Start with reconciliations on every account through December 31. That means the business checking, any savings, every business credit card, and every fuel card. Comdata, EFS, RTS, WEX, whichever cards your drivers use. Fuel cards are where trucking books usually fall apart because the statements look different from a regular credit card and the transactions are high volume. Every charge needs to be in the books, categorized correctly, and matched to the statement balance. If the ending balance in your accounting software doesn’t match the statement, something is missing or duplicated and your fuel expense is wrong.

Pull December statements for every loan and lease. Tractors, trailers, financed equipment, working capital loans. The lender statement shows the actual principal balance at year end. Your books need to match. The payments you made through the year split between principal and interest, and most bookkeepers get this wrong by coding the entire payment to interest or the entire payment to loan principal. Pull the amortization schedule or the year-end statement and adjust each payment so the principal reduction ties to what the lender shows.

Tie out fuel and mileage records to your IFTA filings and ELD reports. Total gallons purchased on fuel card statements should reasonably match what shows up on IFTA. Miles logged in the ELD should match what you reported. Per diem deductions for drivers depend on days away from home, so make sure you have that documented. If you’re claiming the standard meal allowance for drivers, the day count needs backup.

Pull together W-9s and payment totals for every owner-operator and contractor you paid during the year. Anyone paid $600 or more for services as a non-employee gets a 1099-NEC. Trucking companies often pay owner-operators, dispatchers, lumpers, and mechanics as contractors, and missing 1099s draw penalties. If you don’t have a W-9 on file, request one now rather than in January when everyone is scrambling. Catch-up bookkeeping projects often find a quarter of the contractors were never set up correctly in the first place.

Review insurance. Trucking carries a lot of it. Primary liability, cargo, physical damage, occupational accident, workers’ comp if you have employee drivers. Many policies are paid annually or financed through a premium finance company. If you paid a full year in October, part of that premium covers next year and should sit in prepaid insurance, not be fully expensed. Finance company payments also split between principal and interest. Get the coding right or you’ll overstate or understate expense.

Sort out repairs versus equipment purchases. A $400 brake job is a repair and gets expensed. A $12,000 engine overhaul that extends the life of the truck is a capital improvement and gets depreciated. New tractors, trailers, APUs, and major components are capital assets. Section 179 and bonus depreciation rules can write off a lot of this in the year of purchase, but only if it’s coded as a fixed asset in the first place. If big equipment purchases got dumped into repairs and maintenance, you’re losing the depreciation election and overstating current year expense.

Run a final P&L and look at it with skeptical eyes. Does fuel expense look right for the miles you ran. Are repair costs reasonable. Are there any negative balances. Is the loan balance on the balance sheet close to what the lenders actually say you owe. Books that look obviously wrong to you will look the same to the tax preparer, and fixing them in March costs more than fixing them in December.

If the year is too far gone to clean up on your own, that’s what a cleanup project is for. The team at GMJ handles small business accounting, bookkeeping and tax services in Jacksonville, NC for trucking and freight clients, and the work before tax season is mostly about making sure the return is built on numbers that actually match reality.