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Leaving MileIQ: exporting your data and starting a new log
How to get your drives out of MileIQ, what to keep and for how long, what a new log needs on day one, and what does not carry over.
People leave MileIQ for ordinary reasons: the subscription ($13.99 a month or $139.99 a year on the company’s website when we checked, after 40 free drives), the required account, the privacy label, or simply a change of car. Whatever the reason, leaving well means two things: get your history out in a form you can open in six years, and start the new log so there is no gap. Here is how to do both.
Get your data out first
Do this before cancelling. Once a subscription lapses, access to history may be limited, and a CSV you do not have is a log you do not have.
MileIQ’s web dashboard can produce reports of your drives as a spreadsheet file. Sign in on a computer, choose the widest date range the tool allows (ideally each full tax year separately), and export. The result is a CSV with one row per drive: date, start and end locations, distance, the classification you gave it, and usually the dollar value at whatever rate the app applied.
Export each year you used the service, not only the current one. Name the files by year. Open each one and check that the row count looks right against what you remember; a truncated export is easy to miss.
If you also want the monthly or annual summary reports the service generates, download those too. They are convenient for an accountant, though the CSV is the primary record.
What to keep and for how long
The CRA expects supporting records to be kept for six years from the end of the tax year they relate to. The IRS generally asks for three years from filing, longer in some situations, and the safe habit on either side of the border is to keep the lot.
So keep:
- The per-year CSV exports.
- Any PDF reports you filed with or gave to your accountant.
- Odometer readings from those years, if you recorded them.
- Receipts that support expense claims for those years.
Store them somewhere that does not depend on a subscription: a folder in your own cloud storage, a backup drive, and a copy with your accountant. A CSV is plain text and will open in anything for decades.
Check the old data while you can
Before you close the account, look at the exported years with a critical eye. Are there drives still unclassified? Classify them now, then re-export, because an unclassified drive is neither business nor personal and will not support a claim. Are there obvious errors, such as a bus ride logged as a drive? Fix or note them. After cancellation you may not be able to.
What a new log needs on day one
A fresh logbook does not need your old drives. It needs three things on the day you start it:
An opening odometer reading. Write it down, dated, with a photo of the dash. If you switch mid-year, this reading also closes the old log, so the year’s total kilometres are still accounted for across both.
The same categories you used before. If your old log distinguished clients or projects, set up the same tags, so the year’s reports line up.
The right rate for the year. Check that the new app’s rate matches the current CRA or IRS figure, or set it by hand.
From then on, every trip is recorded in the new log with the date, destination, purpose and distance. The old CSV covers the days before the switch; the new log covers the days after; the odometer reading on switch day joins them.
Switching mid-year is fine
A year with two logs is normal and auditable. At tax time you have the MileIQ CSV for January through the switch date and the new log from then on. Add the business kilometres from both, and use the January 1 and December 31 odometer readings (one from each system, or from your own notes) for the total. Your accountant has seen this before.
The one thing to avoid is overlap: two apps recording the same drives for a few weeks, producing duplicates. Pick a day, take the reading, and turn the old app’s drive detection off.
What does not carry over
Be clear about this before you switch to anything. Most mileage apps cannot import another app’s history, and the ones that can rarely bring over routes, classifications and rates cleanly. Your MileIQ years live in the CSV. They do not become part of the new app’s database, and that is fine, because the CSV is already the record you need.
The new app also does not know your regular destinations until you tell it or until it sees them a few times. Expect a week or two of tapping Work and Personal before any suggestions become useful.
A short checklist
- Export every year from the MileIQ web dashboard as CSV. Check the row counts.
- Classify any unclassified drives and export again.
- Save the files in two places, named by year.
- Take a dated odometer reading with a photo.
- Set up the new log with your categories and the current rate.
- Turn off drive detection in the old app.
- Cancel the subscription once the exports are safe.
Odie has no importer for MileIQ or any other app; a switch means starting a new logbook from the day you install it, with an opening odometer reading. It exports its own log as CSV and a year PDF, and keeps a JSON backup of everything, so the same question in reverse has an answer too.
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Written by the Odie team. Not tax advice; your accountant knows your situation.