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Expenses and mileage
Track deductible expenses and mileage throughout the tax year.
Note
Expense categories
Sessional supports 17 expense categories shaped to what locum healthcare professionals actually claim. The picker surfaces a Suggested for you group based on your profession, so common items such as your regulator, indemnity cover, CPD, and mileage are close to hand.
Travel
- Mileage: claim at HMRC rates. You cannot combine mileage with fuel for the same journey.
- Fuel: actual petrol, diesel, or charging cost when claiming actual costs instead of mileage.
- Travel: train, bus, taxi, parking, tolls, and congestion charge.
- Accommodation and subsistence: overnight stays when working away, plus reasonable meal costs.
Regulatory and professional
- Professional body fees: your regulator and recognised bodies.
- Indemnity insurance: MDU, MPS, MDDUS, or equivalent.
- CPD and revalidation: ongoing learning, appraisal providers, e-learning, and portfolio tools.
- Training and courses: one-off courses, conferences, and exam fees for your existing role.
Running costs
- Equipment: stethoscope, diagnostic tools, and clinical supplies.
- Accountancy and legal: accountant fees, bookkeeping software, and legal advice on self-employment.
- Business insurance: public liability, contents, and general business cover.
- Subscriptions: BMJ, BNF, UpToDate, specialty journals, and work-related software.
- IT and communications: phone, broadband, laptop, and software, claimed by work-use proportion.
- Uniform and PPE: scrubs, PPE, and laundering. Standard clothes do not qualify even if worn at work.
- Marketing and advertising: website costs, business cards, and adverts promoting your locum work.
- Other: anything else legitimate, with a clear description.
Use of home as office
HMRC simplified expenses for the self-employed can use £10, £18, or £26 per month, tiered by hours worked from home that month, with a minimum of 25 hours. The £6 a week flat rate is employee-only relief and does not apply to self-employed locums.
Important
What mileage rate can a locum claim?
If you claim mileage instead of actual fuel costs, Sessional uses the current HMRC approved mileage allowance payments.
The 20p bicycle rate is an employee approved mileage allowance payment. HMRC's simplified expenses for the self-employed cover cars, goods vehicles and motorcycles only, so a sole trader claiming for a bicycle deducts the actual cost instead. Sessional records the 20p figure if you use it; check it with your accountant.
Sessional tracks year-to-date mileage. When you cross the 10,000-mile threshold for car or van travel, the rate switches from 55p to 25p for all subsequent miles in that tax year.
You do not work the amount out yourself. Choose the vehicle, enter the miles and the journey date, and Sessional calculates the amount at the HMRC rate. Because the threshold depends on the order of your journeys, adding, editing or deleting a car or van journey recalculates the other car and van journeys in the same tax year that are not on an invoice, so the amounts always add up to the mileage total. Three things are left alone: a journey already billed on an invoice keeps its amount (its miles still count towards the 10,000), an amount you typed by hand before the calculation existed is never rewritten, and motorcycle and bicycle journeys are paid at their own flat rate and do not use up the car and van allowance.
The first-10,000 rate is keyed to the date of the journey. Expenses dated before 6 April 2026 stay at the old 45p rate, so a claim you have already filed is never restated.
Tip
Adding an expense
Click Add expense at the top of the expenses page and fill in the record.
Link an expense to a session
The expense form has an optional Link to session dropdown listing your last 90 days of shifts. Pick one and the expense is tied to that specific session.
HMRC mileage rates apply to journeys made for work. Linking the trip to the shift makes the audit trail concrete.
The Earnings page can show per-session margin when linked expenses exist.
If an organisation contests a paid claim or short-pays, linked expenses give you receipts with context.
For example, a £350 GP session with £42 of travel and parking is really £308 before tax. That number matters when deciding whether the rate is worth it next time.
Linking is optional. Overheads such as regulator fees, indemnity, subscriptions, and courses should not be linked because they are not session-specific. Travel and consumables usually should be.
Billing an expense to an organisation
When you log an expense, say who pays for it. Choose Me for a cost of your own work. Choose The organisation when you will bill it on your invoice, such as mileage or parking an organisation has agreed to cover.
When you create an invoice for that session, the expense is listed under Expenses to bill and already ticked. Each ticked expense goes on the invoice as its own line with its date. Mileage is billed at the rate per mile you set on the invoice, which can differ from the HMRC rate.
Billing an expense does not remove it from your costs. HMRC treats what the organisation pays you as income, which your invoice already records, and the cost stays allowable. Parking billed at cost nets to nothing. Mileage billed above the HMRC rate leaves you a small profit. The Expenses page shows what is marked to bill and what has been billed back, so you can see the net position.
Once an expense is on an invoice its amount, miles, date, category and who pays are fixed, because the invoice has gone out with them. Void the invoice to release the expense. For the invoice side of this, see Invoicing.
Receipt uploads
There are two doors, and they do different jobs. Add receipts, at the top of the Expenses page and on its Receipts tab, has the receipt read for you. Attach, in the receipt column of an expense you have already typed, files the document against it and reads nothing.
Add receipts takes an upload first: choose a PDF, a photo or an iPhone HEIC file, up to 5 MB each, and within the hour the vendor, date, amount and category are proposed for you to check. Forwarding a receipt by email does exactly the same thing and lives on the same page, second, under Or forward by email. Nothing becomes an expense until you confirm it. See Receipts for the detail.
Attach accepts JPEG, PNG, WebP, PDF and the HEIC photos an iPhone takes, with a maximum file size of 5 MB per receipt. Through either door, an image of more than 50 megapixels is refused: save a smaller copy or take the photo again. Once a receipt is attached, click Receipt to view or download it. Receipts are stored securely and are only accessible to you. You can replace a receipt by uploading a new file to the same expense.
Searching and filtering
Text search
Search by description to find a specific expense.
Category filter
Show one category at a time, such as Training.
Date range
Use From and To dates for a tax year or quarter.
Filters can be combined. For example, you can view all insurance expenses from the 2026/27 tax year, or switch to 2025/26 to audit the year just closed.
CSV export
Click Export CSV to download a spreadsheet of your expenses for the current filter selection: date range, category and search. One file holds up to 500 rows and says so when it has been cut short, so export a shorter period at a time if you have more.
Use it for your accountant, bookkeeping software, or an offline backup of your records.
How expenses connect to tax planning
The tax planner works from the expense rate and the annual expenses figure you set on your tax profile, and subtracts them from gross earnings to estimate taxable profit. Your expense records here are the evidence for that figure: check the category totals and update the tax profile when they move.
Expenses tracking is available on the Plus plan and above. See Sessional plans and pricing for what Plus includes and the 14-day trial.