Book the call the day it runs, whoever pays
Every job that clears the dispatch board becomes a revenue entry the same day, coded to the driver who ran it, the truck that rolled and the payer who owes it. Dispatch platforms like Towbook already hold that detail; we map it into QuickBooks Online instead of letting it die in a report nobody reconciles. A cash roadside call, a motor-club job at contract rates and an accident tow billed to an insurer are three different receivables with three different collection speeds, and the books keep them apart from the first entry.
Per-driver revenue is not a vanity report. Percentage pay, fuel habits and damage complaints all attach to a name, and the operator who can put revenue per driver beside cost per driver settles the Friday argument with a printout. Motor-club settlements get reconciled line by line against the calls you actually ran, because club adjustments and missed calls are quiet leaks that only a matched list will catch.
| Payer | How we book it | When the cash lands |
|---|---|---|
| Motorist, card or cash | Revenue on the day of the call, tied to the dispatch record | Same day, reconciled to the terminal batch |
| Motor club | Each call at contract rate, settlement matched line by line | On the club's cycle, net of adjustments |
| Insurer: accident tow and storage | Invoiced at release, receivable aged by insurer | Weeks to months later, often after negotiation |
| Impound storage | Accrued per vehicle, per day, at the posted rate | At release or lien sale, and not always in full |
Storage earns daily, so the books accrue daily
A vehicle sitting in the compound is earning the posted daily rate whether or not anyone has been invoiced yet, so each unit in the yard carries an accrued receivable that grows with the calendar. We keep a days-in-yard ledger per vehicle, which means month-end revenue includes storage earned, not just storage billed, and the yard's contribution stops hiding inside a lump at release.
The honesty check is collectability. Notice deadlines under Ontario's Repair and Storage Liens Act can limit how much storage a lien actually secures when the owner is never notified, and an abandoned vehicle sold under lien rarely clears the full accrual. So long-stay vehicles carry an allowance, reviewed monthly, and the write-down happens on paper before it happens at auction.
The insurer receivable, aged by name
Accident tows and the storage behind them are usually paid by an insurer, and insurers pay on their own clock, frequently after an adjuster has worked the invoice over. We age those receivables by insurer, not in one blended bucket, so the slow payers are named and the follow-up list writes itself. Since 2024, the itemized invoices the Towing and Storage Safety and Enforcement Act requires have a bookkeeping bonus: a line-by-line invoice that matches the dispatch record is much harder for an adjuster to shave.
When a bill does get negotiated down, we issue a credit note rather than letting the shortfall vanish into a bad-debt guess, so revenue and the HST already remitted both adjust correctly. The tax mechanics of that timing difference sit on our towing tax pages; the accounting job is making sure the file supports them.
Percentage payroll, fuel cards and a finished year-end
Our End-to-End Accounting service puts bookkeeping, payroll, financial reporting and tax filing under one roof, which for a tow operation means drivers on per-call percentages paid through real payroll: source deductions remitted on schedule, T4s in February, WSIB coverage kept current alongside. Fuel cards are coded to the truck that burned the diesel, Dext captures the parts, tire and yard invoices, and the 13% HST on every charge line flows into the return from books that already balance.
Because the file stays current all year, year-end is an event, not a season: the numbers roll into the T2 through Corporate Tax Filing with no catch-up billing. We work with tow operators across Mississauga and the GTA, from multi-truck impound operations to a single flatbed, where CPA Quick Support at $99 a month keeps a CPA on call between filings. Every engagement starts with a free 15-minute discovery call and a written quote.
