Guide

Your mileage tracker missed drives. Your Timeline may not have.

Updated October 2026 · 6 min read

You pay for a mileage tracker so you never have to think about it, and then you look at the year and there are holes: a week with nothing, a month before you installed it, a road trip it never saw. Trackers depend on the phone letting them run in the background, and a phone that saves battery, loses a permission or restarts can stop them without saying so.

Google Maps Timeline is a second recorder, running separately on the same phone. Where it was on, it usually caught the drives the tracker missed. This guide shows how to find the gaps and put them back.

Find the gaps

1. Export your Timeline from the phone. The export guide covers Android and iPhone.
2. Open it in Time-mile and pick the year. Every drive the phone recorded is a row with its date, start, end and distance.
3. Narrow the dates to the period your tracker is missing: the months before you installed it, or the week it went quiet.
4. Keep the work drives. Hide personal ones with the eye at the end of the row, and say what a place is by clicking it (home, a personal place, a business place): the answer covers every drive that stops there.

If Timeline was off too, or its auto-delete removed the months you need, there is nothing to recover from Google. Here is how to tell which applies.

Everlance: import the file

Everlance takes a file. In Time-mile, choose Export → For Everlance: you get a CSV in the columns its Import History asks for (Date, Miles, Purpose, Income Source, From, To, Notes), car trips only, distances in miles. In Everlance, open the Web Dashboard, go to Settings → Import History and upload it. The details, including how business and commute drives arrive.

MileIQ: add the drives by hand

MileIQ's help center describes adding a drive manually, from the web dashboard (+ Add a Drive, top right) or from the app (All Drives, then +), with the start and end locations, the date and time, and Personal or Business. It does not describe importing a file of drives, so each missing drive goes in one at a time.

That is fine for a few. For a whole missed month, it is quicker to keep the gap in the Time-mile log: export its PDF for those dates and file it beside MileIQ's report, so the two together cover the year without counting any drive twice.

Stride: log the miles manually

Stride's support pages describe a "Forgot to track a drive? Log miles manually" option, with a choice between a single trip and multiple trips for miles driven before you started using the app. Stride asks you to add only mileage you can document. The Time-mile log for those dates, with each drive's date, route and distance, is that documentation: keep its PDF with your records.

Do not count a drive twice

Timeline and your tracker recorded the same car. Where both have a drive, keep the tracker's. Only add what falls inside the gap, and if you keep two reports for one year, make sure their date ranges do not overlap. Menu names in these apps change from one version to the next, so check yours before you rely on the steps above.

Frequently asked questions

Why did my mileage tracker miss some drives?

Automatic trackers run in the background and rely on location access. Battery saving, a permission that was turned off, an update or a restart can stop them without warning, and a tracker cannot record anything from before you installed it.

Can I recover drives my mileage tracker missed?

Often, if Google Maps Timeline was on during the gap. It records drives on its own, separately from your tracker. Export it, narrow the dates to the gap in Time-mile, and you have the missing drives with date, route and distance.

Can I import missed drives into MileIQ?

MileIQ lets you add a drive manually, from the web dashboard or the app, with its start and end locations, date and time. Its help center does not describe a file import, so for a long gap it is quicker to keep the Time-mile log for those dates beside the MileIQ report.

How do I add missed trips to Everlance?

In Time-mile, choose Export, then For Everlance. The CSV matches Everlance's Import History: in the Everlance Web Dashboard, go to Settings, then Import History, and upload it.

Will I count drives twice if I combine both?

Only if the date ranges overlap. Add from Timeline only what falls inside the gap your tracker missed, and keep the tracker's record wherever it has one.