TMS integrations that matter for US carriers

Why integrations decide whether a TMS saves time

A TMS saves time by making each fact enter the business once. A load's miles come from the truck's ELD, its fuel from the fuel card, its paperwork from the driver's phone or the customer's email, and its invoice flows to accounting without retyping. Every integration that is missing becomes a person copying numbers between screens, and every copy is a chance for a mistake. When you compare systems, the list of integrations matters less than how deep each one goes.

For each integration below, there are three questions worth asking: what moves (which records and fields), which way (into the TMS, out of it, or both) and how often (live, every few minutes, nightly, or when someone clicks import).

ELD and telematics

Every interstate carrier subject to hours-of-service rules records duty status on an electronic logging device that meets the technical rules in 49 CFR Part 395, Subpart B, and must keep those records and supporting documents for at least six months (49 CFR 395.8(k)). The ELD therefore already holds data your TMS needs.

What a good ELD integration moves into the TMS:

• Trucks and drivers, so you do not maintain two lists.
• Location, so dispatch and customers can see where a load is.
• Hours-of-service logs, so you can review violations and available hours from the office.
• Miles by jurisdiction, the backbone of the IFTA return.

How to test it: connect your own ELD account, then check that a truck's state miles for last month in the TMS match the ELD's own IFTA report. Ask what happens when a driver logs in on the wrong truck, and how you are told if the connection stops.

In TruckerPro, ELD connections to Samsara, Motive and Geotab are included on every carrier plan. The ELD contributes jurisdiction miles to IFTA reports, an hours-of-service audit reviews the logs against Part 395 with a citation for each finding, and from the Mobile plan trucks can be imported directly from the ELD.

Fuel cards

Fuel purchases are the other half of IFTA, and often a driver deduction too. IFTA covers the 48 contiguous US states and the ten Canadian provinces; each quarter your return reports miles and taxable fuel by jurisdiction. A fuel card integration should bring in each transaction with date, location (state), gallons, product, truck or card number and amount. Ask whether the import maps transactions to trucks automatically, what happens to purchases outside the network that drivers pay for by other means, and whether reefer fuel is kept apart from road fuel.

How to test it: import last month's fuel file and compare gallons by state with your card provider's statement. TruckerPro imports fuel card transactions from the Operate plan and uses them, with ELD miles, to build IFTA reports by jurisdiction.

Accounting: QuickBooks, Xero and others

The goal is to stop entering invoices twice, not to run two sets of books. Decide which system is the source of truth for each record: the TMS usually owns loads and invoices; accounting owns the general ledger, bank reconciliation and taxes. Then ask:

• Do invoices go from the TMS to accounting, with the customer and line items intact?
• Do customer payments recorded in accounting come back so the TMS shows the load as paid?
• Do bills, such as carrier payables or owner-operator settlements, sync too?
• What happens when someone edits an invoice in accounting after it synced?

How to test it: send three invoices from the demo account to a test company file and check them line by line. TruckerPro syncs with QuickBooks or Xero from the Mobile plan; on the Broker Everything plan, Wave and Sage are also available once activated.

Factoring

If you factor receivables, the factor needs the invoice, the rate confirmation, the bill of lading and the signed POD for each load. A factoring integration should send that package without someone assembling PDFs by hand, and record what the factor advanced and what it later remitted, so receivables stay correct. Ask whether your specific factoring company is supported or whether the integration is a generic export you upload yourself. TruckerPro includes factoring from the Operate plan for carriers.

Document intake: rate confirmations and PODs

Much of a carrier's paperwork arrives as email attachments and phone photos. Useful document intake reads an emailed rate confirmation and drafts the load from it, and attaches a driver's POD photo to the right load so billing can start the same day. Ask what a person still has to check, because no reader is perfect, and how documents are matched to loads. TruckerPro's WhatsApp and email dispatch, from the Mobile plan, takes in rate confirmations and PODs that way.

EDI for shippers and brokers

Large shippers and many brokers exchange loads through EDI, using standard ASC X12 transaction sets:

EDI is usually set up per trading partner, and each partner has its own rules about codes and timing. Ask how long onboarding a new partner takes, who maps the fields, and whether a 204 becomes a load on your board without retyping. If only one or two customers ask for EDI, a portal or email workflow may serve you until volume justifies it. TruckerPro offers EDI on the Broker Everything plan once activated.

Load boards, mileage and payments

• Load boards. Useful if you book spot freight. Ask whether a booked load becomes a TMS load without retyping, and whether posting your trucks from the TMS is supported.
• Mileage and routing. Practical truck miles drive rates, driver pay per mile and fuel planning. Ask which mileage source the TMS uses and whether it accounts for truck-legal routes.
• Payments. Paying drivers, owner-operators and carriers electronically from the settlement, and collecting from customers online, both cut days off the cash cycle. Ask how payments are reconciled back to the settlement or invoice.

API connection or file import?

An API integration connects the two systems directly: data moves on a schedule or as it happens, with no files in between. A file import means exporting a CSV or spreadsheet from one system and uploading it to the other. API connections are better for data that changes all day, such as ELD locations and hours. File imports are perfectly fine for data that arrives in batches, such as a weekly fuel card statement, as long as the import maps columns for you and flags rows it could not match. The question is not which is more modern, but how much manual work is left and how errors are surfaced.

How to test an integration before you sign

1. Ask for the integration list as "live in production today", separate from "planned".
2. Connect your own account (ELD, fuel card, accounting) in the demo or setup, not a vendor sandbox.
3. Move one real record each way and compare it field by field.
4. Break it on purpose: a truck that is not in the TMS, a duplicate invoice, a fuel purchase with no unit. See what the system does.
5. Ask who you call when it stops working, and how you will find out it stopped.

Our TMS demo questions include the ELD and IFTA questions in a checklist you can take into the call.