Do you know how much it costs you to travel to a shoot? It may surprise you if you’ve never looked into it before. Like any other expense, it’s important to know your travel costs so you can accurately charge for your services and any additional mileage fees.

When calculating travel costs, you should take into account how much you want to be paid for your drive time as well as expenses incurred while driving your vehicle. I like to use the standard mileage rate provided by the IRS to estimate my vehicle mileage expenses. This is not a perfect calculation, but it’s an easy number to estimate auto insurance, gas prices, maintenance costs, depreciation, and other costs that go into operating a vehicle.

This mileage fee calculator can also help you determine what to charge for driving outside your normal service area. If you normally allow up to 30 miles or 30 minutes of driving, just subtract that number from the distance and drive time fields. For example, an agents needs a listing shot 50 miles away with a 45 minute drive time. If you normally allow up to 30 miles or 30 minutes of driving, you would input 20 miles (50-30) and 15 minutes (45-30) in those fields to find out what you need to charge the agent.

Hope this helps!