What changed
International Registration Plan (IRP) jurisdictions audit apportioned registrants to test whether the distance reported on the registration application is supported by the carrier's records.
IRP, Inc. advises that a carrier must keep the records supporting reported distance for the current registration year and the three preceding registration years, covering all travel by each apportioned vehicle, including empty and deadhead miles. IRP members have balloted changes to the Plan's audit and record-retention provisions (for example, Ballot 2025.03), so confirm the current requirement in the Plan text at irponline.org. Audit findings often turn on whether the ELD or GPS state-line data, fuel receipts, and dispatch logs reconcile.
What auditors look at
Mileage by jurisdiction reported on the IRP renewal vs the underlying source documents. The auditor sample-tests trips against drivers' trip sheets or ELD reports.
Fuel receipts that don't match the dispatch log timing are a red flag - the auditor reads these as evidence the trip records aren't being maintained contemporaneously. Maintaining clean fuel receipts in chronological order is a low-effort, high-impact audit-prep step.
How to prep proactively
Run an internal mileage reconciliation quarterly. Pick a week of operations and reconcile reported miles to ELD and fuel receipts. Discrepancies are easier to fix three months out than two years later during an audit.
Centralize records in a single system. Carriers with ELD reports in one system, fuel receipts in another, and dispatch logs in a third often fail audit reconciliation simply because they can't produce documents quickly enough.
What to do next
Start a 90-day internal IRP-audit drill. Imagine the auditor arrives next quarter - pull a sample week from the prior year and reconstruct the records. The exercise surfaces gaps before the real audit. Our /guides/irp-registration-complete-guide page walks through audit prep in detail.
Source: IRP, Inc., record requirements for IRP accounts: http://support.irponline.org/what-are-some-record-requirements