Patent ID: 7908191

Claim:
A portable computing device associated with a user for tracking mileage in a motor vehicle, comprising: a processor; a memory; a global positioning satellite (GPS) module configured to determine a physical location of the portable computing device; a tracking application stored in the memory of the portable computing device and configured to interact with the GPS module, wherein the tracking application, when executed by the processor, is configured to: automatically activate based on a movement of the portable computing device; determine whether a threshold speed is reached by the portable computing device; record a number of miles traveled to a business appointment by the portable computing device in the motor vehicle when the threshold speed is reached to obtain tracking data, wherein the tracking application determines a plurality of physical locations of the user using the GPS module; and send the tracking data to a second computing device, wherein the second computing device is configured to: obtain information associated with the business appointment of the user from an electronic organizer application configured to execute in the second computing device, compute a number of future potential miles associated with traveling to the appointment in the motor vehicle, once computed, store the number of future potential miles as stored potential miles, receive the tracking data from the portable computing device, and display the tracking data and the stored potential miles for reconciliation by the user to obtain reconciled data, receive reconciled data from the user, wherein the reconciled data comprises data the user identifies as actual business related mileage data using the tracking data and the stored potential miles, and configure the reconciled data to be downloaded into a tax preparation software.