Expense tracking for carriers

Trucking expense tracking for owner-operators and small fleets

Fuel, tolls, scales, parking, repairs and lumpers add up fast, and the receipts are on the driver's phone or in a cab door. This page lists the expenses most trucking companies track, shows how a receipt gets from the driver to your books in LaneTally, and explains cost per mile.

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Information only. LaneTally helps you keep organized records. It is not tax or legal advice, it does not decide what you can deduct and it does not file anything for you. Check with your accountant.

Why track every trucking expense

Three things depend on good expense records. Your cost per mile tells you which loads are worth taking. Your books show your real profit. And your accountant needs the numbers and the proof at tax time. The IRS generally says to keep records for 3 years after you file, with longer periods in some cases, and IFTA fuel records have their own 4-year rule (see how to file IFTA).

A trucking expenses list

These are the expense types LaneTally uses in the books. They are a good starting list for any owner-operator expense tracker:

• On the road: fuel, tolls and scales, parking, lumper fees.
• The truck: maintenance and repairs, truck lease, truck loan payment (only the interest is an expense, not the principal), insurance, taxes and licenses.
• The business: software, office, phone, supplies, advertising, rent, bank fees, professional fees.
• Paying people and partners: dispatch fees, factoring fees, driver pay, staff pay.
• Other: meals (per diem), equipment purchases, and "Other / unknown" for anything you sort out later.

Some entries are not expenses at all. An owner draw, a driver advance and the principal on a loan are money moving, not costs, and LaneTally does not count them as expenses.

Deductible trucking expenses: what to ask your accountant

Whether an expense is deductible depends on your business type, your records and the tax year. LaneTally does not decide that. What it does is match every category to a Schedule C line, so you and your accountant can see where each dollar would go. A few examples of how the categories map:

For a corporation, the preparer moves these to the right form. Meals for drivers have special rules; IRS Publication 463 describes a standard meal allowance for people in the transportation industry, so ask your accountant how it applies to you. LaneTally has a "Meals (per diem)" category but does not work out the allowance for you.

Receipts from the driver's phone

The easiest receipt is the one sent at the pump. In the driver screens, the driver:

1. Takes a photo of the receipt. This is the only required step.
2. Picks what it was for: fuel, truck charging, tolls, scale, parking, repair, lumper or other (or "Not sure, you fill it in").
3. Types the total, and the gallons for a fuel receipt, if they can.
4. Says how it was paid: company card, or their own money that needs to be paid back.
5. Adds a note if needed, and sends it.

The same photo cannot be sent twice, so a receipt is not counted two times. Drivers send photos from the driver screens on the phone; the dedicated phone apps are Coming at launch. Reading the receipt photo with AI, so the amount and gallons fill in by themselves, is also Coming at launch. Today a person types the amount.

Office approval keeps the books clean

A new receipt shows as "Receipt waiting" on your Home. You open it, look at the photo, set the type, type the amount and how it was paid, and approve. Only then does it go into the carrier's books as an expense, with the photo attached. Nothing is booked before a person approves it.

• A receipt is never added to a driver's pay by itself. To pay a driver back for their own money, you add it on their weekly statement (see driver pay and settlements).
• A receipt with the same amount as a bank line links to it, so nothing is counted twice.
• Fuel receipts with gallons and the state also feed your fuel by state for IFTA.

The books: categories, history and the accountant packet

In the books every entry has a date, an amount, a category, an optional truck and a receipt photo or PDF. Every change keeps who made it and when. You can also upload a bank statement and approve each line; nothing posts until you approve it, and lines that match entries already there are linked. Sorting the lines with AI and a live link to the bank are Coming at launch.

The "For my accountant" card has a Check my records first button that lists what to fix, such as entries with no category and expenses of $75 or more without a receipt. Then it makes a year packet PDF and a zip with the Schedule C lines and every expense. These are summaries for your accountant, not official tax forms. See trucking accounting software for QuickBooks, Xero and Wave files.

Cost per mile from your expenses

Cost per mile is all your costs divided by all your miles, loaded and empty. LaneTally's number leaves out income, dispatch fees, factoring fees, driver advances, owner draw and equipment purchases. You can type your costs and miles, or have LaneTally figure them from your delivered loads and your books for the last 90 days, this month or this year.

Example (example numbers only): if a truck had $9,800 of costs and drove 14,000 miles in a period, the cost per mile is $9,800 ÷ 14,000 = $0.70. The New load form uses your cost per mile for the "Worth it" or "Too low" check: an offer is too low when it does not cover your cost per mile plus the smallest profit per mile you set.

Habits that make expense tracking easy

• Photo at the pump. Do it before pulling out. A receipt photographed a week later is a receipt that gets lost.
• Use one business account and card for the truck, so bank lines match receipts.
• Review weekly, not once a year. Approving five receipts on Monday beats sorting a shoebox in March.
• Upload the bank statement every month to catch what no one photographed.