Toll and card charges seen only on the bank
How a transporter posts toll and fuel-card debits that appear only on the bank statement, using suggested journals, card statements and a monthly review.
By Achekam · · 5 min read · For Logistics businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Open a transporter's bank statement and a large share of the lines have no invoice behind them. A toll account tops itself up. A fuel-card provider collects the month's diesel in one debit. A vehicle tracking company, a weighbridge operator and a traffic-fine agency all take their share. Meanwhile, the receipts the drivers were meant to keep are faded slips in a cab, if they exist at all.
These charges are real costs of moving freight, and they are often large ones. The risk is not that they go unrecorded; the bank makes sure they are paid. The risk is that they are recorded badly: lumped into "sundry", coded to the wrong vehicle, or posted without the support you need for VAT and for the auditor. This article covers how to post them properly when the bank line is the first thing you see.
Charges with no supplier invoice
There are three common kinds:
| Charge | What arrives | Typical support |
|---|---|---|
| Toll account top-ups | A debit when the account balance runs low | The toll operator's account statement |
| Fuel-card settlements | One debit for a period's fills across the fleet | The card provider's statement, often with a tax invoice |
| Small direct debits | Tracking, permits, subscriptions | The provider's monthly invoice or statement |
None of these will arrive as a neat supplier invoice before the money goes. You learn about them from the bank. So the process has to start there and work backwards to the support.
Bringing the statement in
Achekam imports bank statements as PDF, CSV, Excel, OFX, QIF, MT940 or CAMT.053, and checks each import so that the opening balance plus the movements equals the closing balance. That check matters for a transporter with hundreds of small debits: a missing page or a duplicated import shows up immediately as a balance that does not work.
Where a statement is a scanned PDF, an AI model can read it if the workspace has one configured, and every amount it reads must appear on the page.
Suggested journals a person approves
Bank lines are matched by suggestion, and a person accepts each match. A line that is not yet in the books, such as a toll top-up, becomes a suggested journal, and a person approves it before it posts.
That approval step is where the coding happens. A toll debit should go to tolls, a fuel-card settlement to fuel, and if you track costs by vehicle, route or customer, the approver is the person who makes sure that happens. Nobody else will catch a fuel-card settlement coded to repairs once it is posted.
A reconciliation completes only when there is no difference left or every leftover line is explained. That rule suits a transporter: you cannot close the reconciliation with toll lines still sitting in limbo.
Splitting a combined debit
A fuel-card settlement covers every vehicle and sometimes more than one kind of cost. If you want fuel by vehicle in your management accounts, the single bank line has to become several postings. Use the card provider's statement to split it. Where the suggested journal cannot carry the split you need, post a manual journal: Achekam refuses one that does not balance or that is dated in a closed month, and a posted journal is corrected only by a reversal, so check the split against the statement before you post.
Statements from the card provider as support
The bank line proves the money left. It does not prove what it bought. For each card and toll account, download the provider's monthly statement and, where the provider issues one, its tax invoice.
Those documents do three jobs:
- They support the split between vehicles, drivers and cost types.
- They are the evidence for any input VAT your accountant agrees you may claim. The VAT rules on fuel and tolls differ between South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya, so do not assume; ask.
- They let you check the fills themselves: a card used on a weekend for a vehicle that was parked, or two fills an hour apart, is worth a question.
Uploading statements to Financial Intake
Supplier invoices and receipts uploaded to Financial Intake become suggested postings. AI can suggest the posting from the document; a person approves and posts it. For card and toll providers that send a proper monthly invoice, uploading it to Financial Intake gives you a posting proposal built from the document itself, with the document attached.
Be careful not to post the same cost twice: once from the bank line and once from the uploaded statement. Agree a rule for each provider. A common one is that the bank line carries the posting and the statement is filed as support; another is that the uploaded statement carries the posting and the bank line is then matched against it. Either works. Mixing them does not.
Monthly review of unmatched lines
Before each month is closed, look at what is still unmatched. AccountingTools' walk-through of the bank reconciliation process explains how a business compares its cash records with the bank statement and adjusts its books, and the same discipline applies here.
A short checklist for the transport side:
- every toll top-up posted to tolls, with the account statement filed;
- every fuel-card settlement split as you require and supported by the card statement;
- no small debit left in a suspense or sundry account without a note;
- any unusual fill or toll pattern raised with the driver's manager.
Drivers' own cash spend on the road is a different problem with its own controls; see drivers' trip floats. Costs that belong to the month but have not yet hit the bank are handled by accrual, covered in accruing carrier costs at month end.
Getting started
List every account that debits your bank without an invoice: toll, fuel card, tracking and the rest. For each, set up how you will get its statement each month, decide whether the bank line or the statement carries the posting, and name the person who approves the suggested journals.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
