Release Notes April 2026

We're excited to announce a significant compliance update to Access Expense that transforms how electric vehicle mileage claims are handled for company vehicles.

This release delivers full support for HMRC's dual EV charging rates for company vehicles, enabling employees to accurately declare and claim reimbursement for both home and public charging miles within a single mileage claim — across both the web application and mobile app.

HMRC introduced separate advisory rates for company electric vehicles depending on where the vehicle is charged — £0.08 per mile for home charging and £0.14 per mile for public charging. The previous single-rate architecture in Access Expense could not differentiate between these two charging types, leaving customers unable to comply with HMRC's requirements without resorting to manual workarounds.

This release moves from a temporary workaround to a fully compliant implementation, reducing the compliance risk and administrative burden previously placed on both administrators and employees.

· HMRC Compliance: Employees can now accurately claim reimbursement for mixed charging scenarios (e.g. 100 miles home @ 8p + 80 miles public @ 14p) in a single claim line, in line with HMRC's post-September 2025 dual rate requirements.

· Simplified Claim Entry: A new EV charging type selector guides users to declare their home and public charging miles separately, eliminating the need for manual calculations and reducing error rates.

· Administrator Control: Expense Administrators can now designate mileage classes as Electric Vehicle (Dual Rates), with the system automatically applying the correct rate structure and locking the VATable Rate at £0.00 in line with HMRC guidance.

· Accurate VAT Treatment: The VATable Rate for all HMRC Company Car: Fully Electric mileage rates is now fixed at £0.00, correctly reflecting that VAT is not reclaimable on electricity used to charge company electric vehicles.

· Clean Audit Trail: Dual-rate mileage splits are persisted against claims and retained when claims are duplicated, providing full visibility for approvers and a verifiable audit trail for regulatory purposes.

· Feature Parity: Both the web application and mobile app support dual-rate EV mileage entry, ensuring a consistent experience regardless of how employees submit their claims.

For Expense Administrators — Configuring Custom EV Mileage Classes:

If your organisation uses custom mileage classes for company electric vehicles, administrators can now configure them to support dual EV rates:

1. When creating or editing a custom mileage class, administrators can tick the new Electric Vehicle (Dual Rates) checkbox to designate the class as applicable to company electric vehicles.

2. Once enabled, the system will present separate rate fields for EV Home Charging and EV Public Charging, allowing the correct pence-per-mile rates to be configured against each charging type.

3. The VATable Rate field is automatically greyed out and fixed at £0.00 for any custom mileage class with Electric Vehicle (Dual Rates) selected, preventing incorrect VAT from being entered.

If your organisation uses the HMRC Company Car: Fully Electric mileage class, no administrator action is required. Access has automatically updated this class to support dual rates:

1. The HMRC Company Car: Fully Electric class now supports both EV Home Charging (£0.08/mile) and EV Public Charging (£0.14/mile) rate types, in line with HMRC's current advisory fuel rates.

2. The VATable Rate is locked at £0.00 across all existing and future rate records for this class, correctly reflecting that VAT is not reclaimable on electricity used to charge company electric vehicles.

3. As with all HMRC rates, these rates are managed and updated automatically by Access on a quarterly basis — no manual configuration is needed.

If your organisation uses both custom mileage classes and HMRC rates for electric vehicles, both of the above apply independently.

For Employees — Submitting EV Mileage Claims (Web & Mobile):

1. When entering a mileage claim against an EV-enabled mileage class, employees will see a new EV Charging Type drop-down, allowing them to select Home Charging, Public Charging, or Mixed.

2. If Mixed is selected, employees can enter the number of miles attributed to each charging type. The system will calculate the correct reimbursement for each rate and combine them into a single claim line.

3. Both zero and non-zero mile entries are accepted at either rate, providing flexibility for journeys where all miles were on a single charging type.

The dual-rate breakdown is retained if a claim is duplicated, saving employees from re-entering data for recurring journeys. If an employee deletes a claim or changes the vehicle to a non-EV type, the EV split records are automatically removed to keep claim data accurate.

This update will be automatically rolled out on the 22nd of April at approximately 8pm.