What software do you trust to run your trucking business? It’s a difficult choice to determine what we need. There are options out there – but we need a trucking accounting software to manage our trucking business.
How Does Trucking Accounting Software Work?
Trucking is like no other industry. The world of transportation has its own rules, taxes, requirements, and standards that don’t apply to anyone else.
Trucking accounting software is built around the needs of a trucking business or owner-operator.
- Other businesses might have to track mileage for tax deductions – we track to pay more taxes.
- Some businesses have to track inventory – we haul inventory.
- Businesses get paid for their product – we get paid per mile.
So why are we trying to use the accounting software that everyone else uses?
Trucking accounting software manages all of the usual accounting items: expenses, invoices, paying employees – but it goes further to cover the details that QuickBooks and others never touch:
- Miles per state
- Miles per trip
- Deadhead miles
- Expenses per trip
- Revenue per trip
- Fuel taxes paid
Why don’t non trucking accounting software programs track those things? They don’t need to. Most of the world doesn’t care about how many miles per state were driven. We have to.
How do trucking accounting software packages work? By keeping track of everything: miles, fuel, invoices, maintenance, expenses – you name it. The right trucking accounting software doesn’t just do accounting.
Do you need trucking accounting software?
We need a software solution that’s going to manage everything:
- Invoice and accounts payable
- Maintenance records and scheduling
- Load dispatch, routing and tracking
as well as all the items we listed above. Maybe they could all be managed by hand, or using free software. Do we really need more?
Google Drive
Using Google’s free software platform, we could build programs that will track everything for us.
Can Google track your miles per state – without you keeping a log by hand?
Can Google tell you when you need an oil change based on the miles you’ve driven since your last oil change? (And do you really want Google to know that?)
Can you trust Google to keep those products alive and free? Google has closed down over 60 applications – some of them over 10 years old. Will you have enough notice to save your work – and where will you put it?
QuickBooks*
We don’t want to take a swing at the number one accounting program in the world. QuickBooks can and does a lot of work for accountants. It was first designed to be a financial program for small businesses. Businesses struggled for years to make Quicken produce the accounting features they needed. There’s no doubt that QuickBooks is king.
So why don’t they have the features we need? Because they’re accounting – not trucking accounting software. It’s like asking a chicken to produce bacon or the Browns to get their act together this year. It might happen… but it’s not likely.
Creating a trucking application for QuickBooks will take a lot of work. There are simply too many changes which would have to be made for too little market share in the accounting world.
Trucking Apps
If you head over to Google Play Store or Apple App Store, you’re going to find a lot of apps that say they’re “trucking apps.”
Out of professional curiosity, we check out the competition every once in a while. Several of the apps we saw in January – gone. Several new ELD apps – but we don’t know if they’re approved by the FMCSA. Some of the old ELD apps are gone. And those so-called “free apps” aren’t free – you have to buy a license or pay a monthly fee.
TruckingOffice Trucking Management
Knowing your numbers is the key to managing your trucking operation. Whether you’re running a fleet of a dozen or a hundred, or an owner-operator with a single rig – you have to know what makes you money and what costs you money. QuickBooks, Google Sheets, or some random trucker app aren’t going to tell you what you need to know. Trucking accounting software – TruckingOffice – will.
Management isn’t just about making sure you don’t spend too much. It’s also about knowing when to take a load even if it’s dirt cheap.
It’s about tracking your maintenance to avoid the on-the-road emergency.
It’s about getting your IFTA filed on time without worrying about using out-of-date tax rates or spending a day trying to recreate lost records to guess what you drove, where you drove it, and when you bought fuel.
When you’re ready to be a manager of your trucking business – we’ve got the software you need. And we’ll let you try it for free – every part of it! You’ll have free access to it all to discover all the benefits of having a trucking accounting software that does much more.
*QuickBooks
*If you’re using an accountant who wants to use QuickBooks, we just want to let you know that we do have an option to export data to QuickBooks – just the way your accountant wants it.
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