Google Sheets is the perfect tool to manage expenses. Truck business owners can create a powerful tucking expense calculator in Google Sheets for accurate financial management.
Trucking business is hard to manage without proper tools at your disposal.
Then, if you are just starting, it can be a daunting task to keep track of expenses over time.
Let us discuss the top 3 trucking expenses spreadsheet templates using Google Sheets in this article. We will also discuss the steps to create a trucking expense calculator from scratch in Google Sheets. So, make sure to read the article till the end.
Table of Contents
Now, without any further ado, let’s begin.
A powerful trucking expense calculator helps business owners effectively monitor and track financials.
Trucking businesses include many factors, from fixed expenses, such as vehicle costs, to variable expenses, such as Fuel costs. All of them are hard to manage if you don’t use proper tools like the Trucking Expense Calculator.
It allows you to make accurate business decisions and, at the same time, avoid errors and save money.
Overall, a trucking expense calculator is a crucial tool for the growth of your trucking business.
There are plenty of third-party websites offering this tool for free as well as paid. We found that a few of them are super useful, and the remaining ones give you a partial idea of the trucking expenses.
Google Sheets is a popular spreadsheet program. It offers powerful tools and functions to create comprehensive templates.
An Expense Calculator created using Google Sheets includes all the aspects of a trucking business.
Here are a few of the benefits of using Google Sheets for creating a Trucking Expense Calculator:
These are only a few of the benefits of using a Google Sheet to create a template or calculator to keep track of expenses.
In case you are stuck somewhere or have any difficulties using the template, refer to official documentation or third-party articles and tutorials. There will hardly be a time when you need help and won’t find the solution online.
The two templates discussed in the following section are free to download.
Whereas, for the template available on Etsy, you need to pay $29.99. In my opinion, this is a very small fee compared to the money you will save in the long run.
All of the templates discussed below are well-designed, considering the fixed and variable expenses associated with the trucking business.
It is the best free-to-download spreadsheet template by SoftwareAccountant to keep track of your trucking business expenses.
The template includes two spreadsheets:
This template is pretty straightforward and focuses on small trucking business owners.
You can customize and add the information as per your requirements.
Make sure to play with the formatting to make it more personal. You can easily share this calculator with your colleagues using the “Share” button at the upper-rightmost corner of the screen.
Also, you will find an editable table in the “Trucking Expense Calculator” spreadsheet named “Miles Driven and Income”. Make sure to enter the data in this table, as most of the formulas depend upon that information.
This is a powerful template available on Etsy for just $29.99.
Small and medium-sized trucking business owners can use it to manage finances on a monthly basis. Considering the benefits offered by this template, its price point is totally worth it.
Along with Fixed and Variable Expenses, users can keep track of Loaded and Empty Miles per week, month, or day.
It includes formulas throughout the spreadsheets. So, avoid editing the cells that hold formulas.
The template is divided into the months. You can keep track of all the ongoing and fixed expenses on a monthly basis. All you need to do is input your monthly expenses, and the template will automatically display weekly and daily expenses using built-in Google Sheets formulas.
At the end of each monthly spreadsheet, you will find a table where you can input Targeted Income, Gross Income, and Net Income. With this income data and your expenses, the template will calculate your profit for the month.
It includes a spreadsheet named “Summary”, where the data from the monthly spreadsheets is collected and presented in a tabular form. This spreadsheet is supposed to help business owners make informed decisions.
Note that the Summary spreadsheet is fully automated, and you should not edit it as all the data is automatically populated without your input.
Overall, with this spreadsheet template, you will surely save time and money, which will contribute to the success of your trucking business. Make sure to edit the header and add your business name before sharing this awesome trucking expense calculator with your colleagues.
Another free-to-download Trucking Expenses template on this list.
The template is divided into the monthly spreadsheets.
It allows you to keep track of Fixed and Variable Trucking expenses over a month. The table for Fixed Expenses is divided into weekly, monthly, est. yearly expenses.
It uses formulas throughout the spreadsheet to calculate expenses and profits on a weekly and monthly basis.
