What chart of accounts should a trucking company use?
A trucking company chart of accounts needs to separate fixed costs from variable costs and track expenses in ways that let you calculate cost per mile. Generic QuickBooks setups lump everything into broad categories that don’t tell you anything useful about where your money goes or which trucks are actually profitable.
Revenue accounts should distinguish between different income types. Freight income is your main revenue from hauling loads. Fuel surcharges should be tracked separately since they’re typically passed through to cover fuel cost fluctuations. Accessorial charges like detention, layover, and lumper reimbursements deserve their own category. If you broker loads to other carriers, that income should be separate from your own hauling revenue.
On the expense side, the key is separating what varies with miles driven from what stays constant regardless of how much you run.
Variable costs change based on miles. These include fuel, driver pay if you pay per mile, tolls, maintenance and repairs, tires, and lumper fees. Tracking these separately lets you calculate your true variable cost per mile, which is essential for knowing whether a load is worth taking.
Fixed costs stay relatively constant whether a truck runs 10,000 miles or sits in the yard. Truck payments or lease payments, insurance for liability and cargo and physical damage, permits and licenses like IFTA and IRP, parking and storage fees, and communication costs like ELD subscriptions and driver phones. You need to cover these costs before you start making money on any load.
For trucking companies with multiple trucks, you also want the ability to track costs by unit. This means setting up classes in QuickBooks for each truck or using sub-accounts. Classes usually work better for smaller fleets because the setup is simpler and reporting is more flexible. Larger operations sometimes need specialized trucking software that integrates with their dispatch system.
The goal of all this structure is being able to answer practical questions. What’s my cost per mile overall? Which trucks are profitable and which are eating money? Am I collecting enough in fuel surcharges to actually cover fuel? Are maintenance costs on an older truck making it worth replacing? Without the right chart of accounts from the start, you can’t get these answers without manually digging through hundreds of transactions.
If you’re already running in QuickBooks but can’t get useful reports, the problem is usually how the accounts were set up initially. Our bookkeeping services in Santa Fe NM include restructuring charts of accounts for trucking companies so your financial reports actually match how you think about your business. The structure matters more than the software.
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