HMRC mileage claims in Zoho Expense: rates, the 10,000 mile threshold and records

HMRC mileage claims in Zoho Expense: the short answer

To handle HMRC mileage claims in Zoho Expense, you do three things. You enter the HMRC approved rates as start-dated mileage rates in each policy. You add one vehicle entry per rate band. Then you use a yearly mileage rule to flag the 10,000 mile threshold. From 6 April 2026 the car and van rate is 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles and 25p after that. The government has announced a rise in the above-10,000 rate to 35p from 6 April 2027.

A mileage claim in Zoho Expense is a mileage expense. Zoho defines a mileage expense as one created to report fuel costs when someone uses their own vehicle or the organisation's vehicle for business. Zoho Expense calculates the amount for you from the distance and the rate your administrator has set. The rate is therefore the setting that decides whether a claim matches HMRC.

Zoho Expense does not know the tax rules on its own. You have to tell it the rates, the dates they apply from and the vehicles they apply to. You also have to decide what happens when an employee crosses 10,000 business miles in the year. Zoho's help pages describe rates by start date and by vehicle. They do not describe a rate that changes automatically after a set number of miles.

This guide covers the HMRC rules first, then the settings in Zoho Expense, a worked example and the checks your finance team needs.

HMRC approved mileage rates for cars, motorcycles and bikes

Mileage Allowance Payments (MAPs) are what an employer pays an employee for using their own vehicle for business journeys. HMRC lets you pay a certain amount of MAPs each year without reporting them. GOV.UK calls this the approved amount. You calculate it by multiplying the employee's business travel miles for the year by the rate per mile for their vehicle.

The rates on the GOV.UK rules for business travel mileage are set per vehicle type and split at 10,000 business miles:

Vehicle	First 10,000 business miles	Above 10,000 business miles
Cars and vans	55p from 6 April 2026 (45p before)	25p
Motorcycles	24p	24p
Bikes	20p	20p

Electric bikes follow these lines too. An electrically assisted pedal bike uses the bike rate. Any other electric bike uses the motorcycle rate.

Only cars and vans change rate at the threshold. Motorcycles and bikes pay the same rate whatever the mileage. That matters for setup, because only the car and van rate needs a second band in Zoho Expense.

The count is per employee, not per vehicle. GOV.UK says it does not matter if an employee uses more than one vehicle in a year, because it is all calculated together.

Paying above or below the approved amount: P11D, payroll and MAR

Paying above the approved amount creates a reporting duty for the employer. GOV.UK says you must then either report on form P11D, or add anything above the approved amount to the employee's pay and deduct and pay tax as normal. Either way, the excess is not tax-free.

Paying below the approved amount creates no reporting duty. You do not report to HMRC or pay tax. Your employee can instead claim Mileage Allowance Relief (MAR), which is tax relief on the unused balance of the approved amount.

You can also tell HMRC about those unused balances yourself. The Mileage Allowance Relief Optional Reporting Scheme (MARORS) is a scheme under which employers make separate optional reports of unused balances to HMRC.

These rules decide what Zoho Expense has to give your finance team. For each employee, finance needs three figures for the year:

• total business miles, across every vehicle they used
• the vehicle type behind those miles
• the total amount you actually paid them

With those figures, finance can compare payments with the approved amount. The comparison then shows whether anything goes on a P11D, through payroll, or into an optional MARORS report.

Setting mileage rates in a Zoho Expense policy

Mileage rates in Zoho Expense live inside a policy. In Organization Settings, click Policies under Setup & Configurations, choose the policy and open the Mileage tab. If you run several policies, for example one for field staff and one for office staff, set mileage in each one.

The Zoho Expense mileage help page lists the settings you need:

• Default mileage unit: choose miles, so distances match HMRC's per-mile rates.
• Default category: choose Mileage expenses rather than Fuel, so claims land in one category that finance can report on.
• Vehicles: add a vehicle entry wherever the rate depends on the vehicle, then attach rates to it.
• Mileage rates: give each rate a start date, plus an undated default rate if you need one.

Vehicles in Zoho Expense are shared. Zoho says the vehicles you add are common to all policies, so you only create them once. Each employee then picks a vehicle when they log a journey. That choice sets the rate Zoho Expense applies.

A sensible starting set is a car or van entry for the first 10,000 miles, a second car or van entry for miles above 10,000, a motorcycle entry and a bike entry. The Zoho Expense overview for UK firms covers the wider product if mileage is your first use of it.

Handling the 45p to 55p change on 6 April 2026 with start dates

Start dates let Zoho Expense apply the old and new car rates without anyone changing a setting on the day. Zoho says mileage expenses recorded after a rate's start date are calculated with that rate. A default rate is a rate created without a date, and it applies to mileage expenses recorded before the first start date.

