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Your Real Hourly as a Delivery Driver: Spreadsheet Formulas for Gas, Mileage and Tax

#excel #spreadsheet #productivity #tutorial

Every delivery app shows you a number per hour. It's the gross: pay plus tips divided by time online. It ignores the car. I built a spreadsheet for gig drivers that works out the real number, and these are the formulas behind it. They work in Excel and Google Sheets.

Want the quick version for one shift? The free real hourly calculator works on your phone: pay, hours and miles in, real hourly and tax set-aside out.

One row per shift

Keep the inputs small so you actually fill them in after a shift:

Date App Hours online Trips Pay Tips Bonus Miles

If you multi-app, use one row per app for the same shift and split the hours. Everything else is a formula:

Total      = Pay + Tips + Bonus
Per hour   = Total / Hours
Per mile   = Total / Miles
Per trip   = Total / Trips
Deduction  = Miles × mileage rate
Day        = TEXT(Date, "ddd")
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TEXT(date,"ddd") gives "Mon", "Tue" and so on. That one column gives you a best-days table later with no extra work.

Gross hourly vs real hourly

Real hourly takes off what the car costs you: gas, repairs, washes, the business part of your phone. Put those on an Expenses tab with an amount and a business %. A phone used 60% for driving goes in at 60%.

The business part of all expenses in a date window:

=SUMPRODUCT((Date>=Start)*(Date<End)*Amount*((Pct="")+Pct))
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(Pct="")+Pct is a small trick: if the % cell is empty it counts as 1 (100%), otherwise it uses the %. That saves an IF inside the array.

Then:

Real per hour = (Earnings - business expenses) / Hours
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With sample data, a month that shows $24.00 gross came out at $18.67 real. Drivers who never run this number often take shifts that lose money once gas is counted.

The mileage rate trap

In the US you can deduct either actual car costs or the standard mileage rate (72.5¢ a mile for 2026 in this sheet; check the current rate). With the standard rate, gas, repairs and insurance are already inside it. You can't deduct them again.

So the sheet treats expenses two ways:

  • For real hourly: every cost counts. It's money you spent.
  • For tax: only things outside the mileage rate count, such as phone, bags, parking and tolls.

A Setup table marks each expense type "Yes" or "No" for deductible, and the Expenses tab looks it up:

=IF(INDEX(DeductibleCol, MATCH(Type, TypeCol, 0))="Yes", Amount * Pct, 0)
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A rough self-employment tax estimate 

Taxable profit = Earnings - mileage deduction - other deductible costs
SE tax         = Taxable profit × 92.35% × 15.3%
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The 92.35% is there because SE tax applies to 92.35% of net earnings. Income tax comes on top, so the sheet also has a flat set-aside % you pick yourself (25% is a common start). This is an estimate, not tax advice.

Best days and best app

With the Day column, a weekday breakdown is one SUMIFS per cell:

Hours    = SUMIFS(Hours, Date, ">="&Start, Date, "<"&End, Day, "Fri")
Earnings = SUMIFS(Total, Date, ">="&Start, Date, "<"&End, Day, "Fri")
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Divide the two for per hour by day. Do the same with App in place of Day to see which app pays best per hour and per mile. They often differ: rideshare can win per hour and lose per mile.

The template

If you want this ready-made, with a dashboard for any month, results per app, best days, a 2,000-row shift log, expenses with business %, and a tax estimate, it is here: Gig Driver Tracker (Excel + Google Sheets).

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