your mileage log fills in, this gets harder and harder! Now you might think you'll copy and paste the entire row to avoid this, but 'Oh NO!' That destroys your date formula! Now we've had experts get around this by using another sheet to make the dates then using 'paste values' into the mileage log sheet and that will work. However, copying a row and then inserting dozens of times into a sheet is very tedious and error prone.
At some point everyone reaches the same conclusion! There has got to be a better way, and our hundreds of thousands of customers, many who have used Mileagewiz&8482 since the early 2000's can testify to that!