For the car and van entry covering the first 10,000 miles, set up two rates:

1. A default rate of 45p, with no date, for journeys before the change.
2. A rate of 55p with a start date of 6 April 2026.

The car and van entry for miles above 10,000 uses 25p for the 2026 to 2027 tax year. The government has announced a rise to 35p from 6 April 2027, so keep 25p as the default and add a 35p rate starting 6 April 2027 once HMRC confirms it. The motorcycle and bike entries need one rate each, 24p and 20p.

Test the dates before staff rely on them. Zoho's wording is "recorded after the start date". Create one test claim dated before 6 April 2026 and one dated after. Then check that the first shows 45p a mile and the second 55p.

A late claim for an old journey should still pick up the old rate. That test is the quickest way to confirm the behaviour in your organisation.

Keep the old rate in place rather than editing it. Once you overwrite the 45p rate with 55p, Zoho Expense has no record of what applied before.

The 10,000 mile threshold: flagging it with a yearly mileage rule

Zoho Expense will not move a driver from 55p to 25p on its own. Its rates follow dates and vehicles, not cumulative mileage. You need a rule that flags the threshold and a clear instruction for what the driver does next.

Rules let administrators set daily, monthly, yearly or custom limits per policy. To add one, open the policy, go to Rules and click + Add Rule. The Zoho Expense rules help page says monthly and yearly limits support a Mileage Limit, with an action of Warn or Block. Warn marks the expense with a warning. Block stops the employee creating it.

For the car and van band, create a yearly rule with a Mileage Limit of 10,000 miles and the Warn action. When the warning appears, the employee logs later journeys against the "above 10,000 miles" vehicle entry at 25p. At Svennis we set this rule to Warn rather than Block. A driver who crosses the threshold mid-journey can still submit the claim, and finance sees the flag and checks which band each trip belongs in.

Check one thing before relying on the rule. HMRC counts the 10,000 miles over the tax year, 6 April to 5 April. The help page does not say whether Zoho's yearly limit uses the calendar year or the tax year, so check this in your organisation. If it does not match, finance should check cumulative miles against the threshold from a report instead.

Some employers simply pay one rate all year. That is allowed, but anything above the approved amount then goes on a P11D or through payroll.

Worked example: one employee driving 12,000 business miles

Take an employee who drives 12,000 business miles in their own car in the 2026 to 2027 tax year. The approved amount is £6,000. That is 10,000 miles at 55p, or £5,500, plus 2,000 miles at 25p, or £500.

In Zoho Expense, the setup from this guide produces that figure as follows:

1. The employee logs journeys against the car or van entry for the first 10,000 miles. Each claim calculates at 55p.
2. The yearly Mileage Limit rule warns on the claim that takes their total past 10,000 miles.
3. From then on, the employee picks the car or van entry for miles above 10,000. Each claim calculates at 25p.
4. At year end, the claims total £6,000, which equals the approved amount. Nothing needs reporting.

Now suppose the employee ignored the warning and kept claiming 55p. The total would be 12,000 miles at 55p, or £6,600. The £600 above the approved amount must go on a P11D, or through payroll with tax deducted.

Suppose instead your policy paid a flat 45p for every mile. The total would be £5,400, which is £600 below the approved amount. You report nothing, and the employee can claim MAR on the £600 unused balance.

The same check works for any employee. Add up their business miles, apply the HMRC rates, and compare the result with what Zoho Expense paid.

How staff log business journeys: maps, distance, odometer and GPS

Staff can log a journey in Zoho Expense in several ways, and each one feeds the distance into the rate you set. On the web app, the Zoho Expense guide to creating mileage expenses lists three methods: Maps, Distance Travelled and Odometer Reading. The amount is then calculated automatically from the distance and the prescribed rate.

Maps

Maps calculates mileage from the route travelled. The feature is on early access, so an administrator has to email support@zohoexpense.com to enable it. On the iOS app you can add up to 10 locations to a route.

Distance travelled and odometer reading

These two methods suit staff who already note their mileage. They type the distance, or the start and end odometer figures. Odometer entries leave a clearer trail if finance ever queries a claim.

GPS and automatic tracking on mobile

The mobile app supports GPS and Automatic Mileage Tracking. With GPS on Android, the driver must start and stop tracking manually for each ride. Android needs location, battery usage and physical activity permissions. iOS needs location access set to always and Precise Location turned on.

Whatever the method, the employee also chooses the vehicle. If your organisation uses different rates for different vehicles, that choice decides the rate. A mileage claim can also be marked Billable and assigned to a customer when you recharge travel.

