Manage your vehicles

Settings → Vehicles is where you add the cars, vans and motorcycles you use for business, and choose how each one
claims its costs.

Mileage or actual costs — pick one per vehicle

Every vehicle has a cost method:

- Mileage — claim a flat rate per business mile (55p for the first 10,000 miles across all your cars and vans
combined, then 25p; motorcycles are a flat 24p). You log trips on the Mileage page and BusyBee Hub works out the
amount. You can't also claim fuel, insurance, servicing or any other running cost for that vehicle — the flat
rate already covers them.
- Actual costs — claim the real running costs instead (fuel, insurance, repairs, servicing, road tax, hire).
Record them as expenses or bills in the usual way, naming the vehicle.

You can mix methods across vehicles — one van on mileage, another car on actual costs is fine. What you can't do is
claim both ways for the *same* vehicle, which is exactly what Settings → Vehicles stops.

The method locks once you use the vehicle

Once a vehicle has a trip, an expense or a bill line against it, its cost method is locked — you can't switch it
between mileage and actual costs. This follows HMRC's own rule: you can only change basis when you replace the
vehicle. If you trade a mileage van in for a new one and want to claim actual costs instead, add the replacement as a
new vehicle rather than trying to change the old one.

The combined 10,000 miles is per business, not per vehicle

The 55p rate applies to your **first 10,000 business miles in the tax year, added up across every car and van on
mileage** — not 10,000 miles each. Two vans doing 6,000 miles each share one 10,000-mile allowance: the first 10,000
miles between them are at 55p, the remaining 2,000 at 25p. Motorcycles have their own count, always at the flat 24p
rate regardless of mileage.

If you're both a sole trader and a landlord, your trade and your property business each get their own 10,000 miles —
a trip you assign to a property counts toward the property side, everything else counts toward the trade.

What still counts as a running cost either way

Parking, tolls, congestion charges, and travel that isn't about running the vehicle itself — trains, taxis, hotels —
stay claimable regardless of which method a vehicle uses. Only vehicle-specific running costs (fuel, insurance,
repairs, servicing, road tax, hire) are locked out for a mileage vehicle.

A bicycle isn't a simplified-expenses vehicle

HMRC's flat-rate mileage scheme only covers cars, vans and motorcycles — a bicycle was never eligible, so you can't
add one as a vehicle or log a new bicycle trip. If you already have older bicycle mileage records, they stay in your
history but aren't allowable in your figures.

Choosing a vehicle when you record a cost

Once you have at least one vehicle, a running-cost category (fuel, or vehicle running costs) asks you to name the
vehicle — pre-filled automatically if you only have one. This is what lets BusyBee Hub tell your actual-costs running
costs from your mileage vehicle's (disallowed) ones. An expense or bill line saved without a vehicle chosen shows up
under the Expenses list's Needs a vehicle filter so you can fix it later.

See also Refund an expense and Record a payment.