How to read your Turo earnings export (and why your books never match)
If you have ever tried to match your bank deposits to your Turo trips, you know the numbers rarely line up. The reason is simple: the export mixes money that is yours with money that is only passing through you. Once you can tell them apart, your books get a lot easier.
This guide is general information, not tax or legal advice. Ask your accountant how to treat each item in your situation.
The two kinds of money in a trip
Every row in the export is one trip, and its total blends two things:
- Revenue you earned: the trip price you set (after discounts), extras such as additional mileage or late-return charges, and fees the platform paid you.
- Pass-through money: amounts that reimburse a cost you already paid, such as tolls and fuel.
Mixing them is the number one reason a host thinks they made more (or less) than they did.
What to look for in each column
The export can arrive in English or Spanish, depending on your account language. The names below are the common ones; yours may differ slightly.
| What it is | Typical wording | How to treat it |
|---|---|---|
| Trip price after discounts | Trip price, Discounts | Income |
| Platform fee | Turo fees, Plan fee | Cost of earning that income |
| Extra usage | Additional usage, Extra distance | Income |
| Late return or improper return charges | Late fee, Improper return | Income (or a recovery of a cost) |
| Toll reimbursement | Tolls | Pass-through: offsets the toll you paid, not revenue |
| Fuel reimbursement | Gas reimbursement, Fuel | Pass-through: offsets the fuel you paid |
| Refuel or convenience fee | Refuel fee, Convenience fee | Income (a fee for the service, separate from the fuel itself) |
| Total earnings | Earnings, Total earnings | The net deposit for the trip, not revenue |
Why the bank deposit is not the trip total
Turo pays you in batches, usually weekly, and a single payout can combine several trips, adjustments and reimbursements. A payout of $800 does not mean you earned $800 in revenue that week.
A practical approach:
- Record each trip's income and fees by trip date.
- Record reimbursements separately, so they offset the matching expense.
- Record the payout as cash arriving, and reconcile it against the trips it covers.
A worked example (illustrative numbers)
Say one trip shows a $300 trip price, $20 of discounts, $45 of platform fees, a $10 refuel fee, $40 of fuel reimbursement and $12 of tolls.
- Income: $300 − $20 + $10 = $290
- Platform fee: $45
- Pass-throughs: $40 fuel and $12 tolls, which offset costs you paid, so they do not belong in revenue.
- Net deposit for the trip: 290 − 45 + 40 + 12 = $297
If you had counted the whole $297 as revenue, you would have overstated income by $52.
Keep the fixed fees consistent
Small recurring fees, like a refuel fee, are easy to mis-file as fuel. Decide once where each one belongs and apply it every time. Consistency matters more than perfection, and it is what your accountant will thank you for.
Doing this automatically
FleetWise reads the Turo export (English or Spanish), separates revenue from pass-throughs, posts balanced entries to a real ledger and reconciles each payout against its trips, so your books and your bank agree.
FleetWise brings your Turo earnings, expenses, tolls and direct bookings into one real set of books.
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