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How we calculate mileage (applied to the FR market) 🇫🇷
How we calculate mileage (applied to the FR market) 🇫🇷

Last update: June 2023

Updated over a year ago

Sometimes, the amounts charged for mileage expenses can be quite confusing to understand. With this guide, you'll be able to understand Spendesk's approach to calculating mileage expenses.

Then you can read more about the variations in amounts to be reimbursed between the expense claim submission and its reimbursement! 😊

Calculate car mileage

How we calculate expenses under 5000 km

The URSSAF annual scale is as follows:

As you can see, the amount you get depends on the number of kilometers driven per year.

The difference on Spendesk is that our Product team has reconciled an annual scale (URSSAF scale) with a system of one-off requests (in the Requests tab).

This is quite tricky compared to an annual expense declaration made other than through Spendesk! 😊

Here's how it works ⬇️

Below 5000 km, your users will receive amounts as follows:

Distance x scale (0.529 to 0.697) depending on horsepower

How we calculate over 5000 km (= the difference between the number of km and what the user has already received from their company)

This is where things get a bit more complicated.

We have to calculate the difference between what they've already earned (=5000km x 0.529 or 0.606 or 0.636 or 0.665 or 0.697 depending on the car's power) and what they'd get from their company if they reported their mileage expenses annually.

From 5001 to 20000 km (yearly)

👉🏻 Suppose a user called Mark owns a 6CV car. He has already received, from his company and via Spendesk, 5000 km x 0.665 euros = 3325 euros in his account. We'll call this AMOUNT A.

He's going to drive 30 km.

He expects to receive 30*0.665 = 19.95 euros, as before.

This is not the case here: 5030 km on an annual scale = 5030*0.374+1457 = 3338.22 euros.

We'll call this AMOUNT B.

The user has already received 3325 euros from his company following his initial requests.

He will therefore receive the difference between AMOUNT B and AMOUNT A, i.e. 13.22 euros.

🚨 You can reassure the user: the total corresponds to what he would receive if he only made one request a year.

If a user changes vehicle during the year, the counter starts again from zero.

This is because the scale is applied separately for each type of vehicle (so mileage is not added up).

This official Impots.gouv.fr site gives a little more information on this topic:

20001 km and more

Repeat steps 1 and 2, but with this scale:

Electric vehicles 🚗 ⚡️

You can tick 'Electric car' (on French accounts / under URSSAF only) if you own an electric vehicle. The amount of your claim will be increased by 20%.


Scale for two-wheelers with a cubic capacity of less than 50 cm3

Scale for motorcycles

Variations between submission and reimbursement of a claim

Submission

When a mileage claim is submitted, we estimate the amount that could be reimbursed, based on the rate and previously approved mileage claims (for example, the rate depends on the number of kilometers driven during the year).

The estimated amount is not updated until the claim is approved by an approver, account owner or cost center owner.

Approval

When a mileage claim is approved, the amount is updated to the final amount, taking into account the rate in effect at the time of approval. There are three possible reasons for a change between the estimated amount and the final amount:

- The number of kilometers driven during the year has reached a threshold while this claim was awaiting approval, so the final amount is calculated with the new rate;

- A rate change occurs while this claim was awaiting approval, so the final amount is calculated with the new rate;

- The "compensation for rate change" (see below) has already been made on another claim, so this claim must be reimbursed at the normal rate.

Compensation for rate changes during the year (URSSAF update)

When the annual rate is updated in France, the UK or Germany, this rate is applied retroactively to all claims made since the beginning of the current year (so even if we update the rate in March, all claims made between January and March will be reimbursed at the new rate).

As we cannot edit the amounts of claims already approved, this compensation is taken into account on the amount of the next mileage claim → this claim will be reimbursed with the new rate + the additional amount that should have been reimbursed with the new rate for mileage claims made since January 1.

Note that all newly created claims will take this compensation into account until one of them is approved - then the amount of the others will be returned to normal upon approval.

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