You can keep track of things like fuel, driver pay, truck payments, licenses, vehicle maintenance, emergency funds, tolls, and much more.
The template may feel confusing to the Google Sheets beginners. However, we suggest downloading and exploring it until you figure out various tables and their purpose.
It should take around an hour to understand this template. But it is totally worth it!
As a starting point, the template includes the spreadsheets for February and March 2023. You can duplicate one of them and use it for any other month of the year.
Also, don’t get confused by the “#DIV/0!” error you see in this template. It is due to incomplete data. You can delete all the sample data from the spreadsheet except the formulas and replace it with the actual data from your company.
If you delete any formula from the spreadsheet, use the keyboard shortcut “CTRL + Z” on Windows and “CMD + Z” on Mac to undo the changes made by you.
You can edit the header of this template to include your company name and logo.
Trucking expenses need to be divided into two types,
Let us discuss them in detail.
As from the name itself, these expenses remain safe regardless of whether your trucking business is running or idle.
These expenses do not depend upon the miles driven and any objectives met by your team.
They can be weekly, monthly, or yearly expenses, depending upon their type.
Here are a few examples of Fixed Expenses,
Variable expenses depend upon the miles driven by your truck. Simply put, these are fluctuating expenses that vary from time to time.
It includes ongoing payments such as fuel costs, tolls, etc.
You can directly connect these expenses with the amount of work done by your trucks over the week, month, or year.
Here are a few examples of Variable expenses,
Note that there can be many types of expenses you need to consider while running a trucking business. However, most of them can be categorized into the above two categories.
Make sure to account for loaded and empty miles while calculating the expenses and profits from your trucking business.
In this section, we will learn to use Google Sheets to create a trucking expense calculator.
The steps are simple and will help you create a trucking expense calculator that meets the requirements of your business.
You need to start with a blank Google Sheet. Click here to create a new Google Sheet.
You can copy and paste the following URL into the address bar of your browser.
We will create a header to display the company name and logo. It will help reflect your brand to the people with whom this calculator will be shared.
Here’s how our header looks after following the above steps,
This table is going to be a part of our trucking expense calculator.
Here are the steps,
Now, as you might have noticed, the first five rows are about cost and the sixth is about the percentage. Refer to the following image.
Let’s change the formatting of the cells so that whenever you enter any values, it will automatically include the “$” and “%” symbols.
That’s it. Our Income table is all ready.
In this step, we will create two similar tables by following the same process discussed in STEP #3 above.
Make sure to change the column width and row height to make the tables attractive by avoiding font overlap.
Also, the font type should be “Poppins“, or you can even use “Lexend“.
Adjust the border type and color as well.
Finally, you must change the cell number formatting to the “Currency rounded” so that whenever you type something, the Google Sheets will automatically detect it as a currency and put the “$” symbol before it.
In this step, we will create a table to record our fixed expenses associated with the trucking business.
Here’s how our table for Fixed Expenses looks,
Now, we need to change the cell formatting to “Currency rounded” so that all the numbers will be displayed with the dollar sign in the beginning.
The steps to change the number formatting are,
After following the steps above, you will notice that the dollar symbol appears in the total section of the table.
The process of designing the Variable Expenses Table is similar to the one discussed above for the Fixed Expenses Table.
You need to prepare a table as follows,
It uses the same logic and Google Sheets functions. So, if you clearly understood the process of creating the Fixed Expenses table, then this one is also an easy task for you.
Now, play around with the formatting of the table by adjusting the row heights and column widths.
As a final step, to make our Trucking Expense Spreadsheet more attractive.
It is pretty simple and will definitely improve the aesthetics of your spreadsheet.
Here are the results,
You can download the Trucking Expense Template prepared by us after following the above steps.
If you are struggling with the trucking business finances, then the templates discussed in this article will be the right decision.
All of them are customizable as per your preference.
Make sure to explore our blog for more tips and tricks to use a Google Sheet to manage expenses.
Google Sheets is a really powerful program with lots of potential. So, what are you waiting for?
