Driver Pay: Easy Trip Settlements with TruckLogics

It’s time for a #MoneyMonday blog!

With so many fees, percentages, deductions & reimbursements, settling your drivers and calculating their pay can be a huge headache, particularly if payroll and accounting aren’t your strong suit. (and unless you’re an accountant, why would they be!)


The TruckLogics Trip Settlement feature makes driver pay simple. It allows you to precisely calculate the total owed, without having to do any calculations yourself. 
And while calculating the pay, you can still itemize specific expenses for more accurate accounting. It’s the easiest way to pay your contract employees! Plus the pay automatically gets logged in your Chart of Accounts as a payroll expense, and is immediately visible in a Profit & Loss report.

Let’s dive right in.

First, head over to your dispatches and select the order that you’d like to settle. Once you’ve clicked on a dispatch, then select the “Trip Settlements” tab. From here you can update the driver pay details at any time.

1. Hauling Charges

To begin the settling process, enter the hauling charges. If you’ve already set-up your Driver Pay preferences in Driver Settings, this part will already be completed with the Driver’s standard rate. However, you can still alter the information if necessary.

If the driver pay is not already saved in your settings, then you can choose to pay per mile, a percentage, or manually. If you choose to pay per mile, you will also need to choose the mileage values: by dispatch miles, by trip sheet miles, or by the invoice. Once you’ve selected that, enter the rate, and TruckLogics will create a subtotal of the hauling charges.

2. Fuel Surcharge Fees

After entering the hauling charges, it’s time to enter a fuel surcharge fee, if necessary. If not, you can skip this portion of the settlement. Choose your FSC calculation method from the dropdown menu: flat fee, percentage, or per mile.

3. Accessorial Fees

The nice thing is, you can add as many as you need, or none at all. Select the kind of accessorial you’d like to add to the pay. We have stop off, lumper, detention, tarp, and more. Or you can always click “Add New” to create your own accessorial category. After choosing the category, enter the amount. If you need to add more than one, click the “Add Accessorial Fees” button on the left.

4. Reimbursements

Almost done! Time to reimburse your driver for tolls, parking, room & board, or whatever expense they incurred. Simply enter the reason for the reimbursement in the open field, followed by the amount. If you need to add multiple reimbursements, select “Add Another” as many times as you need.

5. Deductions

If you need to dock the driver’s pay for any reason, for a late delivery for instance, here’s the line to do it. Select the reason for the deduction, either “Advance” if you already paid the driver in part, or other to enter another reason. Then enter the amount to deduct, and TruckLogics will subtract it from the total.

Now that you’ve entered all of the fields, just hit save! You’ll see a neat little total at the bottom of the page, so you know exactly what to put on their check.

After saving, you can scroll down to “Upload Trip Documents” to save images of invoices, BOL, or receipts from that trip. Just click “Choose File” and select the file type to upload. To upload multiple files, just select +Add Another Attachment.

And to view your total income/expense details for that order in particular, just scroll to the bottom of the trip settlement page, and select “Trip Net Revenue.”

This will display an itemized graph of your income and expenses for the trip, as well as your total Net Revenue and Revenue per Mile for that trip.

And that’s how it’s done! In total, you can settle your driver and log all trip expenses in just minutes. The itemized expense will also be logged in your Chart of Accounts. You can view all of your driver settlements by going to your Expense Transactions, and sorting through them by the Expense Category “Payroll.”

To learn more about Driver Pay, adding Drivers to your TruckLogics account, or setting driver preferences, check out this handy video!

TruckLogics Driver Pay

If you aren’t a TruckLogics user yet, but this all looks good to you, then get signed up now. Try 15 days free!

And if you need help getting set up, ask our Support Crew. They’re available at 704.234.6946. They’re also available for 24/7 email assistance at [email protected]. Or set up a free live demo, and they’ll walk you through the program and show you first hand all of the ways TruckLogics can streamline your business (and save you from nasty calculations!).

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