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Last updated: 08/20/2026
Contents
- What TripSnap does
- Setting up — worker mode, car, permissions
- Permissions, and what each one is for
- How automatic capture decides a drive happened
- Classifying trips and stating a purpose
- Reports, pay periods and sending to a manager
- Shifts, earnings and the self-employed view
- Mileage rates and custom employer rates
- Where your data lives, and backing it up
- Troubleshooting
- Frequently asked questions
- A note on tax and reimbursement
- Contact
What TripSnap does
TripSnap is an automatic mileage tracker for iPhone and iPad. It notices when you get into a car you've saved, records the drive in the background, and keeps a log you can turn into the document that gets you paid — a PDF expense report for an employer, or a year-to-date mileage total for a Schedule C.
Everything happens on the device. There is no account, no sign-in and no server, so nothing syncs and nothing is uploaded. The only time a trip leaves your phone is when you export or email it yourself.
Setting up — worker mode, car, permissions
Onboarding asks three things, in this order:
- Who you drive for. Employee reimbursement, Gig & self-employed, or Both. This is a presentation setting, not a different app — it decides whether TripSnap talks to you about reimbursement and submission deadlines, about Schedule C and shifts, or both. You can change it any time in Settings.
- Your car. Connect to the car first, then add it, so TripSnap can offer you the connection the phone actually has. See How do I pair my car with TripSnap? below.
- Permissions. Location, and optionally Motion & Fitness and notifications. Granting these during onboarding rather than on a cold launch is deliberate — it's the point where the reason for each one is on screen.
Permissions, and what each one is for
| Prompt | What it does | Required? |
|---|---|---|
| Location — Always | Records where you drove and how far, including while the app is closed. Without Always, a drive that begins with TripSnap in the background is never captured. | Yes, for automatic tracking |
| Precise Location | Approximate location is accurate to a few kilometres, which makes a mileage figure meaningless. With it off, distances are wrong rather than merely imprecise. | Yes |
| Motion & Fitness | Detects that you've started or stopped driving, which sharpens where a trip begins and ends. | Optional — capture is degraded without it |
| Bluetooth | Read only to check whether Bluetooth is powered on, so TripSnap can warn you that your car stereo won't be able to connect. It never scans for or connects to devices. | Optional |
| Notifications | The classify prompt after a trip, the weekly classify reminder, and the unclaimed-mileage warning. | Optional |
Two more settings live in iOS rather than in TripSnap, and both silently break background capture when they're off: Background App Refresh (Settings → General → Background App Refresh) and Low Power Mode, which lets iOS defer background work. The Tracking Health card watches both.
How automatic capture decides a drive happened
TripSnap uses connections your phone already has, in confidence order:
- CarPlay. Nothing but a car presents a CarPlay audio route, so a CarPlay connection is proof on its own.
- A saved Bluetooth car stereo. Factory head units speak Classic Bluetooth, which iOS never exposes to apps as a scannable device — the audio route is the only handle an app gets on them. TripSnap matches the route against the cars you saved.
- Automotive motion. Sustained driving-type motion, used to catch a trip in a car that isn't saved or isn't connected.
Nothing scans for Bluetooth devices and nothing pairs. An earlier version did scan, and it was the wrong trade: the list filled with watches, earbuds and the neighbours' television, while the one device you were actually looking for — your factory stereo — could never appear in it at all.
Because iOS doesn't wake a suspended app for an audio-route change, TripSnap also registers for significant-location changes, then re-checks which car is connected when the system relaunches it. That's why a trip occasionally appears a minute or two after you set off rather than the instant you close the door.
Classifying trips and stating a purpose
Every trip gets a purpose: Business, Personal, Commute, Medical, Charity, or Unclassified until you say. Swipe a row in Trips to classify it, use the notification that arrives after a drive ends, or bulk-classify the backlog from the Dashboard nudge.
Commute is separated automatically once you've saved a Home and an Office in Places — a drive between the two is your commute, which no employer reimburses and no tax authority allows.
A business trip should also carry a purpose — "Client visit, Riverside", not just "Business". This is the element expense reports get rejected over most often, so TripSnap nudges for it on classify and flags purpose-less business trips in the pre-export audit.
Reports, pay periods and sending to a manager
The Reports tab has two halves. Get Paid builds the expense report; Totals shows year-to-date figures.