Fixing a missing Add Mileage option in Zoho Expense

A missing Add Mileage option is a known stumbling block. On the Zoho community, one user reported that the Add Mileage tab on Expenses was not visible. Their user had admin privileges and mileage was enabled in the policy. So admin rights and a policy switch alone did not fix it for them.

When staff report the same problem, work through the settings this guide relies on:

• Check which policy the employee is assigned to, because mileage is set per policy.
• Check that the policy has a default unit, a default category and at least one rate.
• Check that a vehicle entry exists and has a rate attached.
• Check which logging method the employee expects, since Maps needs early access enabled.

If the option is still missing after those checks, raise it with Zoho support with the policy name and a screenshot. The community thread on the missing Add Mileage tab is worth reading first, so you know what has already been tried.

Test the whole path with a pilot group before you roll mileage out to every driver. A single failed claim on the first Monday costs more goodwill than a week's delay.

Getting mileage claims into Zoho Books and payroll cleanly

Clean mileage data in Zoho Books starts with consistent settings in Zoho Expense. One default category, Mileage expenses, keeps every claim in a single line. One set of named vehicle entries keeps the rate bands visible. Billable claims assigned to a customer show which travel you recharge.

The Zoho help pages behind this guide cover Zoho Expense setup. They do not describe how approved mileage claims post into Zoho Books. Test that step with one approved report before go-live. Then check the category, the amount and any customer in Books against the claim in Expense.

Some firms record mileage in Zoho Billing instead. The Zoho Billing expense preferences page follows the same pattern. Rates and vehicles sit under Settings > Preferences > Expenses. Each rate has a start date and a vehicle, and +Add Mileage Rate adds another. You can then record expenses and get them reimbursed by raising an invoice.

Payroll and the P11D sit outside both products in this guide. Finance needs a yearly figure per employee for miles and amount paid. Agree who pulls that figure, and when, before the year closes. If you want trend reporting across teams, Zoho Analytics is the usual place to build it.

What HMRC mileage rules mean for a UK employer using Zoho Expense

For a UK employer, the tax position depends on one comparison: what you paid each employee against their approved amount. Zoho Expense can make that comparison easy or hard, depending on setup. The HMRC rules themselves are simple. Errors usually come from rates that were never updated, or bands that no one tracked.

The checklist below sums up the settings and the HMRC rule each one supports:

Setting in Zoho Expense	Value to use	HMRC rule it supports
Default mileage unit	Miles	Rates are per business mile
Default category	Mileage expenses	Payments can be totalled per employee
Car or van, first 10,000 miles	45p default, 55p from 6 April 2026	Rate for the first 10,000 miles
Car or van, above 10,000 miles	25p default, 35p from 6 April 2027 once HMRC confirms it	Rate above 10,000 miles
Motorcycle and bike entries	24p and 20p	One rate at any mileage
Yearly Mileage Limit rule	10,000 miles, Warn	Flags the change of band

Two habits protect you. First, never overwrite an old rate; add a new one with a start date. Second, count every vehicle an employee uses towards their total, because HMRC calculates it all together.

Next steps for HMRC mileage claims in Zoho Expense

Start with an audit of your current mileage policy, then make the changes in this order:

1. List every policy in Zoho Expense that allows mileage.
2. Set the unit to miles and the default category to Mileage expenses.
3. Create the vehicle entries, with the 45p default and the 55p rate from 6 April 2026 for the first car and van band.
4. Give the above-10,000 car and van entry a 25p default, and add a 35p rate from 6 April 2027 once HMRC confirms it.
5. Add the yearly Mileage Limit rule at 10,000 miles with the Warn action, and confirm whether it counts the calendar year or the tax year.
6. Run test claims dated either side of 6 April 2026 and check the rates.
7. Push one approved report through to Zoho Books and check it there.
8. Agree with finance who produces each employee's yearly miles and payments for P11D or payroll.

Send drivers a short note on which vehicle entry to pick and what the threshold warning means. Most claim errors come from the wrong vehicle, not the wrong rate.

If you would rather have the setup done and tested for you, the Zoho Expense implementation page explains how Svennis UK sets it up. For a wider view of the role, see what a Zoho partner does.

Sources

• GOV.UK: Expenses and benefits, business travel mileage, rules for tax
• Zoho Expense user guide: Mileage
• Zoho Expense user guide: Creating Mileage Expenses
• Zoho Expense user guide: Rules
• Zoho community: Add Mileage Tab on Expenses
• Zoho Billing help: Expense Preferences, Mileage Rate and Vehicle Tracking