I talk to owner-operators every week about their bookkeeping, and I hear the same complaint over and over: “I tried QuickBooks, and I hated it. “You’re not crazy. You’re right. QuickBooks was built for coffee shops, consultants, and marketing agencies. It assumes you sit at a desk with stable WiFi and have generic expenses like “Rent” and “Office Supplies.” It wasn’t designed for someone who lives on the road, buys fuel in eight different states, needs to calculate Revenue Per Mile on the fly, and has to file IFTA taxes every quarter.
So most truckers do one of three things:
- Fight with the software until they rage-quit.
- Give up and stuff receipts in a door panel or shoebox.
- Pay a bookkeeper $300 a month to deal with it.
None of those are good options.
The Round Hole, Square Peg Problem
QuickBooks is great software — if you run a landscaping company. But trucking is a different animal.
Think about the metrics that actually keep you in business:
- Revenue per load, broken down by loaded miles vs. deadhead miles
- Fuel purchases separated by state for IFTA
- Cost Per Mile, so you know if a broker’s offer is actually profitable
- Lumper fees, detention pay, and accessorial charges
- Maintenance costs tied to a specific truck or trailer
- Dispatcher fees/Broker Fees
- Driver’s cut/payroll
QuickBooks doesn’t track any of that out of the box. To make it work, you’d have to create custom classes, manually split transactions, and build your own reports from scratch. And even then, it’s clunky. QuickBooks wants you to “reconcile with your bank.” But if you’re paid by factoring one week and direct deposit the next, with cash advances mixed in, good luck matching that up. The software wasn’t built for how trucking money actually moves. If you have to spend 10 hours customizing software just to get started, the software isn’t working for you — you’re working for it.
The Bookkeeper Trap
So if the software doesn’t fit, you hire a bookkeeper, right?
A lot of owner-operators go this route because it feels like delegating. You pay someone $200 to $400 a month, and they handle the headache for you. But here’s the dirty little secret about bookkeepers: you’re still doing the hard work. A bookkeeper can’t organize the receipts crammed in your sun visor. They can’t read the faded thermal paper from that fuel stop in Oklahoma. You still have to dig through your wallet, take photos, scan everything, upload it to some app, and explain what that weird charge at the Pilot was. You’re doing the gathering and sorting. They’re just doing the data entry. And if you forget to send something? They don’t know it’s missing. They only work with what you give them. So now you’re chasing down receipts AND paying someone $300 a month. Over a year, that’s $2,400 to $4,800. Over five years, you could be looking at $20,000 or more — just to have someone else type in numbers you already have in your hand. That’s money that should be going toward a maintenance reserve, a trailer payment, or your own pocket.
What Happens at Tax Time Without a System
Here’s a scenario I’ve seen way too many times. It’s March. Taxes are due in a few weeks. An owner-operator shows up at their accountant’s office with a grocery bag full of receipts, a pile of settlement statements, and a vague idea of what they made last year. The accountant has to sort through everything, figure out what’s deductible, and basically reconstruct the entire year from scratch. That takes time. Time costs money. So instead of paying $300 for a simple tax return, the driver pays $800 or $1,000 because the accountant had to do all the bookkeeping too. And the worst part? The driver has no idea if the numbers are even right. They’re just hoping the accountant caught everything. Now compare that to walking in with a clean profit and loss statement, organized by category, with all your deductions already totaled. The accountant plugs in the numbers, files the return, and you’re done. Lower bill, less stress, and you actually understand your own business. That’s the difference a real system makes.
The $74.99 Solution
I got tired of watching my clients overpay for software they didn’t use or bookkeepers they didn’t need.
So I built a spreadsheet system specifically for owner-operators. It cuts out the noise and focuses only on the numbers that matter to a trucking business.
Here’s what it does
- Income by Load Log every load with the revenue, miles, and rate per mile. You can see instantly which lanes are making money and which ones are dead weight.
- Expenses by Category Fuel, maintenance, insurance, permits, tolls, lumper fees — everything organized into categories that make sense for trucking. Not “Office Supplies.”
- The IFTA Fix When you enter a fuel purchase, you enter the state. The spreadsheet sorts it automatically. When the quarter ends, your IFTA report is already done.
- Cost Per Mile This is the number that tells you whether you’re actually making money. The spreadsheet calculates it for you. If your cost per mile jumps, you’ll see it right away — not six months later when you’re wondering where your cash went.
- Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly Summaries See your profit and loss for any time period. Track your deductions. Know where you stand without digging through bank statements.
- Tax-Ready Reports At year-end, print the summary page and hand it to your accountant. Everything is already categorized the way they need it. No grocery bags. No guessing.
Why Doing It Yourself Is Better
There’s a reason the saying “nobody cares about your money like you do” exists. A bookkeeper sees a number on a screen. You see the story behind it. You know that the repair bill was for a problem you’ve been nursing for months. You know that one broker always takes 45 days to pay. You know that fuel is cheaper if you route through Arkansas instead of Oklahoma. When you track your own numbers, you start noticing patterns. You realize which loads are actually worth taking. You see where your money is leaking. You make better decisions because you understand your business at a level no bookkeeper ever will. That’s not just bookkeeping. That’s how you grow.
Stop Renting Your Bookkeeping
Here’s the math:
- QuickBooks Online: $30–$90/month, forever
- Bookkeeper: $200–$400/month, forever
- My spreadsheet: $74.99, one time
No subscriptions. No monthly fees. No upsells. You buy it, you own it, and you use it year after year.
If you’re an owner-operator who wants to take control of your finances without spending a fortune or turning into an accountant, this is built for you. Get the Trucking Accounting & Tax Spreadsheet
