Mileage claims

Mileage is the middle tab of Payroll, under Money out in the sidebar, between Timesheets and Pay runs. It appears only when both the Time & payroll and Mileage claims modules are on, and it carries a count in the tab itself when anything is waiting on you.

Everything on it reads the tax year, not the pay period. HMRC's rate steps down after a certain number of miles per person per year, so a claim only makes sense against the year it was driven in.

What is waiting on you

The tab opens on Waiting on you with a count of how many there are to decide. Each claim is one row: who drove, the date, the miles, the vehicle, where from and where to if they said, any note they left, and the estimate with its working shown underneath.

The two decisions sit on the row itself. Approve confirms with "Approved at the HMRC rate for that point in the tax year." Rejecting asks for a reason first, in a field placeholdered "Why, so they know", and confirms with "Rejected, and the reason is on the claim." The reason is not optional politeness: it is what the cleaner sees, and a rejection with no reason is a rejection they will ask you about in person.

When there is nothing to decide the section is replaced by a single line: "No mileage claim is waiting on you." A tax year with no claims at all reads "No mileage claimed in this tax year", with the explanation that claims arrive when a cleaner files one for a journey in their own vehicle.

The rates, and the band

These are HMRC's Approved Mileage Allowance Payment rates, which are statutory figures rather than a CleanFlo setting. Cars and vans step down after the first 10,000 miles in a tax year, per person. A motorcycle and a bicycle are flat however far they go.

The 10,000-mile point can fall inside a single journey, and CleanFlo says so rather than rounding the whole claim to one rate. A cleaner on 9,950 approved miles claiming 100 gets 50 at 45p and 50 at 25p, and the working under the estimate reads exactly that.

Filing one on somebody's behalf

Record a journey at the top of the tab opens a sheet of the same name, subtitled "Filed as waiting, the same as one a cleaner sends in. Approving it is what sets the rate." It is for the journey somebody told you about in the van rather than filed on their phone.

Who drove

The cleaner it belongs to. The claim is theirs from that point on, and it counts towards their band for the year.

When

The date it was driven. It decides which tax year the claim falls in, so a late claim is still rated against the year it happened.

Miles

The distance. Fractions are fine.

Vehicle

Car, Van, Motorcycle or Bicycle, which is what picks the rate.

From, To and Note

All optional, all worth filling in. They are what makes the claim recognisable in three months.

Add the claim files it as Waiting, exactly as if the cleaner had sent it in. You still have to approve it, and that is deliberate: filing and deciding are two acts even when the same person does both.

What happens to an approved claim

An approved claim carries its resolved rate for good, and it goes out on that person's next pay run as its own named line rather than being folded into their gross. It is money being paid back, not earned, and somebody checking a total needs to be able to see the difference.

A claim's four states are Waiting, Approved, Rejected and Paid, the last set once the pay run carrying it is settled.