Road Ready Trucking bookkeeping for leased owner-operators
Bookkeeping for leased owner-operators. Know what your truck is leaving you.
Short answer: We record your weekly settlements, match the deposits, and reconcile your accounts. Every month you get a report on your profit, truck costs and cost per mile, for $89 a month. You keep your tax preparer.
Get a free books check See pricing15-minute call. No documents or bank access to get started.
What you get every month
Sample report: fictional numbers, not a real driver. Your report comes from your own reconciled books.
| November · 10,000 miles | Amount |
|---|---|
| Settlement gross (what your 1099 will count) | $13,500.00 |
| Fuel | −$5,600.00 |
| Repairs and maintenance | −$1,200.00 |
| Truck insurance (carrier deduction) | −$1,100.00 |
| Truck loan interest | −$450.00 |
| Tires, tolls, plates, ELD, phone and the rest | −$1,000.00 |
| Bookkeeping profit for the month | $4,150.00 |
| Truck loan principal paid (lowers the loan, not an expense) | −$1,650.00 |
| Escrow the carrier held back (still yours; balance now $2,400) | −$400.00 |
| Cash left after those payments, before taxes | $2,100.00 |
| Cost per mile, counting the full truck payment | $1.10 |
What moved since October: fuel up $0.04 a mile, repairs down $600.
Every settlement in it is matched to its bank deposit, and every account is reconciled to its statement before the report goes out. Built by Jordan Sanders, a leased owner-operator who drives full-time; read the story.
Know what's working and what isn't
Most owner-operators know their weekly deposit. Fewer know what they actually kept after the truck payment, fuel, insurance, repairs and the carrier's deductions, or whether this month was better than last. Clean books answer that. Every month you get:
- What you made and what you kept. Gross settlements, every cost, and your profit for the month and the year so far.
- Cost per mile. (Try the free calculator.) What each mile costs you, broken into fuel, truck payment, insurance, maintenance and the rest, from the monthly miles you send us from your ELD or trip records.
- Your biggest costs, and what moved. Which costs went up, which went down, and what that did to your profit.
- Money that's yours but not in the bank. Your escrow balance, checked against the carrier's sheet.
Built for drivers paid by settlement sheet
If you're leased on with a carrier, you don't send invoices. Your carrier bills the shipper and pays you every week on a settlement sheet: gross pay, a list of deductions (insurance, plates, tolls, escrow, the event recorder), then a net deposit. Your bookkeeping starts with that sheet: gross pay, deductions, escrow and the deposit. Ours is built around it: every line booked where it belongs, the net matched to your deposit to the penny, and your income compared with what the carrier reports on your 1099, with any difference explained.
Current books make the next step easier
When your books are current, nothing is a scramble. Your tax preparer gets clean numbers and a short list of questions. And if you decide to finance a truck or take out a loan, you have reconciled books, real debt balances and organized records ready for the lender's review. Requirements vary by lender. See loan-ready books and the lender package.
Two ways to work with us
Monthly Books
$89 a month
Weekly settlements recorded and matched, receipts categorized, every account reconciled, and your monthly numbers report by the 10th. Cancel any time.
See pricingCatch-Up Cleanup
from $750, one time
Behind? We catch up and fix up to 12 months of books, reconcile every account, and include a lender package. Ten business days from complete records.
What's includedBooks as road ready as your truck
Your books are yours
Cancel whenever you want. Within five business days you get your QuickBooks file in your name, or a full export, plus every document you sent us. We never hold your records to collect a bill, and the price we publish is the whole price.
Free guides for owner-operators
- Trucking cost per mile calculator (free)
- Owner-operator expense spreadsheet (free Excel download)
- How much do owner-operators make after expenses?
- Bookkeeping for truck drivers: the weekly and monthly checklist
- How to read a carrier settlement sheet, line by line
- Trucking accounting for one-truck operators: chart of accounts
- Why your 1099 is bigger than your deposits
- How to get semi truck financing: the documents lenders ask for
- Truck driver per diem and meals: the IRS numbers for 2026–2027
Common questions
Who is Road Ready Books for?
Leased owner-operators: one-truck operators leased on with a carrier and paid by a weekly settlement sheet, usually filing as a sole proprietor or single-member LLC. Operators with their own authority who invoice shippers directly are on our list for later.
What will I learn from my books each month?
What you made, what you kept, what each mile cost you, which costs went up or down, and your escrow balance. It's the picture of where your business stands, every month.
Do you prepare my taxes?
No. We keep the books and hand your tax preparer clean reports and a list of questions. We don't prepare returns, compute estimates or give tax advice.
Do I need QuickBooks?
Your books live in QuickBooks Online either way. The Monthly Books price includes a QuickBooks Ledger subscription, or you can keep your own QuickBooks login and invite us as your bookkeeper.
Do you need my bank password?
Never. You connect your own bank and card feeds to QuickBooks, and you send statements as PDFs.
What does loan-ready mean?
Books organized for a lender's review: every account reconciled to its statements, settlement income compared with your carrier's records and 1099 with any differences explained, debts listed with the lender's own balances, and the documents lenders commonly ask for. Each lender sets its own requirements.