There are several different ways to capture expenses. Start by selecting a day from the calendar or use the big green [+] at the bottom of the page. TIP: The calendar will prefill the date.

• New Trip Report - primarily used for single or multi day race events. You can enter expenses, capture your results and prize money. Represented on the calendar with a blue dot.
• Rainout - Used to track a day where the race was rained out. It places a blue dot on the calendar so you know that
• Non-Trip Expenses - Used to capture non-trip related expenses like parts and supplies, salary, repairs, race car wrap, insurance etc.
  • TIP: you can enter multiple expenses using the “+” icon at the top of the page.
• Additional Income - Used to track merchandise sales like T-Shirts, sponsorship income and used part sales. This is added to the prize money to track total income.

You know that racing costs a lot - so understanding your cost to race and analysing your numbers is useful to make decisions. Sponsors will see how serious you are if you have all the numbers at your fingertips.

Filter custom reports and Completed Trip Analysis using tags to provide insight for budget and opportunity with sponsors. For example:

• How much does it cost us to run a specific track or series?
• What is our race fuel cost, race tire cost, or travel expense if we have a sponsor that pays for it?

Use the data to budget for a big race. Create a Dummy Trip Report with estimated expenses and update it with the real numbers after the race.

Operating your race team as a business with an LLC or DBA provides an ideal structure for maximizing tax benefits. It allows you to deduct expenses up to the amount of your income, effectively reducing your taxable income. However, it's not strictly required. Even without a formal business structure, you can report your race team’s income and expenses on Schedule C of your tax return, provided you treat it as a business.

A tax professional can guide you through this process. Using the RaceTrips app to capture and organize income, expenses, and receipts demonstrates that you’re managing your race team as a business, which can be beneficial for tax purposes.

Establishing an LLC may offer additional advantages, such as the possibility of writing off losses against other income, depending on your specific circumstances. To maximize the benefits of RaceTrips and ensure proper tax treatment, consult your financial or tax professional.

With a mobile app at your fingertips, you can effortlessly log all your expenses and quickly snap a photo to organize receipts. To the extent that you have income from Prize Winnings, sponsors, merchandise sales or selling used parts, you can deduct your expenses against income to reduce your taxable income liability.

You can start using RaceTrips and create 8 Trip Reports. All of the features of the app are available.

Once you hit the trial limit, you can still enter trip reports but certain features will be locked until you upgrade to premium.

TIP: If you want to play with RaceTrips and test the features and reports - create a couple of sample trip reports and expense entries. You can select these trip report and use the trash can at the top of the trip report page to delete it. Deleted trip reports do not count for your trial usage.

These are racing and non-racing expense reports. Visually scan the calendar to see the week days you went racing to verify that you have all trip reports.

• Green are race related Trips
• Blue are Rainout days. They make it easy to identify on the calendar that you are not missing a Trip Report.
• Yellow are where you purchased non-racing related item.

The 6 Icons from left to right are:

• Calendar - Main Dashboard page to start Income or expense entries
• Season Snapshot - This page is filtered by year and 3 tabs for Insights, Season Stats and Alerts.
• Reports - Access your Tax Summary and Custom Reports. - Account - You can see Trial or Subscription Status and manage your account
• More - Brings up a menu for Subscription, manag tags, replay product tour and contact us for help or feedback.
• Plus Menu - Start a new Trip, Expense or income entry.

Tap on the warning or choose Trip Report -> Add Prize Money. Choose the “N/A - No Race Trip” Button. This clears the warning and marks the Trip Report as a Non Race expense report.

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AI suggestions are items that people who take trips like yours also enter.

TIP: You can select the “x” in the corner to turn off the suggestion for the current trip or you can choose it which takes you to a page to add the expense. You can also turn off all AI suggestions on your Account Page

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DNQ = Did not qualify for the Feature.

DNF= did not finish.

Some people like to track DNF rather than the position that you officially finish. If you use DNF, then the finish is not used for your + / - in the Season Snapshot.

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Select Trip Report from Calendar page -> Details Tab -> Select expense -> Make your edit or delete it.

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If you already have a Trip Report started, you can mark it as a rain out and continue to enter expenses.

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SmartScan will automatically open the camera on your phone. Have the receipt fill the screen on the camera if possible and snap the photo. SmartScan will read the receipt and do the best it can to extract the name of the receipt and the total. You can select the category. RaceTrips will Learn your categories based on the expense name and try and autofill in the category any time the name is used.