Set your pay period in Settings — weekly, every two weeks, twice a month, or monthly — and, for the two cadences that need it, an anchor payday so TripSnap knows where periods start. Reports then offers your real periods instead of calendar months.
The PDF puts the period total at the top, because payroll usually keys one number, then lists each trip with its date, start and end, distance, purpose, rate and amount, plus tolls and parking. Rows are badged GPS-verified or manual so a reviewer can see which is which, and the header carries your name and odometer readings if you've entered them.
Before it exports, TripSnap runs a log-health audit and warns about unclassified trips, overlapping trips, very short trips, business trips with no recorded route and business trips with no stated purpose. You can export anyway; the point is that you know first.
Tap Send to manager and TripSnap opens a mail composer addressed to the manager email you saved, with the PDF and CSV attached. You send it. TripSnap has no ability to send mail on its own.
Trips included in a report you've sent are marked submitted, which is what makes the unclaimed-mileage figure on the Dashboard mean something.
Shifts, earnings and the self-employed view
If your worker mode includes gig work, a Shifts tab appears. Clock on when you start, tag the platforms you're working, enter what they paid you, and clock off.
Trips are adopted by a shift by time — any trip that starts inside the shift's window belongs to it. Nothing is stored linking the two, so correcting a shift's start or end time simply re-adopts the right trips instead of stranding them.
Each finished shift reports $/hour, $/mile, and take-home after fuel or electricity and tolls. Very short shifts show no rates at all: dividing by four minutes produces a number that is arithmetically true and completely useless.
TripSnap deliberately never adds your net earnings to your mileage deduction. Net earnings are cash after what the driving actually cost you; the deduction is those same miles at the standard rate, which already includes fuel and depreciation. Adding them counts the drive twice.
Mileage rates and custom employer rates
TripSnap ships the IRS standard mileage rates for 2026 — 72.5¢ business, 20.5¢ medical, 14¢ charitable per mile — along with prior years.
Rates are keyed to the year the trip was driven. When the IRS publishes new rates each December, last year's log keeps last year's numbers instead of quietly repricing every January.
If your employer reimburses at their own rate, turn off "Follow the IRS rate" in Settings and enter theirs. The custom rate applies to business trips in every year, since it reflects your employer's policy rather than the IRS table. Medical and charitable trips always use the statutory rate for their year.
Commute and personal trips are priced at zero — they're recorded so your log is complete, not because anyone pays for them.
Where your data lives, and backing it up
Trips, route points, vehicles, places, schedules, shifts and settings are stored in TripSnap's own database on your device. There is no account, no cloud sync and no server.
That is the privacy guarantee and also the risk: if the phone is gone and you have no backup, the log is gone. Two ways to protect it:
- Export regularly. Reports → export a CSV or JSON archive and keep it in whatever storage you already trust. JSON round-trips the most detail.
- Keep encrypted device backups. An iCloud Backup, or an encrypted backup made through the Finder, includes TripSnap's database and restores it to a new phone.
Troubleshooting
Trips stopped being recorded and I didn't notice
Open the Dashboard and read the Tracking Health card — it names the specific precondition that's degraded and where to fix it. The usual culprit is an iOS update resetting Location from Always back to While Using, which produces no error and no visible symptom until you go looking for the miles.
A trip started in the wrong car, or in someone else's car
Open the trip and reassign the vehicle, or delete it. To stop it happening again, set that vehicle's tracking mode to Don't track in Settings → Vehicles.
A trip didn't end when I parked
Bluetooth audio drops out of the phone's route whenever audio simply stops flowing — a paused podcast, an ended call — even though the car is still connected. TripSnap waits out a short grace period before treating that as a disconnection, so a trip can run a couple of minutes past your arrival. Edit the end time on the trip if it matters.
One long drive was split into two trips
A long stop, or a spell with no GPS fix, can end one trip and start another. Delete the shorter fragment and edit the distance on the one you keep, or delete both and add a single manual trip.
The Live Activity or widget shows stale numbers
Both update on a schedule iOS controls and can lag by a few minutes, especially in Low Power Mode. Open the app to see current figures.
How do I check my TripSnap version?
Settings → About, at the bottom of the Settings tab. Include the version and build when you email support.
