Trip Modes and Record Quality

Last updated: April 11, 2026

Choose the right trip precision, clean up messy history, and know what to fix before you trust totals, trackers, or exports.

What This Page Helps You Do

Use this page when you are adding trips manually, cleaning up old history, or trying to work out why dashboard totals, trackers, or exports look wrong downstream.

By the end of this page, you should know:

• when to use Exact Dates, Year, or Unknown
• how Transit and ongoing trips affect the record
• how duplicates, overlaps, and same-day crossings should be interpreted
• when manual entry is still better than Photo Import or CSV Import

When the Trip Record Looks Wrong

Most record problems come from a small number of choices or conflicts. Check these before you trust anything downstream:

• Wrong precision: a trip that should be Exact Dates may have been saved as Year or Unknown, which preserves history but does not support precise counts.
• ongoing trip: an ongoing trip keeps affecting totals because AtlasDays uses today as the effective end date until you close it.
• Transit marked incorrectly: Transit counts as 0 days. If you actually entered the country, the trip should not be marked as Transit.
• Duplicate Exact Dates trip: this repeats the same stay twice.
• Overlap conflict: this means different records share dates and need review.
• Same-day border crossing: this can be normal if you really left one country and entered another on the same date. Not every shared calendar date is bad data.
• Upstream quality matters: if the trip record is messy, dashboard totals, tracker math, and export output will look messy too.

Choose the Right Trip Mode

Exact Dates

Use Exact Dates when the trip needs to feed real day counts, tracker math, or an upcoming application or compliance check. This is the mode to use for current trips, recent trips, and anything you can verify from stamps, tickets, or records.

• Exact Dates trips are the only trips that generate precise day totals.
• They are also the only trips that can be ongoing or upcoming.
• AtlasDays counts both the arrival day and the departure day for Exact Dates trips.
• Use this mode for current trips, recent trips, same-day border crossings you can verify, and anything that affects live counts.

Year

Use Year when you know which year a trip belongs in, but you do not know the exact entry and exit dates. This is for reconstructed history, not for active counting.

• A Year trip can be a single year or a multi-year range.
• Use it for approximate past history, not planned travel.
• It preserves the visit without pretending you know the exact dates, and it can appear as visited history without contributing exact counted days.
• Use it when the year is defensible but the exact dates are not.

Unknown

Use Unknown when you know you visited a place, but you cannot confidently place the trip in a year yet. In AtlasDays this is stored as a trip with no date fields.

• Unknown trips appear in the No Date section of the timeline.
• They are useful for preserving history while you keep researching the dates.
• They do not generate exact day counts or precise tracker results.
• Use this only when even the year is still uncertain.

Use Transit Only for Non-Entry Travel

Mark a trip as Transit when you did not actually enter the country, such as an airside layover or similar pass-through travel. Transit entries stay in your record, but AtlasDays counts them as 0 days.

If the trip should count toward time spent in the country, do not mark it as Transit even if it was short.

How ongoing trips work

Only Exact Dates trips can be ongoing. To create one, save the trip with a start date and leave the end date empty.

• They appear in the Ongoing section of the timeline.
• AtlasDays uses today as the effective end date until you close the trip.
• If you need a fixed total, close the trip before you rely on downstream counts.
• If you need a planned future trip, use Exact Dates as well.

Duplicates, Overlaps, and Same-Day Crossings

Duplicates and overlaps are not the same problem, and a same-day crossing is not automatically either of them.

• Duplicate Exact Dates trip: the same stay was entered twice.
• Overlap: two different records share dates and create a conflict that should be reviewed.
• Same-day border crossing: if you departed one country and arrived in another on the same date, that shared date can be legitimate because AtlasDays counts both arrival and departure days for Exact Dates.
• Not every shared date is suspicious: review the chronology before assuming every overlap is bad data.
• Date conflicts are flagged in Timeline when Exact Dates, non-Transit trips overlap and should be resolved before you rely on the totals.
• Manual entry blocks exact duplicates when you try to save them.
• Photo Import and CSV Import skip duplicate candidates automatically instead of adding them twice, but imported history can still create overlaps or other cleanup work.

When the Record Is Trustworthy Enough

You can start trusting downstream math when the record is precise enough for the question you are asking.

• Trips that affect live counts, trackers, or paperwork are saved as Exact Dates.
• ongoing trips are closed if you need a fixed result.
• Transit is used only for non-entry travel.
• Duplicate Exact Dates trips and overlapping conflicts have been reviewed.
• Same-day crossings have been checked and left as-is only when they reflect real travel.
• Imported history has been reviewed instead of trusted blindly.

When to Use Import Instead of Manual Entry

Use manual entry when you are logging a small number of trips, cleaning up recent travel, or still deciding whether an entry should be Exact Dates, Year, or Unknown.

Use Photo Import when geotagged photo metadata is your best source for reconstructing old travel. Use CSV Import when you already have a spreadsheet, a large backlog of travel history, or rough source material you want to convert into a structured batch import.

• Decide or review the right precision for each trip first. Import does not resolve ambiguity for you.
• Imported duplicates or overlaps should still be reviewed before you trust totals.
• If the source material is messy, expect cleanup after import rather than a perfect record immediately.

How Record Quality Affects the Rest of the App

• Dashboard summaries reflect the trip record you have now, including Year, Unknown, Transit, and any open ongoing trip. Exact day totals still depend on Exact Dates.
• Trackers depend most on trips that are saved as Exact Dates. Year and Unknown preserve history but do not power exact tracker math.
• Export output reflects the same trip record and does not repair conflicts or bad precision choices for you.
• Auto-Detect Trips can help surface suggestions, but those suggestions still need review, edit, and confirmation before you rely on them as part of the record.