Reviewing a Trip in Backbuild Miles

The trips list is for scanning. This screen is for finishing the job. Tap any drive in your history and it opens here, with everything the drive recorded on one page and every field you are allowed to change in reach. A mileage claim is not won by driving the miles; it is won by having a record that answers, for each drive, when it was, how far it went, where it went and what it was for. This is the screen where that record gets completed. After this page you will be able to read a trip's facts confidently, fill in the parts only you can supply, lock a trip once it has been filed, move one that was recorded against the wrong business, and delete one that should never have existed.

What This Screen Is For

After this section you will know which parts of a trip the app records and which parts only you can supply.

A recorded drive arrives with facts the phone measured: the times it started and ended, the distance, the route, the two addresses. Those are not editable here, and that is deliberate. They are the measured evidence, and a record whose measurements can be quietly rewritten is worth very little when somebody asks you to stand behind it.

What the phone cannot know is the meaning of the drive: whether it was work, which car you were in, and what the journey was for. Those are yours to state, and every one of them lives on this screen.

The screen keeps what was measured apart from what you assert. The measured stage is read only; the stated stage is the work this screen exists for.

Reading the Top of the Trip

After this section you will be able to read a trip's headline and know why its date is the one shown.

The heading gives you the two numbers that matter first: how far the drive went, and how long it took. A drive shorter than a minute reads "less than 1m" rather than "0m", so a very short hop never looks like a recording fault.

Below it are the start and end times, followed by the name of the time zone. That zone is not decoration and it is not your phone's current setting: it is the zone the drive actually happened in, and the times are shown in it. This matters more than it sounds. A drive that began at 11:30 at night on 31 December belongs to that year. If the times were shown in whatever zone your phone happens to be in when you read the record, that same drive could read as 1 January after you travelled a few zones east, and it would then be evidence for the wrong tax year. Backbuild Miles keeps the zone with the drive so the date can never drift.

The Route

Under the addresses is the map. When the drive recorded its path, the map draws the real route you took. When it recorded only where the drive started and ended, the map joins those two points with a straight line, which is honest: it shows you the endpoints without pretending to know the roads. When a drive has no location points at all, the map says "No route recorded" instead of showing an empty grey panel, so you can tell a drive with no route from a map that failed to load.

Classifying the Trip

After this section you will be able to set a trip's classification and know why the three categories are kept apart.

Three choices, one of which is always selected:

Business: a journey made for work. These are the miles a standard mileage deduction is calculated from.
Commuting: travel between home and a regular place of work. It has its own category on purpose, because commuting is generally not deductible, and folding it into business is one of the most common ways a mileage claim gets reduced or disallowed.
Personal: everything else. Recording personal drives is not wasted effort; a log that accounts for all of a vehicle's use is far easier to defend than one that only ever shows business miles.

You can change a classification after filing a trip, with one exception. Once a business trip has been posted into the mileage records in Backbuild Finances, the accounting area of the platform, it can no longer be reclassified as something else, because a figure has already gone into the books against it. The other two choices are shown dimmed on such a trip so you can see the rule rather than tap into a refusal, and the trip itself says that it has been posted.

If your entity is set up to post business trips into Backbuild Finances and a particular trip has not been posted yet, the screen offers to post it. That is there for the ordinary interruptions: the posting was switched on after the trip was already filed, or a connection dropped part way. Posting again on a trip that is already posted does nothing, so the offer is always safe to take.

Writing the Business Purpose

After this section you will be able to write a purpose that does its job when the log is questioned.

This is the single most valuable field on the screen and the one most often left empty. A business mileage claim is substantiated by recording what the journey was for. A trip classified as business with a blank purpose is exactly the trip that is challenged, and the trips list flags it in red for that reason.

Write it for a stranger reading it in two years, because that is who will read it. A good purpose names the other party and the reason:

"Site survey, Harborview roof replacement, quote 2417"
"Client meeting, Alvarez Dental, treatment plan review"
"Collected timber, Northgate Supplies, job 118"

A poor purpose is one that only means something to you on the day you wrote it: "work", "meeting", "the usual", "job". Those cost nothing to write and prove nothing later.

The field saves when you move away from it. If the save cannot go through, the screen tells you and gives the reason, so a purpose you typed is never left looking saved when it was not.

Notes

Notes are for everything that is worth recording but is not the purpose itself: who travelled with you, that a detour was caused by a road closure, an odometer reading you took, the fact that you paid a toll. It is your own working memory, and it is where the small circumstance that explains an unusual figure belongs. A drive twice as long as it should have been looks like an error a year later, and looks entirely reasonable next to a note saying the bridge was closed.

The Vehicle

Which of your registered vehicles the drive was in. This normally arrives already correct, because Backbuild Miles attributes a drive to the vehicle you were driving, either the one you chose in the header or the one whose Bluetooth your phone connected to. Change it here when a drive was recorded against the wrong car. Attribution matters beyond tidiness: a per vehicle mileage total is what lets you compare the standard mileage method against actual running costs for that vehicle, and a mile filed against the wrong car distorts both.

Marking a Trip Reported

After this section you will know what locking a trip protects and how to reverse it.

Mark reported locks the trip. A locked trip is read only: the classification, purpose, notes, tags and vehicle can no longer be changed, it cannot be deleted, and it cannot be returned to your inbox or moved to another entity. The screen says plainly that it is locked and why.