TIP: RaceTrips will use the last category that you entered manually.

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Yes, Use the Trip Report -> + Add Miles button for multiple entries. If you are on the miles to add page, you can enter or edit start location and destination, one way or round trip and Calculate.

The answer is ONLY saved when you choose the “+” or checkmark at the top of the page. The “+” icon lets you save the miles and then add another leg of the trip.

Each time you save the miles, Race Trips saves these as an entry on your Trip Report. You can see or edit them on the Trip Report -> Details Tab.

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If you go to the same track weekly, you can speed up creating the same trip report. Enter your basic expenses like mileage, pit or registration fee, tags etc and save it as a template.

If you know the mileage or used your odometer, you can enter it manually. Most people just use the automated trip calculator. Choosing one way will enter the distance between the start and destination. Choosing “Round-trip” will double the amount. Beginning Jan. 1, 2025, the standard business mileage rates for the use of a car, van, or pickup truck is 70 cents per mile, up 3 cents from 2024. For Most trips, Choose Round-trip. The starting point will be your “current location” by choosing the target icon, and enter just the Name of your race track as the destination. Then hit calculate and RaceTrips will use your current location and google the address of your track to calculate your mileage automatically. TIP: The start and destination entries are Smart Fields that will calculate distances between nearly any addressable location including most racetracks. It also understands streets, businesses, landmarks, and points of interest (POIs) like restaurants, stores, parks, public transit stops, airports.

If you go to the same track weekly, you can speed up creating the same trip report. Enter your basic expenses like mileage, pit or registration fee, tags etc and save it as a template.

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Tags help classify race trips for reporting, analysis and budgeting. Trip reports can have multiple tags. Example tags are race track name, series name, car owner (if you run for multiple owners), Car name, Overnight Trip.

Once you have tags on your Trips you can filter Season Snapshot -> My Season and Reports -> Custom Report.

TIP: If you decide you want to track something new, you can create new tags and add them to Trip Reports at any time.

When you enter a start position and finish position for each race then the + / - is the difference. Average + / - is calculated using the sum of all the races divided by the number of races. Races where you enter a Rainout, DNF or DNQ are not counted.

The Average (AVG) trip calculations are based on completed trip report expenses and prize money, PLUS certain expense categories for money you may have spent during the week on race fuel, tires, parts, and season’s pit passes. Other additional expenses (like a trip to a trade show) and income from merchandise sales, sale of used parts, point fund money and sponsorship income are not included in these metrics.

Establishing an LLC may offer additional advantages, such as the possibility of writing off losses against other income, depending on your specific circumstances. To maximize the benefits of RaceTrips and ensure proper tax treatment, consult your financial or tax professional.

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Find more expenses! Here are some ideas:

• Visually scan the calendar to ensure that you have accounted for all the races you may have run. - Did you count trips and expenses for racing related seminars, trade shows, parts pickup.
• Inspect your trip reports to make sure that you have included all your expenses for pit passes, season passes, meals at the track and any money spent on crew members.
• Did you add in expenses for all your parts, supplies and repairs? Here are some expenses that you may be able to claim that are not tracked in RaceTrips
• Talk to your tax professional about depreciation on your race truck and race hauler
• Talk to your tax professional about using a home office deduction for your garage. To qualify - you must meet specific IRS criteria for exclusive use and principal place of business. If you meet these criteria, you can deduct a portion of your home expenses, such as utilities, mortgage interest, property taxes, or rent, based on the garage's square footage compared to your entire home. You might also qualify for the simplified home office deduction, which allows a fixed deduction based on square footage.Consult a tax professional to ensure you meet all requirements and maximize your deductions while staying compliant with tax laws.

Prize Winnings, sponsors, merchandise sales and selling used parts are added together as total income. Expenses are totaled and deducted against income to create a total reduction in your taxable income liability.

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When you are ready to do your taxes, go to Reports Icon -> Tax Summary and pick your tax year from the dropdown.

At the bottom of the page you will have buttons to email you the Tax summary for the year and a separate button to get your receipts. Your tax professional can help you fill out your Schedule C (Form 1040) or your LLC Business Income and Expense Tax Form.

If you still owe tax on your racing income, then read How do I reduce any leftover taxable income?