A month-end checklist for trucking companies

Trucking has more moving parts than most businesses: settlements, fuel cards, factoring, advances, per-diem and drivers paid in different ways. Leave them until quarter-end and the IFTA return becomes a weekend project. Leave them until year-end and you're paying someone to reconstruct a year.

A short month-end routine keeps everything under control. This checklist pulls together the habits from the rest of our trucking guide.

The checklist

1. Bank and credit card accounts reconciled

Every account matched to the books, to the cent. This is the foundation; everything else depends on it.

What it catches: a duplicate truck payment, a customer payment recorded against the wrong invoice, a bank fee nobody noticed.

2. Fuel cards reconciled to trucks and jurisdictions

Every line on the fuel-card statement matched to a unit and a province or state.

What it catches: In one month we found Unit 104's card used for 640 litres while the truck was in the shop. A driver had fuelled Unit 101 on the wrong card. Small mix-ups like this throw off your cost per kilometre by truck and your IFTA return.

3. Every load invoiced and every payment matched

Compare dispatch records or the ELD trip list against your invoices. Every load should have an invoice, and every payment should match an invoice.

What it catches: the load that was delivered on the 29th and never billed, or a broker short-paying a load by $150 in detention with no explanation.

4. Factoring and advances recorded correctly

The full invoice amount recorded as revenue, the factoring fee as a financing cost, and any reserve the factor holds back tracked as money owed to you.

What it catches: factoring reserves that are never released. See cash flow for carriers for what factoring really costs.

5. Distance by jurisdiction recorded

Kilometres for each province and state, by truck, ready for the quarterly IFTA return. Download them from your ELD or trip records while they're fresh.

What it catches: gaps in trip records that are easy to fix now and impossible to fix in an audit. See IFTA for Alberta carriers.

6. Driver pay checked before payroll runs

Mileage, trips or hours on the pay run agree with trip records. Per-diem and reimbursements follow your policy.

What it catches: a driver paid for a trip that was cancelled, or a mileage rate that never got updated after a raise. See paying drivers.

7. Receipts captured

Repairs, tires, permits, tolls, scale tickets and meals on the road, each with a receipt or photo attached to the transaction.

What it catches: the $4,800 shop invoice that only exists as a line on a credit card statement. Without the invoice, you can't show what it was for, and the GST/HST on it can't be claimed.

8. Payables reviewed

Shop bills, insurance, lease payments and permits entered and scheduled, so nothing goes late and nothing gets paid twice.

9. GST/HST tracked

Tax collected and tax paid recorded, and the GST/HST reserve topped up. See GST/HST for trucking companies.

10. A one-page summary, by truck

Revenue, fuel, repairs and kilometres for each unit, plus your cost per kilometre and operating ratio for the month.

Example: what the summary showed

Unit 104 spent nine days in the shop and still had full insurance and plates to pay. Its cost per kilometre jumped by about a third. One month is a blip. Three months in a row is a decision about whether to keep the truck.

How long it takes

With clean records, an owner-operator can do this in an hour or two. A fleet needs a person who owns the routine. That's the work we do for carriers every month, so the owner gets the summary and not the homework.

The bottom line

Month-end is where small problems are cheap to fix. If you'd rather hand the routine to someone else and just get the one-page summary, here's how we help trucking companies.