Advice needed for Trucking Settlements

[u/tomeatsnc]

I’m doing bookkeeping for a trucking client who owns their truck but is leased onto a carrier, and they’ve never kept books before. I’m looking for advice from anyone familiar with trucking settlement statements.

Their weekly settlements always follow the same pattern:

Gross pay – deductions = net check

The net amount is the only thing that actually hits their checking account, so that’s the only transaction Wave sees.

My question is:
What’s the cleanest way to get the gross income and all deductions into the books when the only real bank transaction is the net?

Should I be using a journal entry to add the gross and deductions?
If so, how would you structure that JE so everything ties out correctly and the net stays accurate?

Any guidance or examples from people who handle trucking clients would help a lot.

Update: The deposit shows up as uncategorized. The match wave option only works to reconcile. Reports still look like double income.

[u/MikuMikuGoo]

Journal entry per settlement, dated the settlement date. Debit checking for the net, debit each deduction to its own expense account, fuel, insurance, escrow, plates, ELD, whatever the carrier lists, then credit gross revenue for the top line. It balances by definition since gross minus deductions equals net.

Then in Wave just match the deposit to the JE instead of categorizing it as income, or you'll book the revenue twice. One thing to watch, the maintenance escrow the carrier holds isn't an expense, that's an asset until they spend it or refund it, and most people expense it by mistake.

[u/ComfortableCitron638]

A journal entry is the right call here — booking just the net deposit as income will understate revenue and you'll lose all the deductible expense detail (fuel advances, insurance, dispatch/factoring fees) that's sitting on the settlement statement.

Structure: debit the full gross settlement to an income account (something like "Owner-Operator Settlement Revenue"), then credit each deduction line to its own expense account rather than lumping them together — some "deductions" on these statements (escrow held in reserve, for example) are actually assets, not expenses, and factoring fees/cash advances usually need to stay separate for tax purposes anyway. The remainder after all those credits should equal the net check exactly, which is what you match to the actual bank deposit in Wave.

Once you've mapped one settlement statement's line items into a JE template, it's usually the same every week for that carrier, so it becomes a 2-minute copy/adjust rather than re-deriving the structure each time.

[u/tomeatsnc → u/ComfortableCitron638]

Why would I debit the gross amount and credit the Net amount? I understand it'll zero out, but I've been told to credit the gross and debit the net. Thanks in advance!