Frequently asked questions
The questions we are asked most often, answered in short. The sections above go into more detail on each.
Why didn't TripSnap record my drive?
Almost always one of five things: Location isn't set to Always with Precise Location on, Background App Refresh is off, Low Power Mode was on, Bluetooth was off so your car couldn't be recognized, or the car you drove isn't saved in TripSnap yet. The Tracking Health card on the Dashboard names whichever one applies. If the drive already happened, add it by hand from Trips with the + button — a manually added trip is marked as manual on the report rather than GPS-verified.
How do I pair my car with TripSnap?
Get in the car, connect to it the way you normally do — CarPlay, or the stereo's Bluetooth — then open TripSnap and go to Settings, Vehicles, Add vehicle. The car you're connected to right now appears in the list; tap it and give it a name. TripSnap only offers cars the phone is actually connected to, so there is no list of unknown Bluetooth devices to guess from.
Does TripSnap track me when I'm not driving?
No. Automatic capture starts when your phone connects to a car you saved, or when iOS reports sustained automotive motion. Walking, cycling, riding a bus and sitting still are not trips. You can also mark a whole vehicle as Don't track, and TripSnap will ignore it entirely.
Can my employer see my location in TripSnap?
No. There is no employer dashboard and no server behind TripSnap, so there is nothing for an employer to log into. The only thing they ever receive is the report you choose to send them, which contains dates, distances, start and end addresses and the business purpose you wrote — not a route or a live position.
Can I deduct my work mileage as a W-2 employee?
Not on a federal return. Unreimbursed employee business expenses stopped being deductible in 2018 and that change was made permanent in 2025, so for a W-2 employee the IRS standard rate is the benchmark for tax-free reimbursement from an employer rather than a deduction. A handful of states still allow a version of the deduction, and a few professions are federal exceptions. If you are self-employed, those same miles do go on Schedule C. TripSnap is a mileage log, not tax advice — check your own situation with a tax professional.
How do I send my mileage report to my manager?
Open Reports, pick the pay period you want, review the trips it includes, and tap Send to manager. TripSnap opens a mail composer addressed to the manager email you saved in Settings, with the PDF expense report and a CSV attached and the period total in the body. You send it from your own mail account — TripSnap never sends anything on its own.
Why is my TripSnap distance different from my odometer?
TripSnap measures distance from GPS positions sampled along the route, and your car measures it from wheel rotations, so the two will always differ slightly. Tunnels, parking garages and urban canyons cost GPS accuracy, and a trip that starts before your phone gets a good fix can lose the first few tenths of a mile. Differences of one to three percent are normal; anything larger usually means Precise Location is off.
Does TripSnap work with an electric car?
Yes. Set the vehicle's fuel type to Electric in Settings, Vehicles, and enter its efficiency in miles per kWh along with your electricity price per kWh. Running costs are then estimated in the same way as a gasoline car, and appear in Insights and in the exports.
Where is my TripSnap data stored, and what happens if I lose my phone?
Everything is stored in TripSnap's own database on the device — there is no account and no cloud copy, which is also why no one else can read it. The flip side is that the data lives and dies with the phone, so export a CSV or JSON archive periodically and keep it somewhere you control. An encrypted iPhone backup made through iCloud Backup or the Finder also restores TripSnap's data to a new phone.
A note on tax and reimbursement
TripSnap records miles and prices them. It is not a tax preparer, an accountant or a lawyer, and nothing in the app or on this page is tax advice.
The rules it reflects are the general federal ones: a W-2 employee's unreimbursed business mileage has not been federally deductible since 2018 and that change was made permanent in 2025, which is why TripSnap frames the standard rate as a reimbursement benchmark for employees; a self-employed driver deducts business miles on Schedule C; medical and charitable mileage have their own, much lower, statutory rates; and commuting is never claimable. Several states diverge from the federal treatment, and a few professions are explicit exceptions. Your own situation is yours to confirm with a professional.
Contact
Twisted Data Studios
Email: support@twisteddatastudios.com
When emailing, please include:
- Your iOS version (Settings → General → About → iOS Version),
- Your iPhone or iPad model,
- The TripSnap version and build (Settings → About in the app),
- How the car connects — CarPlay or Bluetooth stereo — if your question is about a missed trip,
- A short description of what happened and what you expected.
We do our best to respond within a few business days.