Tracking Tools I Use For Profit And Loss

I wanted to go over some of the important tools that I use daily to keep track of how much money I am actually making.

There are a lot of factors to consider when driving for a ride share company like Uber.

First of all, and most importantly, is am I making money? I use a couple different tools to come to my answer. My primary is a simple milage tracking tool. How many miles am I diving during my shift? I want to know, not only, how many miles I’m driving during a rid – but the total amount of miles and time spent working, even without a passenger.

For this, I use an app called, Millage Logbook. This is a simple app on the google play store that tracks the time I was on the road and the miles that I drove. With the information gathered on this logbook, I can tally time and milage against the driver apps and determine the following:

  • how long in time was I without a customer
  • how many miles and gas I wasted without a customer
  • what areas of the city was I in where I waisted the least amount of time and gas without a customer
  • what areas of the city generated the longest rides

With this information, I can then assess where the best locations are (empirical evidence – not just “oh downtown is busiest”) and establish goals to cut down time between trips.

In addition, this logbook will generate information about expenses:

  • how much money I am spending on gas vs income from rides
  • exactly how many miles of wear and tear and costs associate

This information is not tax related, but a form of weekly and monthly summary of cost and gains. Being an independent contractor, it is important for you to assess your income and expense to ensure that this is a job that you are making money on and if not, either figure out a solution to get you in the black or to move on to a different endeavor.

Using this information to increase profit is vital to success with ride share.

The second most important tool that I use to determine profit/loss and establish goals, is excel. I use a very basic and straightforward excel sheet. I will give examples of this spread sheet in a future post.