For owners of small trucking companies (those with one to 20 trucks in their fleet) selecting essential expense management software can be intimidating, confusing and, above all, expensive. Such software can often cost thousands of dollars—a major hit to the bottom line of a small fleet operator.

So when my dad and I launched TruckingOffice, we had the small operator in mind. Instead of selling them expensive software for $5,000 and saying “good luck,” we offer affordable software that wraps around all daily functions of a trucking business. If a trucker has a load in Texas to Ohio and then another load from Ohio to Texas, he needs to track all these dispatches. They’re all recorded in our system.

The entire panoply required to run a business is contained in our expense management software, but gives users the flexibility of paying for it monthly. Owners with just 1 or 2 trucks start at just $20 a month. More sophisticated software is designed for larger fleet operators, but is still reasonably priced; owners with three to seven trucks can log on for a mere $45 a month, while those with eight or more trucks pay just $75. It beats paying thousands of dollars for expensive software that oftentimes doesn’t even suit your specific needs.

The software also accommodates required data specific to your trucking business, related to shippers, corporate clients, invoices, customers, and the tracking of miles with the standard PC Miler system. We offer a full range of road-originating tasks, such as the dispatching of loads, creation of invoices, tracking of expenses, and more. But TruckingOffice software also allows for accounting of regular office expenses such as telephone and Internet costs.

I’m still a trucker, and my dad’s an industry veteran too, and our collective experience guided is in developing our trucker-friendly expense management software. Even the vernacular of the software mirrors the type of lexicon or “trucker lingo” encountered in a trucker’s daily life, so you don’t have to take an accounting course to keep track.

Turned off by the cost of other expense management software on the market, many trucking firms use spreadsheets, which is fine, but after a while you might have ten different spreadsheets going, and it gets really complicated really fast. Our software is streamlined, and is designed to help people keep track with minimal effort.

Aside from its tailor-made templates for the trucking industry, its flexibility offers further appeal. Customers pay monthly for the software without having to commit to long-term contracts. Instead, the software is automatically renewed month to month, with the option of cancelling at any time.

Still, the cost of the product is its biggest appeal; most of the software out there is very expensive—$5,000 to $10,000. You could buy another truck with that kind of money! So would you rather spend that money on expensive software or expand your fleet? Even without the benefit of expense management software for calculation, the answer to that rhetorical question is as clear as the open road.