For any trucking company to remain profitable, it must monitor all areas of business operations. That includes budgets, revenues, and operating costs to see how each performs compared to industry best practices and benchmarks. Profitability requires careful management of many key areas. One example is gross margin.
Tax Compliance
The transportation industry faces several unique challenges that require special skills and knowledge. Trucking and shipping companies must juggle DOT compliance, multi-state taxation requirements, driver wages, fuel costs, equipment costs, drivers’ insurance, and more. A transportation accountant with specialized knowledge can help these businesses optimize their operations to increase profitability and remain competitive.
The benefits of transportation accounting services extend far beyond tax compliance and into business planning, inventory management, cost analysis, and more. For instance, if you have service department salaries that are too high, an experienced transportation accountant can assist you with a cost reduction plan while maintaining your profitability benchmarks.
In addition, these professionals can help you reduce your state and federal taxes by advising on deductions, credits, and strategies that will minimize your outgoings. They can also assist with intelligent succession planning that will guarantee your business continues to thrive even if you can no longer manage it.
Cost-Effectiveness
The transportation industry is complex, and managing it requires specialized expertise. Whether it’s tracking expenses, reconciling invoices, or calculating fuel and maintenance costs, transportation companies face many challenges regarding accounting. With the proper support, these businesses can streamline their financial management processes and improve overall efficiency. A well-implemented budgeting framework is one of the most essential tools for driving profitability.
It helps teams align around main KPIs and tangibly estimate the impact of each new item added to the roadmap. But it’s not enough: to boost profitability, you must also reduce expenses. Transportation business owners can significantly cut operating costs by eliminating unnecessary expenses and streamlining operations. For example, a shipping company may need to rethink its employee hiring and training strategy or retrain its staff to handle new services that are more profitable.
To help with these efforts, transportation accounting software is available to automate the process and provide valuable insights. Unlike general accounting software, transportation accounting software is adapted to the unique needs of transport businesses and can streamline operations and improve financial management. The best transportation accounting software can be customized to a company’s specific needs, allowing businesses to manage their finances from any location with an internet connection. It can also automate time-consuming tasks like invoice generation, payment collection, and revenue reconciliation.
Financial Reporting
To operate effectively, the transportation industry requires specific accounting protocols in a competitive business environment. This includes implementing management software to help track inventory, invoice customers, and manage costs. The proper management software helps reduce manual effort and improves data security, allowing finance teams to focus on more strategic initiatives.
The most important aspect of transportation accounting services is ensuring that costs are kept low about sales. This is done by analyzing historical freight expenditures and establishing a standard rate. By doing so, you can set a benchmark for future freight expenditures.
Additionally, you can monitor the impact of varying freight rates on your margins. Financial reporting involves the communication of financial information to both external and internal stakeholders. This includes the critical financial statements (balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows), supporting details, schedules, and commentary such as management discussion and analysis. Whether your transport company is small or large, an experienced CPA can help you stay profitable.
Risk Management
Owning and operating a transportation business comes with some inherent risks. Whether dealing with driver shortages and lack of proper qualifications, infrastructure deterioration causing accidents or delays, weather conditions, regulatory compliance, cyber-attacks, or staffing issues, many moving parts in this industry create unique challenges. To mitigate these risks, trucking companies and fleet management firms need a robust process that identifies potential problems and allows them to make cost/benefit analyses.
For example, operational risk can be caused by human error, so it is essential to identify and implement a system that prevents mistakes or catches them before they happen. Your clients need a complete risk-management program that provides them with the data, projections, and informed updates they need to keep up with their ever-changing logistics and transportation processes. The best way to do this is with a system offering wall-to-wall visibility up and down the supply chain, providing the company real-time insight into every load and potential risk.
In addition to having the most comprehensive view of their risk factors, your clients need a fully fleshed-out system that identifies all their risk-based responsibilities and enables them to flag analytic results for attention and communication quickly. This will help them make the most of their investment in a robust system that will continue to evolve and grow as their business does.