Streamline Your Finances with Contractor Invoicing Software for Logistics

Contractor invoicing software for Logistics

hey guys welcome back to another video i don't know about you but i feel like time has been flying by at the speed of light lately anyway today i want to make a video that was requested by several of you what tools do i use to manage my companies you all know the saying when it rains it pours but in this industry it's more appropriate to say when it rains it forms a tsunami that tries to wipe you out yes when an issue arises it attracts other issues that all happen at the same time so staying organized is extremely important to make life easier and this is no matter whether you're an owner operator driving for your own company or your fleet manager managing your team so let's talk about some tools you can use to simplify your life ready let's go number one tms or transportation management system something you will learn is that there are a ton of transportation management systems out there from ascent tms to trucking office to excel and all of these systems are supposed to keep you organized they're supposed to manage your loads they're supposed to manage your expense reports your ifta miles your payment reports and so on and so forth basically it's an organizational tool that should help you streamline your operations now what tms system do i use well i don't so i'm one of those do-it-yourself people who likes to build tools that will fit my specific needs perfectly so instead of using a pre-built tms system i built one myself using an amazing cloud-based software called air build a system that will fit your needs and your company's needs but let me show you mine so here's airtable and this is my workspace right here i have my loads expenses audit files for the two companies and yes i have a very unimpressed face here because i don't like audits uh cash flow i even keep my family reports here for all the bills uh partner reports payroll etc so let me show you for example the loads the way i built it first of all i have all the shippers and receivers here with ratings everywhere where we delivered and picked up loads i keep ratings as well as which broker gave us those loads which loads we did at these shippers and receivers and so on and so forth so if i ever need to look at a certain shipper i have it all in my system then we have the loads button now in the loads button you will see the pickup date the delivery date the load status and i have either paperwork sent booked at pickup and transit delivery or tonu then we have shippers and receivers right here the broker who gave us the load the rate confirmation load number commodity load rate additional detention etc pay date and so on and it's all connected so what i mean when i say connected i mean i can click right here and choose a broker because i set up the system where it's that easy it takes a while to set up but then it becomes super easy i also have payments once a broker pays i put in how much they owed how much they paid if they underpaid it automatically highlights it read if they overpaid it automatically highlights it green basically you can build out a system any way you want it you just add a base and then you go from there you title it and you can create so many different things here you can change the type of field it is you can do a link to another record an attachment you have a ton of stuff to choose from now if you guys want to learn more about this system there is actually a youtube channel dedicated just to airtable so you can learn a ton of stuff about this system and i really highly recommend that you actually look at it and learn about it because it can be such an amazing organizational tool number two invoicing and accounting like many others in this industry i use quickbooks for all my accounting and invoicing needs and it's pretty easy because all you have to do is put in your income your expenses and quickbooks generates reports like a cash flow report balance sheets and so on and so forth so i highly recommend it number three filing i am an extremely organized person well when it comes to work and documents at least yeah that's only because your brain is useless and you don't remember what you did one second ago well this is very true i sadly suffer from short-term memory loss as well as other mental issues due to a very rare condition called tired itis basically it causes my brain to fall asleep even when i'm fully awake you are so funny case endpoint anyway i use dropbox to store all my business related documents and the great part is that this allows me to access those documents from anywhere in the world even if i don't have my computer with me now something that happens more often than it should is you go to deliver a load you get paid a year passes by and then the broker calls you asking you for the bill of lading for that load because they misplaced their copy and dropbox allows me to find any document from anywhere in the world as long as there is a good internet connection number four payroll if you're hiring employees you will probably need the help of a payroll system to calculate your taxes as the employer as well as your employees taxes now i use a system called adp because they're extremely reliable and they're very flexible now something i want to mention right here be very diligent when choosing the payroll company you will be working with otherwise something like this can happen hello i'm calling from the irs about taxes due is this the owner of trucking made successful uh yeah what