“Work smarter, not harder.” This old saying is practically a cliche, but that doesn’t mean it’s a lie. What does working smarter in the trucking industry? It looks like cutting repetitive accounting data entry, refining the process from ret con to invoice, and finding the truth about what makes money – and where to cut to increase profits. In other words, using a TMS – trucking software – to manage all of the trucking business.
Accounting for the Trucking Business
The number one concern for any business is to make sure it’s making money consistently. Basic accounting practices include bookkeeping – watching the expenses and making sure the invoices are paid. However, in the trucking industry, basic accounting isn’t enough. If there’s one thing about trucking, it’s the complications in the accounting processes. There are taxes that no one else pays. Truckers aren’t paid by time, they’re paid by mileage. The number of expenses that are added to the invoice – tolls, lumpers, fuel costs, just to name three – added to the usual costs of doing business – insurance, loan repayments, office expenses – and the average accounting software package can’t handle it.
Many trucking software programs can’t handle it all, either. Take IFTA. Too many so-called complete trucking management software (TMS) programs don’t compute IFTA. That also means they probably don’t compute IRP, either.
Why not? IFTA can take an owner operator off the road for a day to compute manually. That’s a day’s worth of pay lost to a task.
IFTA Is Easy (What?!)
But IFTA can be figured easily – if you use the right program and the right equipment. Using the data from an ELog that tracks locations is far more efficient and accurate. When the ELD is integrated with the trucking software, it makes everything smarter
When the E-Log reports the data directly to the TMS trucking software – that’s the ideal way to be sure not to underpay or overpay taxes.
That’s the perfect example of working smarter, not harder.
That’s just the start. Automatic data entry from a rate con PDF from the start can lead to a dispatch, which then allows the driver to upload expenses with a receipt picture. No typing needed.
Let’s say that again:
AUTOMATIC RET CON UPLOAD
AUTOMATIC EXPENSE UPLOADS
NO TYPING NEEDED.
No kidding.
When it’s time to invoice the shipper, all the data is ready to be used. No typing. No reentry. Add the BOL and the invoice can be ready to go in a matter of seconds.
Working smarter, not harder, with a complete TMS trucking software speeds up the management aspect of the business. If that were all a trucking software did, that might be enough. But a complete trucking software isn’t limited to dispatches and invoicing. It should be able to use that data to analyze the business cash flow.
Instead of pulling numbers from all the different parts of a trucking business, TMS trucking software should be able to show where the money is made and where it’s lost. Those computations are complicated when truckers are paid per mile but many expenses are per trip or monthly.
But that’s what computers are built to do. Figure out complex math problems and give us the answers fast and correct.
TruckingOffice PRO calls those computations Trucker Stats™. It’s a series of reports using your numbers to show your company’s progress toward success. These reports will show you where you’re growing and what’s holding you back.
Less work, more answers. More answers, more success.
We don’t need more expensive software. We don’t need more gadgets. What do we need?
- automatic uploads to speed up data entry.
- a system that goes seamlessly from ret con to dispatch to invoice.
- numbers to show us how we’re doing.
It’s that simple. Less labor is involved when we do it right.
TruckingOffice PRO makes it easy.
You can sign up now for a free trial to discover how to cut your management tasks down and build your profits up with TruckingOffice PRO! Make it even easier with the TruckingOffice ELD.
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