MileWiz vs QBSE
Side by side comparison
Let’s explore the similarities and differences between MileWiz and QuickBook Self-Employed. If you are deciding between the two apps or if you are looking to make a switch, the information here may be important to you.
Before you install
Developer - MileWiz is an app developed and supported by a small studio, while QBSE is developed and supported by the infamous Intuit corporation. Depending on the kind of person you are, you may already have a preference for one over the other - as it should be, since both have pros and cons.
Most notably, you may trust that a big corporation will not suddenly go out of business. On the other hand, by supporting a small business, you can rest assured that you’ll receive unparalleled customer support.
Rating - both MileWiz and QuickBooks Self-Employed have incredibly high ratings score. It would be fair to say that whichever one you choose, you will likely be satisfied.
Price
Price is an important part of the decision, especially when it comes to a service that is supposed be saving money for their users. Such is the case with mileage trackers.
MileWiz costs US$4.99 per month or US$49.99 per year (saving you nearly 17%, or 2 months are free).
QuickBooks Self-employed costs US$14.99 per month. They often provide promotions, for example $0.99 for the first year, or 50% off for 3 months. It’s fair to say that after some initial lowered pricing, you’ll be paying $15 per month.
Onboarding
When you first install MileWiz, you will be asked to provide access to Location, Motion & Fitness and Notifications. Those are critical permissions for the app to function properly, as we’ve outlined here. Then you will be invited to Sign up or Sign in for a cloud account - this is to help preserve your data in the case of an accident (like your child deleting the app from your device). Using a cloud account with MileWiz is encouraged, but it’s not mandatory.
When you first install QBSE, you will be asked to Sign in or create an account with them. You will then be asked to provide access to Location and Notifications. Later you can also provide access to Motion and it’s recommended to improve accuracy of detected trips. To complete your registration though, you will need to share with Intuit plenty of information about you - the kind of your business, your income bracket and so on. Sharing this information would not change the experience in QBSE, so this begs the question why you need to volunteer it.
Other features
MileWiz is a single purpose software product - it is made to automatically track your mileage and all of its features are centered around making this task as efficient as possible. QuickBooks Self-Employed is not that - for the price of $15/mo it offers also a limited capability transactions tracking and a limited capability invoicing. To take advantage of Intuits tax features, it will cost you even more. You may be ok with these options, but you should know that in both categories there are better looking, more advanced and cheaper options.
Tracking and Precision
MileWiz was created and optimized for precision. For example, for MileWiz reliance on the Motion & Fitness sensor is of critical importance. For QBSE, on the other hand, precision is a lot less important. It detects only the start and end points and routs between them. Also it doesn’t detect pit stops. If on your way to a client, you need to make a stop for supplies, QBSE will not detect the entire route, but it will just log the trip as if you went directly to your client. In the course of 1 year, this may cost you hundreds of dollars in missed savings.
“So easy. Accurate. A must have for those who claim on their car. My work is related to delivering packages in downtown, where trips are usually short and there is a lot of driving inside parking structures. MileWiz is the only app out there that’s capable of handling it all.”
Routes - MileWiz renders the entire trips, while QBSE only shows the start and end points.
“What I like about this app vs others is the fact that this app shows the entire trip in the map as opposed to other apps that show you a small map of the beginning of the trip and a small app of the end destination of the trip making it difficult to remember what the trip was for....”
Clearly, MileWiz provides the better value.
Further Experience
Places
In QuickBooks Self-Employed those are called Favorite locations. In both apps you can create places when you already have a trip to or from a particular one. In QBSE this is really convenient as you just type in the name on the pin. In MileWiz, you’ll need to do a bit more work - tap on the trip, tap Options, then Create Place from Origin or Create Place from Destination. On the other hand, QuickBooks Self-Employed is behind on every other aspect here.
It doesn’t show you the place on a map, so you can be sure that it’s correct
It offers automations based on routes, not on places
It doesn’t allow automatic setting of purpose
Clearly, MileWiz provides more value here.
Vehicles
MileWiz allows you to track trips performed with multiple vehicles and to easily switch between them. It offers the option to input the odometer readings at the beginning and end of the year. These are essential attributes of your audit compliant mileage log. QBSE offers none of that - no odometer management, no option to track multiple vehicles.
Clearly, MileWiz offers more value here.
Purposes
MileWiz and QBSE offer very similar functionality when it comes to purposes. Purposes are needed for your audit compliant mileage log, as tax authorities require a detailed description of why each trip was needed and why it should be classified as business. When you categorize a trip as business, both MileWiz and QBSE allow you to input the information needed to define the purpose as plain text.
Mileage Rates
The mileage rates in QBSE are not customizable. That’s a solid minus for many people who get reimbursed by their employers at a rate different than the standard mileage rate set by the government. MileWiz, on the other hand, offer completely customizable mileage rate system, where you can have different rates for different vehicle types as well as different rates up to certain mileage and after that.
One thing that QuickBooks Self-Employed is really missing is the ability to categorize to alternative categories. For example, in the US people can claim deductions on their medical mileage as well as mileage driven for charity.
Clearly, MileWiz provides better value here.
Working hours
QBSE does not allow users to automatically categorize trips based on working hours, while MileWiz offers excellent structured system of categorizing trips this way. In many cases, you would want to at least automatically categorize the trips that occur outside of your working hours as Personal to at least get them out of the way. Not having that option could mean that you’d be spending many more hours to categorize your trips that you otherwise would spent more productively.
Clearly, MileWiz provides better value here.
In Conclusion
MileWiz does offer some more thought out and polished features and at the same time has a lower price. QuickBooks Self-Employed is a recognized brand name that is coming from one of the big tech giants Intuit. QBSE is a software that provides limited capabilities in regards to multiple areas - mileage tracking, transactions tracking and invoicing. If these basic capabilities are sufficient for your use case, that may actually be a decent solution. However, in all of these areas there are better products and MileWiz is among the better ones in mileage tracking.
Ultimately, the best way to decide which one to use would be to install the apps and try them on.