Before starting to track route costs, decide whether you want to figure your truck operating costs per mile or per hour. Which one you choose doesn’t matter as long as you’re consistent about it with all trucks. You then need to figure out your operating costs per mile or hour for each truck, incorporating fuel, scheduled maintenance, unscheduled repairs, tires, and fees/permits. (While Trash Flow does not calculate these, there are free resources online that can help you track operating costs.) Once you’ve calculated those costs, click and select Enable Customer Costs. Next, click . Enter a new truck or look up one that was already entered; enter the Cost per mile/hour and click OK.
You then need to set up the routes to track costs correctly; follow these steps on each route for which you wish to run the report. Open the route, right-click, and click . Enter the Truck that runs the route. Make sure the Period is set to how often the route is run (usually weekly). There are buttons for the days of the week; make sure any days on which the route will be run are set to “Yes,” leave all others to “No.” Enter the Pay per Hour of your drivers (you may have to average this out) and enter the number of Man Hours it takes to run the route. Enter the Avg. TONs of trash you dispose of on each run, the Rate per TON that your business pays to dispose of that trash, and the number of Truck Miles/Hours that it takes to run the route. Be sure that Route Profitability Rpt is set to “Yes.” If you don't know how many man hours it takes your drivers to do the route, or the average amount of trash disposed of for each run, you will need to find out before you can reliably track costs. The amount of trash disposed of, in particular, can be hard to pin down; if your drivers go to a landfill or transfer station once the route is done, have them note the weight every day. Compile that information in the office, whether it’s on the collected route sheets or a computer spreadsheet, and figure out an average after a month or so.
Finally, make sure your billing groups are set up so Trash Flow can calculate your revenue. Click . Pull up the bill group of a customer along the route. Make sure that the Period reflects how often these customers are billed. For instance: if most of the customers have a recurring bill code set up on their Rates tab for $30.00 a month, then the period for their bill group should read “Monthly.” To get an accurate report, this must be set correctly for every bill group that includes customers along the route in question. Trash Flow calculates the total revenue each time a route is run by dividing the amount each customer is billed over the period set for their bill group by the number of pickups the customer receives over that same period.
To see how much money you’re making on different routes, click . Pull up a route, set Show Details to “Yes” if desired and print the report. This report gives a summary of your net income each time you run the route.