Backbuild Miles Free Trips and Subscriptions
Backbuild Miles records every drive for free. What a subscription buys is deductibility past a monthly allowance: each organization gets 30 recorded trips a month at no cost, and a per-seat subscription lifts that limit for a driver. After this page you will know exactly what the free allowance covers, what happens to a trip beyond it (it is kept, not lost), what a subscription costs, and how buying one brings the waiting trips back into your deductible total.
The Free Monthly Allowance
After this section you will know what your organization gets for free and when the count resets.
Every organization gets 30 recorded trips per calendar month at no charge. The allowance belongs to the organization, not to a single driver, so if several people log trips into the same organization they draw from the same 30. It resets on the first of each month: a fresh month is a fresh 30, and an unused allowance does not roll over.
The count is by the month a trip is uploaded, so a backlog you sync after a few days offline counts against the month you upload it in. Recording is always free and always unlimited: the allowance is only ever about how many of those recorded trips are treated as deductible without a subscription, never about whether a drive is captured at all.
What Happens Past 30: Recorded, Then Held
After this section you will understand why a trip beyond the allowance is never lost, only set aside.
A drive that lands after the month's 30 are used, by a driver who is not covered by a subscription, is still recorded and still yours. It shows in your trip list exactly like any other. What changes is that it is held out of your deductible figures: it does not count toward the mileage deduction on the Reports tab, it is left out of the per-vehicle tax figures, and it is not carried into your accounting records, until the organization has an active subscription that covers the driver who logged it.
A held trip is never rejected and never deleted. Losing a drive is the worst thing a mileage tracker can do, so Backbuild Miles does the opposite: it keeps every drive, and simply waits to count the ones past the allowance until you are subscribed. The moment coverage is in place, those held trips are counted, including the ones recorded before you subscribed.
The Subscription: One Seat Per Driver
After this section you will know what a seat covers and who needs one.
A subscription is sold per seat, and a seat covers a driver. One purchased seat gives the buyer their own unlimited tracking across every organization they own, from a single purchase, so a person who runs three of their own organizations buys one seat and is covered in all three. When other people also drive for one of your organizations, each additional driver in that organization is covered by an extra seat on it.
A covered driver has no monthly limit: their trips are deductible as they are recorded, and the 30-trip allowance simply stops applying to them. An uncovered driver keeps using the shared free 30, and their trips past it wait in the held state described above until a seat covers them.
What a Subscription Costs
After this section you will be able to choose a term.
Every price below is per seat. The one-year plan renews automatically each year. The multi-year and lifetime plans are a single up-front payment for the whole term, with no renewal, and the longer terms include free years, so the longer you commit the less each year costs.
| Term | Price per seat | Billing | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 year | $60 | Renews automatically each year | The standard plan |
| 3 years | $120 | One up-front payment | Two years paid, one free |
| 5 years | $180 | One up-front payment | Three years paid, two free |
| 7 years | $240 | One up-front payment | Four years paid, three free |
| 10 years | $300 | One up-front payment | Five years paid, five free |
| Lifetime | $450 | One up-front payment | Covered for good, no renewal |
Subscribing Retroactively Unlocks Held Trips
After this section you will know what happens to the trips that were waiting when a subscription starts.
When a seat starts covering a driver, the trips of theirs that were held for being past the allowance are brought back into your deductible figures at once, wherever they fell in the month. You do not re-enter them or re-record anything. Open the Reports tab after subscribing and the deduction, the per-vehicle figures and the exportable mileage log all include the trips that had been waiting. Nothing recorded during the free months is left behind.
How to Subscribe
After this section you will know where a subscription is bought.
Subscriptions are purchased in the Backbuild web app, not inside the mobile app. From the mobile app, the Subscribe action opens the web app for you at your organization's settings, where you add seats and complete the purchase; you can also go there directly in a browser by opening your organization's settings and choosing to add Backbuild Miles seats. The mobile app then reflects the coverage automatically: once the purchase is complete, the driver is covered and the monthly limit no longer applies.
Common Questions
Do I lose a trip if I go over 30 in a month?
No. Every drive is recorded and kept whatever the count. A trip past the free 30 is held out of your deductible totals until a subscription covers the driver who logged it, and then it is counted. Nothing is deleted and nothing is rejected.
Is the allowance per person or per organization?
Per organization. The 30 free trips a month are shared by everyone who logs trips into that organization. A person who owns several organizations gets 30 a month in each of them.
If I own more than one organization, do I buy a seat for each?
No. One seat covers you, the buyer, in every organization you own. You only need extra seats for other people who drive for one of your organizations, one seat per additional driver in that organization.
What is the difference between the one-year plan and the longer ones?
The one-year plan renews automatically each year. The three, five, seven, ten year and lifetime plans are a single payment for the whole term with no renewal, and the longer terms include free years, so the cost per year falls as the term lengthens.
Do my held trips come back if I subscribe later?
Yes. Subscribing brings every held trip for the covered driver into your deductible figures, including trips recorded before the subscription started. You do not have to re-enter anything.
Can I keep using Backbuild Miles for free?
Yes. Recording drives is always free and unlimited, and each organization's first 30 trips a month are fully deductible at no cost. A subscription is only needed to make trips past that monthly allowance count too.
Where to Go Next
To see your deductible mileage and export the log a subscription unlocks, see Backbuild Miles Reports and Exports. To manage the organizations a seat covers, see Your Backbuild Miles Account and Organizations. For the running view of your month as it happens, see Reading Your Backbuild Miles Dashboard.