You can add and track employee mileage claims directly in Briefcase, so business journeys are captured against the right driver and vehicle. You can create a mileage claim on both web and WhatsApp.

Submit Mileage claims via Web

1. Go to Expenses and open the Mileage Claims tab. Then Choose + Journey to create an claim

2. Select a driver and the vehicle they were driving. To add a new vehicle, click “Add a vehicle” and give it an identifiable name:

3. Enter the route — type the start and end postcodes (or place names). Briefcase calculates the distance automatically. Based on the vehicle's set-up, Briefcase applies the correct mileage rate and works out the claim amount.

4. Create the journey to save it as a mileage claim, then publish it through to Xero (it posts as a bill payable to the driver).

Submit Mileage claims via WhatsApp

Drivers can log a mileage claim straight from WhatsApp — a plain text message is all it takes, no photo and no Briefcase login. Describe the journey in your own words, then confirm the details in a short form.

One-time setup

• Save Briefcase's number (+44 7380 878620) to your contacts by clicking here, and make sure your mobile number is saved on your Briefcase profile

• Ask whoever manages Briefcase for the business to add you as a driver and assign your vehicle — this can only be done in the web app, under Business settings → Mileage

Send a message describing the journey

Mention where you drove from and to, the distance, the date, the business reason and who was driving. For example:

Mileage claim for Jan, London to Manchester, 200 miles, business meeting with John

Check the form and submit

Tap Complete mileage claim in Briefcase's reply. The form opens with everything picked up from your message already filled in. Depending on your setup it may first ask you to pick the business (only if you have access to more than one), the driver, and the vehicle (skipped when the driver has just one). Check the date, start, destination, distance and business purpose, then submit.

Good to know

• Enter the total distance driven, in whole miles, including the return leg — Briefcase does not double a round trip for you.

• Company electric vehicles ask for the split between home-charged and public-charged miles. Personal vehicles show a passenger count when Pay the passenger rate is switched on under Business settings → Mileage.

• Company bicycles are not claimable, and company motorcycles are reimbursed at actual fuel cost — submit those as a standard expense claim.

What happens next

The journey appears immediately under Mileage claims in Briefcase, ready for whoever manages the books to review and publish — nothing more for you to do.

Approving Mileage claims

While the official approval flow is on our roadmap, the current workaround in Briefcase is through user permissions, with publishing acting as the approval step - a claim only reaches your ledger once someone with permission to publish it signs it off. 

To set this up, give each submitter the ability to raise their own claims but not post them. When you invite or edit a team member under Settings → Organisation, set their Expense/Mileage Claims permissions to:

• View Own Only - they see only their own claims, not the rest of the business's
• Create - they can raise expense claims (and upload receipts, including via WhatsApp)
• Leave Publish switched off

and and give the approver the Publish permission (and View All so they can see everyone's claims). The submitter creates and submits the claim; the approver reviews it and publishes it through to Xero or QuickBooks, which records their approval.