That restriction is the point. Once a mileage figure has gone onto a return, an invoice or a reimbursement claim, the record behind it should stop moving. A log whose entries can be quietly edited after they were reported is a log with no evidential weight, and the lock is what makes the difference visible.

Unlock reverses it when a locked trip genuinely does need correcting. Treat that as a deliberate act rather than a routine one, and expect to explain the correction the same way you would explain any adjustment made after the fact.

Every exit from a filed trip runs through this screen, and the lock closes all three of them. Only deletion is one way.

Sending a Trip Somewhere Else

After this section you will be able to move a drive that was filed against the wrong business, and know what the move guarantees.

Two actions sit together, because they are two lengths of the same idea.

Return to inbox takes the drive out of this entity's mileage log and puts it back in your own trip inbox, where it can be edited, split into legs, or filed again. Use it when a drive needs more than a correction: it was really two journeys, or you want to start its classification over. It asks first, because the drive stops counting towards this entity's deduction the moment it leaves, and it names that consequence in the question.

Move to another organization is for a drive filed against the wrong business. Choose the destination from your other entities and confirm. An entity that is not set up for mileage is still listed, shown as unavailable with the reason, rather than quietly missing from the list so that you are left wondering where it went.

The move is careful about one thing in particular: the drive is removed from the entity it is leaving before it is filed into the destination, so an interruption can never leave one drive counted twice in two sets of books. If the second half fails, the drive is put back where it started. In the destination it is attributed to the vehicle you usually drive for that entity, or to its only vehicle if it has just one. If the destination has no vehicle registered at all the move is refused and the drive stays where it is, because a trip with no vehicle cannot be priced or reported.

Deleting a Trip

After this section you will know exactly what deleting does and when to use something else instead.

Delete trip asks before it does anything, and the question names what you are about to lose: the mileage will no longer count towards your deduction, and it cannot be undone. Keep closes the question and changes nothing.

Choose deletion only for a drive that should never have been recorded: a journey made as a passenger, the car moved by somebody else, a duplicate. For a drive that is real but filed wrongly, everything else on this screen is a better answer. Change the classification, change the vehicle, return it to your inbox, or move it to the right entity. Those keep the evidence and correct the meaning. Deleting removes the evidence, and a gap in a log is harder to explain than a correction in one.

A locked trip has no delete control at all, and a deletion refused by the server says so with its reason rather than leaving you tapping.

When Something Cannot Be Loaded or Saved

After this section you will be able to tell "this trip is gone" apart from "we could not read it".

Those two are not the same thing, and the screen never confuses them.

A trip that has genuinely been deleted, or that has been returned to your inbox, says it no longer exists.
A trip the app simply could not read, because the connection dropped or the service was unreachable, says so, gives the reason, and offers Try again. It never tells you your trip does not exist on the strength of a check that did not complete.

The same honesty applies to saving. Every change on this screen reports its own failure, in the words the service gave, right where you made it. Three refusals are worth recognising because each one asks for a different response:

The trip was changed somewhere else. You edited the trip on one device while another device, or another person with access, changed it too. Reopen the trip to see what it now says, then make your change again on top of it.
The trip is locked. It has been marked as reported. Unlock it if the correction is genuinely needed.
The trip has been posted to the accounts. A business trip already in the mileage records in Backbuild Finances cannot be reclassified away from business. Reverse or adjust the entry on the accounting side first.

Common Questions

Why can I not edit the distance or the times?

Because they are the measured evidence, and a record whose measurements can be rewritten is worth very little when it is questioned. If a drive was measured wrongly, or the app recorded something that was not your journey, return it to your inbox or delete it rather than adjusting the numbers.

What should I actually write in the purpose?

The other party and the reason, specifically enough for a stranger to follow in two years. "Client meeting, Alvarez Dental, treatment plan review" does the job. "Meeting" does not.

I have marked a trip reported and now I need to fix it. Can I?

Yes. Unlock it, make the correction, and mark it reported again. Do it deliberately: a figure has already been filed from that record, so the correction is an adjustment you should be able to explain.

What is the difference between returning a trip to my inbox and deleting it?

Returning it keeps the drive and takes it out of this entity's log so you can edit, split or re-file it. Deleting destroys the record. Returning is almost always what you want.

I filed a drive against the wrong business. Do I have to delete it and start again?

No. Move it. The move takes it out of the current entity first and files it into the destination second, so it can never be counted twice, and it is put back if the second step does not complete.

Why is my trip's date a day earlier than I expected?

Because the times are shown in the zone you drove in, not the zone you are reading in. A drive that began late at night keeps the date it happened on, which is what keeps a late December drive in the right tax year.

Do tags and notes appear in my reports?

Your exported trip log carries the detail of each trip, so what you record here is what an accountant reads later. Tags are most useful for finding the miles for one client or one job; notes are for the circumstances that explain a figure.

Nothing I change is sticking. What is happening?

Look for the message under the control you used. Every change reports its own failure with the reason, so the screen will tell you whether the trip is locked, whether it was changed elsewhere, whether it has already been posted to the accounts, or whether the connection is the problem.

Where to Go Next

Working your trips list: finding the trips that need this screen, including every business trip with no purpose.
Clearing your trip inbox: where a returned trip goes, and how a drive is split into legs.
Reports and exports: what a completed trip record becomes at the end of a year.