1DayLater - The Blog

Carpooling - Considering “Mileage Per Person” rather than Miles Per Gallon

Last week we summarized 5 tips to help you track mileage and improve your cars Miles Per Gallon (MPG), but what about other options? If you’re environmentally conscious then maybe Carpooling could be a great alternative to driving everywhere on your own.

Considering the environment

Here’s some interesting food for thought. According to WorldBank (World Development Indicators), there were at least 462 passenger cars for every 1000 people in the UK in 2008 (and a similar amount for the USA). In Monoco it was as high as 732 cars per 1000 people - that’s almost 1 car per person!

No doubt this figure has risen considerably in the past 3 years, but that’s certainly enough to make me stop and think about my own car use.

Start Carpooling

Carpooling (aka car-sharing, lift-sharing, ride-sharing and covoiturage), is the sharing of car journeys so that more than one person travels in a car.

The idea is that, if you’re driving somewhere and have some spare seats in your car, then why not let others travel with you. On the flipside, you might want to find a lift with someone driving your way.

Any tools to help me get started?

One great website which we’ve found is CarShare. It’s free to sign up and shows you (in map view) any Carshare journeys happening in your area.  

There’s also a pretty detailed help section which should alleviate some of those worries you might have after watching slasher-films like The Hitcher ;-)

Of course if CarShare seems a bit daunting, you could always look at setting up your own CarShare with workmates. Not only will you be saving yourself some money, but you’ll be doing your bit for the environment too. Just don’t forget to get everyone to chip in for petrol!

Some cool websites that will help you find the cheapest petrol in your area

I’ve been trawling the world wide web recently to find some useful resources for 1DayLater users. I figured, hey as well as giving you a snazzy tool to log mileage, how nice would it be if we could show you how to save mileage too!

So here are the absolute best sites I’ve found to help you compare petrol prices in your area.

Gasbuddy - as the name suggests this is one from our American friends - but a local search seemed to work just fine for me (see below). You can drill into the map and and get a run-down of petrol prices in your area - how cool is that!

Petrolprices - another great site that tells you the cheapest petrol stations in your area for diesel, unleaded and LPG - you just enter your postcode and how far you’re willing to travel.

The great thing about this site is that you can also get text alerts which notify you of any price changes. There’s even an app - although I haven’t had a chance to look at this yet

So those are two pretty awesome tools which I hope you find really useful! Please drop me any other suggestions if you know any and I’ll add them to my list

5 things you can do before driving to improve your mileage efficiency

Here are some practical tips which can help you save mileage before you even set foot in your car.

• Plan your route well - Take a look at Viamente, a great web-based software which can help you plan routes with multiple destinations - http://www.viamente.com

• Lighten your load - Carrying an extra 100 pounds of weight can increase your fuel consumption by 1-2%. This is especially important if you stop and go often. Light cars also perform better for mileage, something to consider when you are buying a new one! 

• Properly inflate your tyres - Keep your tyres fully inflated as much as possible as this can reduce fuel consumption by up to 3%. Most tyres lose about 1 PSI per month, so checking your tyres monthly at the garage isn’t a bad idea.

• Use synthetic oil - Using synthetic oil in your car can help you save around 5% gas on average

• Figure out your cars optimum speed - Different types of cars perform better at different speeds - this is usually around 50mph. Your cars optimum speed is the minimum speed your car is running at in its highest gear

Next week - 10 things you can do during driving to improve your mileage!

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Is HMRC cracking down on people who submit fraudulent claims? Can people really get away with it anyway?

There has been some talk online recently that UK tax body, HMRC are cracking down on fraudulent mileage claims. I tried to find a decent independent source to confirm this but I’m having no luck so far - I’ll update this blog once I do.

It’s fair to say though, that fraudulent mileage claims represent a real problem for HMRC (and for large companies). Mileage Auditing firm; The Miles Consultancy said that in a recent survey of their company database, 25% of employees admitted to giving fraudulent mileage claims.

Now I imagine that once upon a time, people could probably get away with sneakily bumping up their mileage claims for the taxman. However now that we all live in a world of software and automation…I reckon that we are all just blips on a bell curve somewhere…waiting to be analysed!

Thinking back to what I remember about statistics from school, I would hazard a guess that when all of our data gets pulled together by the powers that be, it looks a little something like this graph.

Now I just couldn’t resist a bit of random statistics (non maths-nerds - close your eyes for this bit)

When you have a normally distributed graph like the one shown above, the majority of the population (around 99%) lies within 2 standard deviations of that average centre line. Oooh I remembered some of my school lessons! The gist being that an HMRC statistician could easily identify any people on these extremities!

So, if you’re a taxi driver or a haulage person, your average will be way over to the right hand side as you drive further than most people each week. But of course HMRC will know all of this as they have data from millions of people in all sorts of different professions….

It’s the guys on the far right hand side who the tax office will have their watchful eyes on of course. If you’re over on the left then you’re not claiming enough and should be using mile tracking software; 1DayLater to track your business miles!

