When it comes to business software, many computer-savvy owner-operators have taken an approach similar to that of Jason Haggard. “I took the time to make a custom spreadsheet,” he says. General small-business accounting software QuickBooks “is nice, but my design is more tailored to my needs.”
With buckets set up for different categories of expenses (“Where does QuickBooks have an expense category for hitting a deer with your truck?” Haggard asks), he can break down income and costs per mile, per trip, or over any length of time. “If a guy can’t figure out his bottom line, he doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Haggard says.
Even those unfamiliar with spreadsheets can make use of owner-operator-focused software, now available at lower prices and with more functionality. While some are still computer-based, others are increasingly Web-based, accessible anywhere you can get an Internet connection. The costs are as little as a onetime $45 fee to $9.95 a month for Web-based software. Free online packages with limited functionality are available as well. (For our quick-glance comparison of available programs for both leased and independent/small fleet operators, click through the chart image above.)
Programs primarily for leased owner-operators
The market for owner-operator software has expanded in large part due to people like Haggard, whose struggles with their own single-truck or small fleet business problems motivated them to devise a solution.
Kevin Rutherford’s all-online MyGauges, which includes FuelGauges and add-on ProfitGauges software, is targeted primarily to leased owner-operators as a bookkeeping system and performance tracking tool. He developed it to make sure owner-operators “could do the minimum amount of accounting, simply,” Rutherford says. “Our system is designed to use it just once and you know it.”
By filing receipts in categories and putting the numbers into corresponding fields, Rutherford says a leased driver can do all of his bookkeeping himself in “under an hour” a month with MyGauges. Rutherford and his team originally developed it as a standalone program, then decided it needed to be online in 2007. (Rutherford detailed his simple, effective accounting system for one-truck operators in Overdrive in this story from 2011.)
