The Client

A Parish Priest

A busy vicar whose ministry required frequent, irregular travel between multiple parish locations, meetings, and pastoral visits, creating a complex trail of expense reporting.

...& He will make your paths straight

The Challenge: Tedious and Error-Prone Mileage

The client's main difficulty was accurately and efficiently tracking his vehicle mileage:

• Time Sink: Manually calculating and entering mileage for multiple trips a day was time-consuming and often deferred, leading to last-minute stress before submitting them at the end of each month.

• Compliance Risk: Reliance on unreliable manual logs or best-guess estimates increased the risk of errors during expense reimbursement.

• Need for Simplicity: The client needed a solution that was non-technical and integrated directly into his existing, familiar digital systems (in this case Google Drive and Sheets.

The Geek in a Cape Solution: Custom Scripting for Automation

We solved this problem by creating a sophisticated, yet user-friendly, automated system built entirely within Google Sheets:

1. Custom Mileage Lookup: We wrote a Google Script and custom formulas to create a powerful engine that automatically queried the distance between a trip's start and end point simply by entering the addresses, looking up common locations such as churches and his Rectory from a custom list

2. Automated Population: The calculated mileage was automatically populated into the main expense spreadsheet, eliminating manual entry and calculation errors.

3. Complete Expense Log: The system was designed to manage all other expenses alongside the automated mileage, creating a single, compliant record for expense returns from both the benefice and the diocese.

4. Product Development: The success of this customised solution became the blueprint for our newly released and publicly available Travel Expenses Add-on, which added features like a handy Google Maps sidebar for easier navigation, and automated workflows for monthly refreshes.

The Result: Compliance and Efficiency Achieved

• Instant Accuracy: The client now has 100% accurate, automatically calculated mileage for every trip, minimising audit risk.

• Time Saved: Tracking expenses was reduced from a stressful, multi-hour monthly chore to a quick, real-time entry.

• Scalable Solution: The initial custom script led directly to a published product, validating our ability to turn unique client problems into robust, widely applicable solutions.