Motivation to Organize Your Trucking Business

This month in the TruckingOffice blog, we’ve been focusing on motivation. Ultimately, what motivates anyone is recognizing the benefits we get from a course of action. In that case, let’s talk about the motivation to organize your trucking business by looking at the benefits.

Benefit 1: Reduce your stress

If The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help is true, then a letter with the return address that says “Internal Revenue Service” is just as terrifying.

When we are expected to provide documentation for taxes or any other reason, when the records aren’t organized, that causes stress. A lot of stress. But getting organized is stressful too. Where do you start?

Start with today. What you buy, you enter into your system. We recommend TruckingOffice PRO, of course. Any expenses that are deductible for your trucking business, make sure that you take the few minutes necessary to enter that information now.

One of the justifications we use when we put off tasks like entering expenses into trucking software is “I don’t have time right now.”

TIme and Organization

Time is an issue when you’re a trucker. We may be paid by the mile, but we want to maximize how many miles we drive per hour. So do this quick test to determine if putting off the task is truly saving you time: Time yourself. The next time you have a single expense to put into your TruckingOffice PRO trucking software, start a stopwatch app on your smartphone and see how long it actually takes to complete the job. You may be surprised at how quickly you can get it done.

I know what you’re going to say:

I can do more of them together than one by one.

True. But… It’s awfully easy to procrastinate when you choose to let receipts pile up. Making a habit of entering a record immediately means you don’t have to try to remember if you did it. And you don’t have to worry if you lose that piece of paper or can’t remember if what you’re looking for is a text message or an email. That’s really stressful. So give yourself a break and take the 30 or so seconds you need to enter your expenses right away.

Motivation to organize your trucking business: you’ll have a lot less stress in your life.

Benefit 2: Saving Time

As a graduate of the Shoebox School of Organization, I know how hard it is to find that one record when I need it. I used to take my shoebox to my accountant and handed it over to her. Do you know what happened?

I paid a lot for my accounting to be done. She had to take the time to organize my little pieces of paper. I should have given her more receipts, but I lost so many, which decreased the amount of money I could have claimed as deductions. So I was out more money!

Some things are easier than others to organize. Invoices have numbers. You can organize those pretty quickly. Maintenance records are a little more complicated.

How do you organize your maintenance records?

If there’s one thing that needs multiple ways to be organized, it’s truck and equipment maintenance.

Do you need the information by date or by system or by which piece of equipment? Do you need it based on how you paid or when you paid or who you paid?

That’s what databases are for. Databases exist to store data and give it back on demand with a search. That’s a huge saving in time when you can’t remember when or where you got your tires. You don’t have to go through calendars or shoeboxes to find the answer.

TruckingOffice PRO’s database system for tracking your maintenance records also will help you schedule your upcoming maintenance tasks. That way you can schedule with your preferred technicians. Or if you do it yourself, you’ll know when it’s time – even if the maintenance is based on miles, not time – to take care of it.

Motivation to organize your trucking business: you’ll save time – and your equipment – by keeping accurate records and by scheduling upcoming maintenance tasks.

TruckingOffice: The Key to Organizing Your Trucking Business

When your trucking business needs to be organized, you can’t do better than using TruckingOffice PRO. Our versatile and easy-to-use software will save you time and money, and reduce your stress at a price you can afford. Combined with our ELD, the TruckingOffice trucking software system, you can be confident that your