A trucking company's books have to answer three questions a general small-business chart of accounts never asks: what did each load earn after fuel and driver pay, how many gallons did each truck burn in each state, and what is owed to or by each driver after advances and deductions. Set QuickBooks up so those three answers fall out of normal data entry (a class per truck, an income item per charge type, one fuel-tracking routine, and a settlement bill per driver pay run) and your IFTA return, your lane-profit view and your tax prep all draw from the same records.
Most trucking files put fuel, repairs, tires and insurance into one “Truck Expense” account, so nobody can tell which unit is losing money. Keep the account list short and push detail into classes.
Income. Separate linehaul revenue from fuel surcharge, detention, layover, lumper reimbursements and accessorials. Each is its own income item, so a single load invoice shows its parts and you can see whether the surcharge actually covers the fuel it was meant to cover.
Cost of goods sold. Put the costs that move with miles here: fuel, driver pay, tolls, scale fees, permits, and any purchased transportation paid to owner-operators or brokers. Keep repairs, tires, insurance, truck payments and depreciation as separate expense accounts.
Classes. Create one class per truck (by unit number) and, if you run a mixed fleet, a class for trailers or for each division. Every fuel receipt, repair bill and truck payment gets the unit class. That one habit makes a profit-and-loss by class report useful.
You need a consistent load number, not an add-on. Put it in the invoice number or memo, invoice each load with itemized income items, and enter the matching fuel and driver pay with the same load reference. Illustrative numbers, not benchmarks: a 1,000-mile load invoiced at $2,400 linehaul (2.40 per mile), with $620 of fuel and $600 of driver pay at 0.60 per mile, leaves $1,180 before tolls, maintenance reserve, insurance and truck payment. Subtract your fixed costs for the trip and you see what the load really made, which a monthly P&L averages away.
The International Fuel Tax Agreement covers qualified motor vehicles. Per IFTA, Inc., that means a vehicle used to carry people or property that has two axles and a gross or registered gross weight over 26,000 pounds, or has three or more axles regardless of weight, or is used in combination where the combined weight exceeds 26,000 pounds. Check your own units against that definition and confirm edge cases with your base jurisdiction.
Returns are quarterly, and IFTA, Inc.’s filing calendar sets the due dates at April 30, July 31, October 31 and January 31 of the following year, moving to the next business day when the date falls on a weekend or holiday. The January 31, 2027 date is a Sunday, so the next business day applies for the fourth-quarter 2026 return. IFTA, Inc. also states that a quarterly return is generally required even if you did not operate in that quarter.
The return needs two inputs per jurisdiction: miles driven and gallons purchased, with receipts. The recordkeeping checklist on the IFTA, Inc. carrier page lists distance by jurisdiction, fuel purchase dates, quantities, fuel type and seller, and supporting receipts, and says to keep supporting records for at least four years from the later of the return due date or filing date. Your bookkeeping can carry the fuel half of that if every fuel entry holds the unit, date, gallons and state.
The arithmetic is simple enough to sanity-check by hand. Take illustrative figures of 10,000 total miles and 1,500 total gallons, which is 6.67 miles per gallon fleet-wide. A truck that ran 2,000 of those miles in one state consumed about 300 gallons there. If you bought 400 gallons in that state, you paid tax on 100 gallons more than you consumed there and earn a credit at that state’s rate. If you bought 200, you owe tax on the 100-gallon shortfall. Tax rates change by jurisdiction and quarter, so take them from the current IFTA rate matrix, never from last quarter’s return.
A workable QuickBooks routine. Use a fuel card or a dedicated fuel clearing account. Import the card statement monthly, code every line to the unit class, and reconcile the card to its statement. Export the mileage-by-state report from your ELD or telematics provider each quarter and keep it with the return.
These are two different obligations with two different weight tests. The IRS Heavy Highway Vehicle Use Tax return, Form 2290, applies to highway motor vehicles with a taxable gross weight of 55,000 pounds or more. Its tax period runs July 1 through June 30, and the return is due by the last day of the month following the month the vehicle was first used on a public highway; changing your registration renewal date does not move it. A truck first used in November 2026 is due by December 31, 2026 under the IRS due-date chart. Record the payment in its own expense account (taxes and licenses, by unit class) so it is not buried in general tax expense.
The treatment depends on whether the driver is your employee or an owner-operator, and that classification is a legal question for your CPA or employment counsel, not a bookkeeping setting.
Employee drivers. Run them through payroll. Per-mile, per-load and percentage pay all work; what matters is that the pay-run expense lands in the driver-pay account and the right class. Per diem and other transportation-worker rules have specific IRS requirements, so route those to your CPA.
Owner-operators and leased units. Enter each settlement as a bill from the owner-operator as vendor, with the gross pay as a line in purchased transportation and each deduction (cash advances, fuel advances, insurance, escrow or maintenance reserve, equipment lease) as a separate negative line or liability. Escrow held for a driver is a liability until it is paid out or applied, and it should show on the balance sheet as such. One bill per settlement keeps the vendor ledger equal to what you owe.
Reconcile bank and fuel card accounts, confirm every fuel line has a unit class and a state, compare invoiced loads to dispatch records, review open settlements and escrow by driver, and run profit and loss by class. If the file is already a tangle of uncoded fuel and mixed accounts, a structured QuickBooks cleanup before the next IFTA quarter costs far less than rebuilding from receipts later, and ongoing bookkeeping keeps it that way. Weighing who should do it? See how to hire a QuickBooks consultant.
This article is general information, not tax or legal advice. IFTA licensing, state tax rates and driver classification vary, so confirm specifics with your base jurisdiction and your CPA.
Do I need IFTA records if my trucks are under 26,000 pounds?
IFTA applies to qualified motor vehicles. A two-axle truck at or under 26,000 pounds that does not run in a combination over that weight generally falls outside the definition, while any vehicle with three or more axles is inside it. Confirm borderline cases with your base jurisdiction.
When are IFTA returns due?
April 30, July 31, October 31 and January 31 of the following year, shifting to the next business day when the date lands on a weekend or holiday.
Do I file an IFTA return for a quarter when a truck sat idle?
IFTA, Inc. says a quarterly return is generally required even if you did not operate during that quarter, so plan to file rather than skip.
Does Form 2290 replace IFTA?
No. Form 2290 is the IRS heavy highway vehicle use tax for vehicles of 55,000 pounds taxable gross weight or more, while IFTA is the fuel tax agreement for qualified motor vehicles over the 26,000-pound or three-axle thresholds. A heavy truck usually has both.
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Founder of Numerawise Solutions, based in Atlanta. Intuit ProAdvisor Gold tier. Former Intuit Technical Support engineer. Has personally led two hundred accounting software conversions for US small businesses since founding the practice. Reachable directly at [email protected].
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