The problem
Some clients expect you to charge for travel. Others don't. Some jobs are five minutes away and you eat the drive. Others are forty-five minutes each way and you need to recover something.
The decision is yours — but right now there's no clean way to track it.
Why we built it
Every trip in DIRT can be tagged billable or absorbed. Billable trips flow to the invoice when you bill. Absorbed trips count against job profit without appearing on the invoice. You have full visibility either way.
How it works
- 1
When logging a trip, toggle "Billable to client" on or off.
- 2
Billable trips appear as a line item when you invoice the job.
- 3
Absorbed trips count against job cost and show in your profit breakdown.
What changes for your business
Before
Mileage either shows up on every invoice or is never tracked. No middle ground.
After
Trip is billable or absorbed. Either way it's in the numbers.
Common questions
What is the best business mileage tracker for contractors?
A business mileage tracker for contractors needs to do one thing general mileage apps don't: tie each trip to a job. That way the drive to a job site shows up in that job's cost breakdown, and you can see whether you're covering the drive cost yourself or billing it to the client.
What does the IRS require for a mileage deduction?
Four things per trip: the date, miles driven, the destination, and the business purpose. The IRS calls this a contemporaneous record — logged close to the time of the trip, not reconstructed months later. A log that meets those four requirements is IRS-compliant.
Should I bill clients for mileage?
Depends on the job and the relationship. Long drives on remote or out-of-area jobs usually warrant a billable mileage charge. Short local drives on repeat residential work are often absorbed. DIRT lets you toggle each trip as billable or absorbed — billable trips flow to the invoice, absorbed trips count against job profit without appearing on the bill.
What is the IRS standard mileage rate and how do I use it?
The IRS sets a standard mileage rate each year — the amount per mile you can deduct for business driving. You multiply your total logged business miles by that rate to calculate the deduction. DIRT logs the miles with the required fields; your accountant applies the current rate at tax time.
How do I track mileage for a single-member LLC?
Same requirements as any other business — date, distance, destination, and purpose for each business trip, kept separate from personal miles. DIRT is built for business trips tied to contractor work. Log your job-related driving there and keep personal miles out of it.
Is there a free business mileage tracker?
DIRT's free tier includes trip logging with job assignment and billable vs. absorbed tracking. You can log trips, tie them to jobs, and see the drive cost in your job profit breakdown at no cost. The mileage data flows into job cost numbers automatically.
How is DIRT different from Everlance or TripLog for contractor mileage?
Everlance and TripLog track miles but they don't know which job the trip was for. In DIRT every trip ties to a job, so the drive cost shows up in that job's profit number. For a contractor, that connection is what matters — not just total miles driven, but which job they cost you.
Start free
Try it free.
Every DIRT plan includes this feature — Solo included. No credit card, no trial that expires. Set up in minutes and use it on your next job from the truck.