Driver pay & settlements

Driver pay is opt-in per carrier and off by default — a carrier that has never asked for settlements does not find a pay module in its portal. Turn it on under Payroll & Billing → Driver Pay → Pay plans, or from the carrier's own portal. The carrier settles its own drivers; it does not have to ask a dispatcher to.

Plans are effective-dated. Changing how someone is paid creates a new version starting on a later date rather than editing the current one, so a raise never reprints a week that was already settled. A plan for one driver beats the carrier-wide default.

You can type the arrangement in plain language — "50% of what's left after gas, DEF, tolls and oil changes, minus $150 a week of escrow up to $2,000" — and the AI fills the form in for you to check. It saves nothing.

• It echoes back what it understood, in the language you wrote in, so you compare prose to prose.
• It names any assumption it had to make — an unqualified "50/50" becomes % of gross, and it says linehaul was the alternative.
• It flags, in amber, anything it could not express. Per-mile, hourly, salary, per-stop, detention and bonuses are reported rather than approximated: a plan that quietly drops "detention at $20/h" pays less than what was agreed and looks correct doing it.

Expenses attribute by TRUCK, over the days the driver was assigned to it. Fuel is logged against a truck and nobody tags a person on it, so attributing by driver would subtract almost nothing and overpay. Assign drivers to trucks alongside the plan; a truck shared by two drivers on the same day splits that day between them.

Only the categories on the plan are deducted. Everything else on the truck still appears on the statement marked as not deducted, so the driver can see it was considered rather than wonder where it went.

• Advances, chargebacks, damage claims and leases are recovered: a balance that falls to zero and then stops on its own.
• Escrow accrues: a balance held for the driver that rises to a target and stops there.
• Nothing is taken beyond what is owed, and nothing is taken that would make a paycheck negative — the remainder carries to the next settlement and is stated, never written off.
• Where several compete for too little money, the oldest obligation is satisfied first.

A settlement is a draft until approved. Approving stores a snapshot of the plan, the loads and every expense it saw — after that the numbers cannot move. A fuel receipt that arrives for an already-settled week does not change that week; it appears on the next settlement as a correction, priced at the rate the old week was actually paid at.

Fixing a settled period means voiding it with a reason and approving it again. The voided statement is kept as the evidence that explains the corrected one, and any deduction it took is given back so a reissue never charges twice.

A driver opens My pay in his portal and sees the running total for the open week with the arithmetic behind it, plus every past statement — in English, Spanish, Russian or Ukrainian, whichever he reads.

• He can flag the period while it is still open. The objection appears above the numbers on the approver's screen and has to be answered in words he will read.
• He can photograph a receipt he paid for. It attaches to the truck he was on that day; the driver, carrier, truck and who-paid all come from the server, not from him.

Settlements are readable over the REST API and the MCP server, with the frozen lines and not just the totals — see the API & MCP article. FalconaraTMS is the settlement of record, not a payroll processor: it does not withhold tax, file W-2s or move money.