What is the difference between the Mileage report and the Mileage By State report?
There are three major differences between these two reports:
State Mileage
The first and clearest difference is how each report delivers the data.
- Mileage simply reports total mileage for the period requested.
- Mileage By State will divide the total mileage up between state.
This can be very useful for interstate travel and to provide accurate mileage for IFTA reporting.
Data Availability
Mileage and Mileage By State use different methods to calculate mileage for a report.
- Mileage will fully recalculate distance between individual GPS data points for each request.
- Mileage By State summarizes the mileage on a larger scale.
What this means is that Mileage By State will typically return results much faster than Mileage, and is more useful for looking at mileage over a period of weeks or months. Mileage is better for getting total mileage over a period of days; running Mileage for several weeks at a time may take much longer to process.
When a GPS unit is reporting accurately, Mileage and Mileage By State will report the same total mileage for a given period of time. There is no difference in data.
Error Correction
When a GPS unit is not reporting accurately, or an asset is moved without the engine running (e.g., being towed), Mileage and Mileage By State will show different totals.
- Mileage will add the distance between all points, including GPS points that are more than 1 hour apart.
- Mileage By State will add the distance between all points, but will discard distances between GPS points more than 1 hour apart.
Because of this, if there is a discrepancy Mileage By State should be showing less total distance than Mileage.
Example:
The path below shows a vehicle that appears to have stopped in one spot, then was moved to another spot some distance away without the engine running (or GPS unit powered). When the GPS began recording engine signal again, it had been >1 hour since the last recorded GPS point. In such a case, the Path report will show a straight line cutting across the map.
Mileage: All distance colored blue is recorded, including the straight line/"as the crow flies" distance.
Mileage By State: Only the distance colored blue is recorded. The straight line distance is ignored.