Written by Aaron Zint, Compensation and Benefits Supervisor at Compass

Mileage Management

One of the myriad ways we support our clients here at Compass is by giving them the freedom to choose how they spend their day. That freedom is afforded to them because their staff all have a vehicle to transport them to wherever it is they want and need to go. I know I wouldn’t want to be cooped in my house all day every day.

To make this service sustainable, we pay our staff a mileage reimbursement. It’d be nice if it were as simple as them telling us, “Yeah I drove 100 miles with my client, Frank, last month,” and we could simply key the reimbursement amount onto their paycheck. Unfortunately, not only do we need way more accountability and detail than that, but we also need that detail and accountability for the 500 staff supporting and driving our 200 clients. And furthermore, for a number of those clients, we need to be able to bill the Regional Center, sometimes in daily increments.

Mileage management would be a herculean task if it weren’t for the capabilities of QSP.

As I prepare to reimburse my employees for their recent mileage use, I navigate to my three mileage reports in QSP: the “Mileage Tracking Report,” “Mileage Detail Report” and “Daily Mileage Report.”

Mileage Tracking Report

I run the “Mileage Tracking Report” using the “Employee” report type and click the “Totals” button. This gets me a list of all of my staff who claimed mileage for the timeframe I entered, and most importantly, the number of miles they claimed. Because I’ve entered my reimbursement rate in the application settings, I don’t even need to do the math. QSP shows me how much to reimburse each of these employees.

Because this report is in Excel, I sort this list by the total number of miles driven to find out who is claiming the most mileage out of all my staff. As I do, I notice two of my staff who are claiming way more mileage than seems normal. So I rerun the “Mileage Tracking Report,” choosing only these two staff, using the “Employee” report type and clicking the “Breakdown” button this time. I now get a detailed breakdown of how many miles each of these five staff drove for each of their clients.

Mileage Detail Report

In my review I notice that one of them claimed the majority of their miles with one particular client. So I run the “Mileage Detail Report” for that particular staff. Because it’s our policy for our staff to document where they’ve driven, I get a detailed report of all of the locations on each day that this staff drove their clients. That’s when I notice the trip from the client’s home to their specialty doctor’s appointment on the day of their appointment. And it’s all making sense now. The peace mind allows me to finish processing everyone’s mileage reimbursement without any doubts.

Daily Mileage Report

It’s finally time for me to get my own reimbursement from the Regional Center (RC). And this particular RC isn’t interested in monthly totals. They want to know how many miles were driven each day of the month for our clients in order to reimburse us. I would be daunted by this task, but not with QSP. I run the “Daily Mileage Report” for all my clients that I know I can get a reimbursement for. The Excel report that downloads gives me the total mileage claimed for each day of that month for each client of that month. I don’t need to sift through piles of paper reports or even navigate through different excel reports. It’s all in one place.

I’m thankful for the ease QSP offers me with its mileage management capabilities and would recommend it to any agency who manages mileage on any level.