Support

Email hello@flatmile.com. A human reads and answers that mailbox — there is no chatbot.

If something went wrong with a specific drive, these four things save a round trip: your iPhone model, your iOS version, the FlatMile version from Settings → About, and roughly when the drive happened.

FlatMile isn’t recording my drives

Start by checking permissions and capture status. Open FlatMile and read the card at the top of the main screen — it names the exact problem and offers the fix as a button.

• “FlatMile can only see drives while it’s open.” Location is set to While Using. Tap Allow Always. iOS only records drives in the background with Always permission.
• “Location is off, so no drives can be recorded.” Tap Open Settings and turn location on for FlatMile.
• “Precise Location is off, so distances are estimates.” Tap Turn on Precise. Without it iOS gives FlatMile a coarse position and the distance estimate can be less accurate.
• “Automatic capture is off.” Automatic capture does not depend on a subscription; it needs location access. Tap the card’s button to fix it. You can still add drives by hand.
• “Capture is paused.” Tap Resume capture. Your existing drives are untouched.

Low Power Mode also limits what iOS will let any app do in the background. Check your log after drives made in Low Power Mode.

A drive is missing

If FlatMile noticed movement it could not fully record, the main screen offers it back: “Were you driving around 4:15 pm? Add it in one tap.” Tap Add that drive.

Otherwise add it yourself — nothing about a hand-added drive is second class, and it appears in reports like any other. Adding drives by hand does not require a subscription.

The distance looks wrong

Turn on Precise Location first, since that is the usual cause. Tunnels, underground car parks and long stretches without signal also cost accuracy; FlatMile flags a drive when location was limited rather than quietly reporting a number it does not trust. You can edit the distance on any drive that isn’t locked.

My car isn’t recognised

Your car is recognised on its first drive, so a new install will not know it yet. Pairing your car’s Bluetooth is how FlatMile tells which vehicle a drive belongs to — it is not what starts the recording. Drives are still captured in a car with no Bluetooth at all; they simply are not attributed to a vehicle.

A drive does not appear on my Lock Screen

Open Settings → Lock Screen and notifications and make sure Show drives on the Lock Screen is on. This controls both Live Activities that begin while FlatMile is open and the server-assisted start used when an automatically detected drive begins while the app is not on screen. Turning it off does not stop drive capture. The Lock Screen card is part of the subscription; without one, drives are still logged, just without the card.

A missing Lock Screen card does not mean the drive was lost. Check the main log first: capture, distance and saving happen on your iPhone and do not wait for the card. If the drive is present there, include that fact when you email support.

Reports

Choose the tax year in Reports. A FlatMile report is a plain mileage record. It states its own basis: the distances, the rate that applied to each period, and where that rate came from. It is not addressed to any revenue service, and FlatMile is not tax advice — what you do with the record is between you, your accountant and your own authority.

• CSV is available whether or not you subscribe.
• PDF is part of the subscription.
• The rate is yours to choose: the published figure for the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada or the Netherlands, shown with its source and the date that source was verified; your own or your employer’s rate; or no rate at all, leaving distances and the business or personal split with no monetary section.

Rates apply by the date of the trip, so changing one never rewrites last year’s numbers.

Subscriptions, billing and refunds

FlatMile is an annual subscription bought through Apple. Apple takes the payment, sends the receipts and handles refunds — we cannot charge or refund your card directly.

• New iPhone, or reinstalled the app? Settings → Restore purchases. There is no FlatMile account to sign into, so this is how your subscription follows you.
• Cancel or change it in your Apple Account settings on the iPhone. Cancelling stops the renewal; you keep the subscription until the period you paid for ends.
• Ask for a refund at reportaproblem.apple.com.

If a subscription lapses, your drives stay on the phone, and every drive you could already see stays open. Automatic logging, adding drives by hand and CSV export keep working.

Drives logged without a subscription are kept but locked: you see the day, time, destination and duration, while the distance, route, starting place, value and business or personal classification stay locked, and they are left out of reports and exports. Subscribing unlocks every one of them at once, and they stay unlocked.

Getting your data out

Settings → Export everything gives you every drive that isn’t locked as a spreadsheet. It is enabled in every state, subscribed or not. CSV import lets you preview a file before saving. Keep the original export, check dates and units, and reconcile the imported totals. Export formats vary between apps; compatibility with every competitor file is not guaranteed. Follow the preserve-first switching guide when moving from MileIQ.

Backing up your records

Turn on Settings → iCloud Drive backup to keep a copy in your own iCloud Drive. Check the latest successful backup before deleting the app or changing iPhone. You can restore an available backup in FlatMile; this is backup and restore, not live sync between devices. You can also export CSV and keep it somewhere you control.

Deleting your data

There is no FlatMile account, and your drives live on your iPhone rather than on our servers. Deleting the app removes its local history. An existing iCloud Drive backup or an export you saved separately can preserve your records. We cannot read your iCloud Drive, delete those files for you, or recover records you did not back up or export.

If you previously joined the website waitlist, that record is separate — one message to hello@flatmile.com removes it. See Privacy.

Privacy choices

On a new install, usage analytics starts on for US, Canadian and UK App Store accounts and stays off until you accept elsewhere. Existing choices are kept. Turn it on or off under Settings → Privacy → Share usage analytics. Purchases and subscription access still work when analytics is off. Show drives on the Lock Screen is a separate choice under Settings → Lock Screen and notifications; turning it off stops future relay requests without disabling capture. See Privacy for the services involved.

Reporting a bug

Send what you saw and what you expected instead, with the four details at the top of this page. Capture bugs are the ones worth reporting hardest: a drive FlatMile missed is a real defect, not something you did wrong.

See also Terms of Use and Privacy.