Anyway, so the short answer to the question “Can I get away with submitting fraudulent expense claims” = no (in my opinion) shouldn’t be scared of real eyes watching them in this day and age, it’s the statistical eyes that they need to be afraid of!

Mileage claims - are you claiming the right tax relief for your mileage?

Claiming the right amount of tax relief for your business mileage could be saving you hundreds of pounds each year.

Although there are several things you must be aware of, maximising your claim will really just require a combination of good discipline and proper organisation. Here’s how you do it:

Firstly, you will need to find out your country’s Approved mileage rate

In the UK, there are 2 sets of rates depending on the total number of miles you have travelled in any given tax year:

For 0 - 10,000 miles, these rates are:

• 40p / mile - cars and vans
• 24p / mile - motorcycles
• 20p / mile - bicycles

After 10,000 miles, this goes down to: 

• 25p / mile - cars and cans
• 24p / mile - motorcycles
• 20p / mile - bicycles

I have to admit that I laughed the first time I saw this table, kudos to whoever travels more than 10,000 business miles on a bicycle in a year :) I want to meet that guy!

Calculated over an entire year, this could add up to a tidy sum, particularly if you or your staff are often out on the road visiting clients.

The next step now that you know your Approved Mileage Rates is to get in the habit of recording your business trips. - naturally we would recommend 1DayLater for this ;-)

The things you will need to record are:

• Distance travelled (remember to check your cars speedometer before and after you make a trip)
• Reason for the trip and who you visited - you will only be able to reclaim mileage for business-related trips so this is really important.
• Date of journey  

And if you’re lucky enough to have an accountant then that’s it….they should deal with everything else….simply hand over your mileage log or 1DayLater mileage claim and relax. Lovely!

Our Ambitious Vision for 2010

1DayLater have enjoyed a great 2009, and look forward to celebrating this Christmas and New Year. But before we go, here are a some exciting things to look forward to in 2010…

• A Full feature set — with outputs including invoicing, mileage claims, export, more in-depth analysis, and 3rd party add-ons.

• Mobile phone & desktop app development — you’ll be able to log your activities on the move, and our handy desktop app will remind you to log them while you’re working at your pc.

• The launch of our market intelligence campaign — by London-based firm, Kingpin Intelligence. That means MORE FEEDBACK which essentially means better end service for you

• Development of an Outlook application for 1DayLater — A useful Outlook ‘skimmer’ being created by our friends at local Centre for Digital Innovation - Codeworks as part of their new Dev scheme.

- check out David doing ‘The Proposition’ pose, perfect for corporate photos!

Aaand if none of that other stuff tickled you, we’ll also have…

• Integration of 1DayLater with Sage Sales Logix (CRM) & Sage Accounts — Using the expert guidance of our friend Derek Curtis & his company Bond Solutions, the leading NE supplier of Sage software products

• A ‘secret charity based project’ — supported by our friends at Sunderland Software City, Newcastle’s Culture Lab, Codeworks & Bond Solutions - more info to come soon!

• A discounted ‘Time Recovery Tool’ for 1DayLater members — A tool to help you save time which has been created by time-management coaches, Cadenza associates.

Wow!

Writing it down like that just made me realise that next year is going to be epic. I don’t know about you lot but I can’t wait :)

Time Management Tips - no.1 

Aggressive Prioritizing / extreme time management

Here’s one of the most effective ways to boost your work productivity. I do this every day and seriously - it works!

Bend time to your will…

Step 1-Create a to-do list every morning

First thing in the morning (after you’ve had your morning cuppa of course) spend 15 minutes constructing a to-do list of activities you feel should get done that day. This won’t be wasted time.

You now have a list of activities

eg.

• 20 activities

• 5 really need doing

Step 2-Use aggressive prioritizing.

If you had to pick just one of these to do today - which one would it be? That is your number 1. Repeat this exercise to find number 2, and so on.

Step 3-Get working!

Stick to the order of your list and make sure you complete each task as much as possible before moving onto the next.

Now if you only get some things done in your day, they will have been the most important ones. Simple but truly effective!

- coming soon: time management for programmers

Developing a business mindset - Mental activity modelling

In order to start acting like a businessman you need to start thinking like one. A neat idea we picked up from one of our excellent mentors, Richard Hanage is to create and follow a mental activity model. The reason I love this is that it’s proactive rather than reactive!

The idea is that you create a complete list (or mindmap) of things which are necessary to the general running & development of your business. Depending on the nature of your business, your tasks might be something like:

• Make an appointment
• Make a sales visit
• Write a proposal
• Take an order
• Deliver some work
• Raise an invoice
• Update finances

Then SET SOME TARGETS & commit them to memory

For example: You could aim to complete one thing off your list every day, and all of them in a normal week. Or devise some practical targets for your own business.

Following this mental model will help you improve cashflow, organisation and working efficiency in the long run. If you’re focused on doing it properly it can also prevent you from neglecting those less fun but important aspects of your business.

I would love to hear about the kinds of mental activity models you all operate. Including any personal experiences with them!

Later!

Paul