This ones for my newbie rideshare workers. A big part of how to be an uber driver, whether you’re dealing with passengers or deliveries, is being able to know how much you’re actually earning, and understanding where the money is going. It didn’t take long for me to start taking a notebook with me when I went online, jotting down miles and order times and all the such. Though useful and accessible to everyone, the pen and paper method of tracking orders and mileage is quite antiquated. You’ll quickly find out that it takes up a great deal of time and does not provide nearly as much information as you need.
This is where spreadsheets come into play. A lot of things became a lot clearer to me when I created my own Uber spreadsheet and arranged my data in a way that answered the questions that I was concerned with: How much should I be setting aside for tax payments? How much am I making per hour as an uber driver? Am I even profitable?
Spending the extra time on the front end to set my sheet up very much enabled me to be aware of key numbers involved in the rideshare gig, such as:
- Average income per order
- Total profit for a working period
- How much it costs to drive a mile
- What I should be putting away for my tax payments
So what’s involved with setting up an effective Uber driver spreadsheet? All of my work is done on Google Sheets with some basic math and scripting knowhow. It’s not hard. Just time consuming. Here’s the key anatomy of a rideshare earning spreadsheet.
The Earnings (duh.)
The bigger portion of your sheet is going to be used on listing out the individual orders you take. I personally like to break up different columns to keep me informed on: The gross payment, the miles, how much I can write off, and the taxable amount of income. Half of these numbers are calculated just based on the first two parameters (gross and miles), utilizing the =sum() and =product() functions built into Google Sheets or Excel.
Your Uber Expenses
This is how we’re going to make sure it’s actually profitable as a driver. Now, first and foremost, PLEASE don’t get confused. Most drivers like to save their time and money on filing and opt for the standard mileage deduction (which varies slightly every year, do your research). Oftentimes this will keep close with, or exceed the actual expenses related to your rideshare activities. This is because the IRS takes a lot of factors into account when calculating this number, including gas costs, maintenance and depreciation. If you are even SLIGHTLY unsure about how to file when it comes to using your car for business purposes, just go for the standard mileage deduction.
With that being said, I usually select any costs associated with my vehicle to be factored into the expenses I want to cover with my rideshare work. This is because I like the idea that my car would essentially be able to pay for itself. So, keeping in mind this isn’t what where bringing to the tax man, I will include things like my full insurance payments, gas purchases, phone bills, etc. That way, having my net income exceed these things, will achieve what I feel is profitable as a driver.
Most of these will be done as a straightforward list, without need for any automated calculations.
Putting The Numbers Together
After identifying and listing things out, you can do different things with these numbers using super basic functions in Google Sheets. We don’t ever do much more than your basic adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. This is also where you can get pretty creative about the data points that you want to know. As I’ve said before, my personal sheet answers a lot of questions for me. This includes keeping me informed on the average value of orders that I accept or the average profit that I make for every mile driven. More importantly, I also keep a running tab of how much I should have put away for the tax season, as well as my overall profit or loss for the month.
Now, I understand that while it may seem useful, it’s still super complicated to set up an informative sheet on your own. That’s why I spent some time this past week putting together something like the sheet that I used to use along with some nice extras that can help visualize the data and keep you on top of things. I even threw in a vehicle maintenance schedule, since now you will be driving much more than you used to. Click here to check it out.