Life on the Road – Trucking News Blog

If you’re reading this, you obviously have a computer and it’s probably in the truck. One of the essential programs that should be on it is something that tracks your expenses.

I could sit here and review a dozen programs, mainly because I either bought them or I tried the free download version of a program. My review wouldn’t mean anything to you. I went through so many that weren’t “just right” for me. Even though you might be also be an owner / operator, you may not do your own fuel taxes and a few programs require you to fill in information you may not need in your situation, thus – Wasting your time. Even so, I did put a short list of programs to get you started at the end of this post.

The most important feature of any program is that YOU USE IT! As long as you are consistently using something to track your income, expenses and mileage. If you want a program that does fuel taxes, maintenance records and twelve other features, great. As long as you use it.

My Solution for Me

Personally, because every company I’ve been with has done things differently, I ended up using a spreadsheet that has evolved over several years. All of these programs require a lot of data entry, then at tax time I would have to enter the same information in my tax program. There are programs that will transfer your information into a tax program, but they’re not specifically for trucks and since I’ve been audited three times, I go over every inch of my return. There was a lot of extra work going on, so I streamlined everything. But I can still tell you how much I make and spend per mile, loaded mile, empty mile, total mile, per day, per month, per year, with percentages and have a running estimate for year end. I found something that works for me.

Your task: Find something that works for you.

• Quicken, Quickbooks, MS Money, etc… Programs like these are good for keeping track of expenses and with a little work, they can reliably transfer into a tax program. But there’s no way to keep track of expenses per mile.
• OOIDA Cost per mile spreadsheet – It’s a good start and will give you your cost per mile, which is good, but that’s it’s only purpose.
• Truckers Helper – A lot of features with a free demo to download.
• Hammerlane – Another full service program with several demos available.
• Drivers Daily Log – This is a great program. Not only for your logbook but keeping track of expenses. Since I’m already updating my log, updating an expense is in the same program on the same screen. There are so many features to this program, it’s a little overwhelming at first, but worth the learning curve especially from the great support in the user forum. It does everything – logs, fuel, expenses, state mileage, IFTA, maintenance, everything.
• Unpaid Endorsement – Never get confused by Hours of Service again, even when they change (they keep the program very current)! Especially with all the changes in Canada recently. Several large and small fleets allow drivers to email their logs back to corporate, others have print modules to print the exact replica of the companies logbook. DOT uses this in many states to audit your hand written logbook. In case you didn’t notice I use and love this program, I don’t use every single feature, I only use what I need. You should at least check out the free trial.
• The Really Big List - There are programs that cost a lot and they do a lot and there are others that only keep track of expenses or try and mesh routing and expenses. All that matters is at the end of the year you and or your accountant knows what’s going on. But why wait till the end of the year for any surprises. All businesses pay taxes year round. Don’t short change yourself by not knowing what your business is doing.

All of these programs have great features, but none of these programs will input the data from your receipt or your odometer automatically, YOU’VE GOT TO USE THEM to get the benefit from these programs.

If you have more than one truck or a lot of trucks, you’ve already got this part down pat or at least you should. There are tons of programs for small and large fleets that track everything from maintenance to IFTA reports. I haven’t seen any of the high end programs, but I’m pretty sure you’ve got to have someone enter the data into those too.

Tell me what you use! Especially fleets! What have you used and dumped? What works best for you?