» 5-step Guide to Safe Money for Truckers

5-step Guide to Safe Money for Truckers

Finance. Is it “stress” what first come to your mind when you think about financial health? And you are right: unpredictable inflation, fluctuations in the markets, external and internal logistic fuckups. All this brings uncertainty about future.

How to fix it? Especially when you are on the road? Based on the deep analytics and experience we worked out 5 steps guide to manage your money easily and without additional efforts.

1-st Step – Clear Budget

It is known that each big company has so call profit and loses analysis. It helps easily see gaps between income and expenses. But it works perfectly with personal budget or small business company finance.

First of all we’ll show how to make it by yourself. Take a list of paper or just open an excel sheet and make two columns: your expenses and your income. In order to find these two figures you should explore the previous year transactions.  You can find it using your credit card or bank account transaction list.  Then you divide it on 12 months or on 4 quarters (by 3 months). The same you will do with your income (exclude from the total bonuses or gifts that are not guaranteed!).

Should you consider the previous year finance experience not relevant use the following budget blocks to calculate the figures:

NOTE: for tracking budget you can also use such apps like Mint, Zeta, Personal capital

Once you find two figures you will easily identify the difference. If your expenses are more than income – it’s time to save money. If your income is bigger than expenses then you can go to bank and invest in interest building saving accounts or get help of financial adviser to find ways to invest.

More precisely we’ll be focused on the case when expenses are more than income.

2-nd Step – Savings

There are several rules that’ll help you safe more.

Meal: plan ahead and buy packed food instead of buying meals at the restaurants.

Medical expenses: take care about your physical health, go sport and use appropriate balance between work and rest time. It will save you from additional medical expenses.

Coupons and loyalty programs of retailers will keep your budget from extra payments. Such apps like Rakuten, Honey and Ibotta  allow quick access to all beneficial offers of different retailers.

3-d Step Cash flow increase

The are two major ways to do that for trucking companies

  1. Invoice factoring.

It takes too much time to wait until your client pay the invoice. And this method allows you to get money very quickly. You sell load invoices to a third party – financial company. Then you receive amount which is agreed with your customer. You pay a small fee for the operation but safe time on the collection process and increase your cash flow. Financial company then collects the amount from the customer.

  1. Fuel Card Program

There are many fuel cards programs you can meet with. Their benefits are clear – you get credit to purchase the fuel/ Some of them also include different discounts – like special price for goods on the fuel locations.

RTS program works out combo offer – fuel program plus invoice factoring. Using free app RTS pro it is easy to excess exclusive freights, send and track your invoices and even to receive credit limit with no hidden fees. We have fuel card options for any credit score, with savings at 2,000+ fuel locations, 200+ Truck Care service centers and more.

4-th Step –  Due dates are key

Check your credit account and make transactions prior to payment date. It will keep you from overpayment. Also you should keep an eye on your taxes and IFTA reports. Once you are late you have to pay more.

5-th Step – Vigilance

Be careful and watch out during your business activities. Always go through pre trip checkup and maintenance. Avoid dubious operations with fuel cards and programs. Watch out for thieves on the road and fuel locations. It will keep you from stressful interactions.

Ready to start?

So you see that it’s just 5 steps to get better financial health. But in case you want more advises and smart tools contact RTS. We elaborated technologies to increase business profit for trucking professionals like you.

 

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