Signs that Your IFTA Is Taking Too Long

How long does it take you do to your IFTA?

Here are a few signs that indicate that maybe it’s taking too long.

1.  Watch for Stopped Vehicles

Are you off the road instead of driving?  Some drivers say it will take them a good 7 or 8 hours to do the IFTA by hand.  That’s a lot of miles that could billed.  What may be worse is if you’re doing your IFTA during your precious time at home with your family.  You didn’t decide to be an accountant – you decided to be a trucker.  It’s not only your time on the road, it’s the time it’s taking you away from the people you love and the things you want to do.

Is your IFTA costing you money?  Then your IFTA is taking far too long for you to finish.

2.  Detour ahead  

Are you already worried about your IFTA – a month before you can even start working on it?  You’ve still got hundreds of miles and probably a dozen or more states that you’ll have to add into your IFTA calculations.  There’s some wisdom to thinking about your IFTA a month before you need to file it, so you can be sure to buy fuel in states where you’re likely to have a hefty tax bill due.  But you have to do the IFTA in advance to know that… Essentially, doubling the number of times you need to compute it!  If you want to plan strategically for your IFTA but have to double your work, your IFTA is taking too much of your time.

3.  Railroad Crossing

You never know how long a train is going to take to finish blocking your route.  Unless you’ve been keeping track state by state, mile by mile, you won’t know how long it will take you to compute each state’s taxes until you sit down to do the work.  Can you imagine doing that kind of daily paperwork? Every day you’d have to be tracking numbers in a spreadsheet or a notebook, and then hope you got them all correctly entered.  And it’s not like you can do much else at the same time – even listening to a ball game score can mess up the numbers you’re adding!  You’re spending too much valuable time on your IFTA, just like watching the cars of the train go past.

4.  Road Work Ahead – Reduce Speed in Work Zones

If you’re using only fuel receipts, log books and maybe a few jotted notes on some spare papers in your cab to track your miles per state, you’re in for a lot of work.  You’ll have to work hard to get those numbers straight and hope you did them right, or you’ll spend more time worrying about the possible audit down the road – which will reduce your driving time even further then.

There’s no getting away from the orange barrel zones.  Every summer, we’ll spend some time going way too slow for way too long.  But using some common sense organization tips – use a standard method for tracking your mileage and recording  your trip mileage, storing your fuel receipts in order by date or by trip (and making sure that you can read them) and tracking your loads so you don’t have to try to remember what you did – will speed you through the slowdown that the IFTA work can cause you.  If you’re spending more than a day on the IFTA, you’re spending WAY too much time on it.

There’s One Way to Do Your IFTA Fast and Right

You need a software package that’s going to manage your numbers for you, give you confidence that the computations are done correctly and help you file your forms.  You could try to do it in Quickbooks, but Quickbooks wasn’t written for truckers, it’s written for accountants.  Did you know that we have several accountants who use TruckingOffice for their trucking clients?  Yep!  Even accountants know a good thing when they see it to reduce their workload.

There’s one way to do the IFTA fast – don’t duplicate work.  By using the same data as you put into the software at the time of dispatch, you should be able to compute your IFTA as well as your invoices, your driver settlements, your revenues, your IRP… If you’re sending all this data to a bookkeeper or a special IFTA program, you’re duplicating work instead of driving your truck!

The One Way to do your IFTA is TruckingOffice.  By using the dispatch information, TruckingOffice will compute your mileage with PC*Miler – the government’s preferred mileage program.  Enter your expenses and fuel purchases, then TruckingOffice can compute your IFTA for you in a matter of minutes, not hours.

What you’re putting into a computer program for your invoices will also compute your IFTA taxes. 

STOP repeating work.  Use TruckingOffice to do invoices and IFTA.  And then let it do your IRP.  And your driver settlements.  And show you how your trucking business can make more money.  All in one program, for minutes per dispatch.

We’ll make a deal with you.  We’re so sure that if you try our program, you’ll see that it’s the best option for owner-operators and small fleet managers on the market.  To prove it to you, we will give you a free 30-day trial.  Take all of your loads from the last quarter and put them into TruckingOffice.  You’ll find we’ve got an efficient data entry system that keeps your customer’s names and data on file for immediate use the next time you need it.  You put in your dispatches, put in your expenses and miles.  Your IFTA will be done faster that way than doing it by hand.  What do you say?  Free 30-day trial, and your IFTA done in minutes at the same time.

What have you got to lose?  Nothing.  We won’t even take your credit card number until you’re sure that we’re the solution to your IFTA problems.