Help! Finances,paperwork,receipts!

Two years is an eternity in the trucking world. Go take some basic business and bookkeeping classes at a local community college in the mean time.

 

Check the OOIDA website. OOIDA is designed for 0/0's and small fleet owners. Someone there knows exactly what you need to do.

 

I use Quicken Home & Business to track my checkbooks, invoices and such.

I have a spreadsheet that I use to track my mileage by state and that compiles it nicely so I can carry it into another sheet to do my IFTA calculations. Simple copy and paste in Excel for me.

As to the rest of it, depending on what it is, I either scan it and attach it to the registry entry in Quicken, or in the case of fuel receipts and such, I simply toss them into an envelope for the current year and quarter.

As to what to keep...

If it's going on the truck, keep it.

If it's for for him to work on the truck, keep it.

If you can show any reasonable connection to the truck, keep it.

I have general receipts, fuel and reefer receipt, maintenance performed and maintenance parts receipt, legal (licensing, authority ETC) receipts folders.

Separate folders for insurance, logs, DVIR, load rate confirmations, oil analysis, maintenance, driver file, etc.

Here is another manual that would help you too....
http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/safety-security/eta/index.htm

 

here is a copy of something and the income statement I have in Excel.


and PL statement is from quicken.

Quicken REALLY makes it easy for me at years end to do my taxes. It puts all the numbers I need into the correct box on the IRS forms for me.

It's cheaper though for me to pay my wife's boss though who is a CPA to do my taxes though. I just print out my P&L for the year and give it to him. ( give him the Schedule C and SE tables also since it does it for me so nicely too)

 

i carry 3 manila envolopes in the truck i use a straight edge to draw a spread sheet on the outside. each envalope is for the category of receipt. fuel, repairs, misc. when say i buy fuel on the outside of the receipt goes the date, where it was purchased, price and gallons. then the receipt goes in the envelope. envelopes run month to month. then at the end of the month info from the outside of the envelope gets entered into a simple spread sheet. all important info from the recept is what is wrote on the outside of the envelope where how much and what for. this way all info can be accessed without digging threw a pile of receipts. also if i need to access a particular recept, say if i have a warrentee issue with a repair or something i just find the envelope that has that receipt on the outside open it up and pull it out.

 

you will need an accounting program for your computer, I like quickbooks or quicken.

 

Oh boy, here we go. Bear with me. I just downloaded the Quicken Home and Business. I have been keeping track the old school manner, paper spreadsheets. I take my trips envelopes, write the gallons, states and cost on outside then transfer them to my paper spread sheet. Bam Done. Well, I'm making an attempt to join the new age tech genre. This thing is asking me to create a new account and input my banking info, including online password. Is this program for real? Do you folks input this info? If no, how does a trucker use this program to keep track of $? Thank you waaaaaaaaay in advance.