taxes again well we have noticed that you have not paid your payroll taxes in two years uh yeah i did through my payroll company yeah we didn't receive any of those so your taxes are still due wait what do you mean yeah that's not the worst part unfortunately because it's been two years there are also late fees that are going to apply but wait a minute this was not me it was the picnic our problem i wish i was kidding but unfortunately i am not the irs will hold you responsible as the employer for any issues with taxes even if it's the fault of the payroll company and this is exactly why i use adp i trust that they will do what they're supposed to do now that being said i also use airtable in order to create reports for my team members so that they can see where the money is coming from and how it's taxed let me show you now i want to show you the template of the report i created on air table and it automatically populates as i start filling out the spreadsheet so you can see it shows the check date the pay period the name of the employee the rate per mile pay then again we pay by odometer reading so odometer start and odometer end with the total distance payment summary total gross any reimbursements per diem taxable wages income after taxes and net payment with the per diem added back in reimbursements added back in et cetera et cetera and this just makes it easy to understand where the money is coming from and how it is taxed number five mileage tracking when we started out we were very lucky to get keep trucking as our electronic logging device because that baby tracks everything so instead of me talking about it let me show you what i mean okay so this is the software that comes with the electronic logging device we use as you can see i can see the location of the truck at all times i covered this part because of privacy of course but the best part is if i go to fuel right here and then i go to ifta summary i can actually filter by quarters i can say quarter 4 of 2021 and it will show me how many miles were driven in each jurisdiction and it makes doing ifta so much easier now you can also track fuel here but we don't we don't track it in our electronic logging device because i have a different system for this which we will talk about in just a second number six fuel tracking one huge part of ifta is tracking all those fuel purchases now we use a fleet one fuel card by rts and it's absolutely incredible first of all i want to show you again the software that comes with that fuel card which helps you find the best fuel on the way this is a system that comes with the fuel card we use all you have to do is put in the route let's say that you're going from houston texas somewhere to uh i don't know let's say um portland oregon and you can choose the route you are planning to take see here there are three different routes let's say this is the route you plan to take which is highlighted in blue and right away you see all the fuel stations on the way if you click back right here you can sort it by for example the lowest price and when you hover right here you will see it will pop out so for example to give you an idea you hover and it pops out you see that three dollar 13 fuel pop out so you can see that for example this one is right on your way it's not too far off the road and if you click on it you see how many miles away it is from your uh location uh you can see the address you can see the price with the fuel card and the retail price without the fuel card as well as any amenities the second amazing thing is the management system i can set card limits there as well as track all the fuel purchases by the dates i want so i can see how much fuel was purchased in each state this is also part of our fuel card where i can do fuel tax reports and it automatically creates a report based on the fuel purchases i had to blink all of this out because of privacy again but for example you can choose a date uh let's say from the first of february to the fourth of february okay let's do that you choose uh what kind of product you want and you click submit and then it generates the report for you you click to view the document it downloads and and you can see that for example in missouri the total gallons that were purchased were 196 gallons in new mexico it was 176 gallons uh in utah there was some fuel purchase so it's pretty cool and this allows you to do ifta so much easier so i highly recommend rts they're pretty amazing number seven reminders without reminders there would be no business in my case so i use an app called to do i put in all the filings due the permit renewals registration renewals phone call reminders meeting alerts feed your kids miranda their starving reminders and so on and so forth without it i would be lost and this is the system i use in order to remind myself of everything i need to do because my brain most of the time forgets everything uh so this is a really great system it will remind you it will give you alerts it will send you messages once you did something on your list you just click right here and it's gone or for example here and it's gone so pretty great system to use if you need reminders which you probably will need if you're managing your own trucking company because there's just too much to remember i hope you guys found this video helpful now i put all the links of all the things i talked about down below so if you find that some of these things or all of these things might be helpful to you and your business the link is right down below and i'll see you guys in the next video