Companies in the shipping and transportation sectors may spend a disproportionately large amount of money on fuel annually. Some travel-related enterprises and any firm that uses delivery drivers fit this description. Another great example is a limo service or a business that offers airport transportation.
Companies that go through a lot of petrol each year might benefit from fleet management fuel cards since they streamline the payment process for employees and provide useful data on how much is spent on gasoline.
Signing up for a fleet management fuel card might be the perfect choice if your company spends a lot of money on petrol and you want to make tracking this expenditure significantly easier.
Fleet Management Fuel Card—What Are They?
Fleet fuel cards, also known as fleet management fuel cards, simplify the process of refueling and maintaining a company’s fleet of cars. Fleet cards allow businesses to provide their drivers easy access to a wide range of services, including fuel and repairs, while they’re on the road.
A fuel card issued by a fleet management company is a credit card that drivers are required to keep with them at all times. Credit cards will be issued to workers so that they may pay for petrol and other approved expenses, and employers will have full access to all transaction details in real-time.
What is The Function of Fuel Cards in Fleet Management?
It makes sense for a company owner to sign up for a fleet management fuel card in order to streamline operations, save costs associated with fuel and maintenance, and increase profitability. Avoid the hassle of manually tallying your workers’ petrol and maintenance expenditures by applying for fleet fuel cards for them.
With the monitoring and tracking features that come standard on fleet management fuel card, you can keep tabs on everything your drivers spend while on the road. Alarms may be placed on fleet fuel cards, which can notify employers immediately of any suspicious activity, such as unauthorized usage. In addition to the standard benefits, like points or discounts at gas stations, many of these cards provide a variety of bonuses that can further increase your savings.
Workers who have access to a fleet fuel card can use it to buy petrol and other approved items, such as routine vehicle maintenance.
Who Can Acquire a Fleet Fuel Card?
Individual customers are unable to apply for fleet fuel cards since they are only available to businesses. Since these cards are designed for businesses that need to monitor and manage gas expenditures and vehicle maintenance across a fleet, individuals generally wouldn’t want to use them anyhow. To maintain tabs on the upkeep and costs associated with a single rig, a one-person shipping or transportation consulting firm wouldn’t need elaborate software.
In any case, there is no shortage of credit cards that provide rebates for petrol purchases. There is no annual charge for many of the top gas credit cards for individuals and corporations.
Why Businesses Should Use a Fleet Fuel Card
An invaluable and flexible option, a business fuel card provides an all-in-one answer to a variety of interconnected issues.
To begin, drivers and management alike waste a lot of time on manual gasoline expenditure tracking. Despite spending many hours on tedious data entry, drivers must gather and submit receipts (because there’s always the possibility of human mistakes). The second issue is that management spends more time using spreadsheet software to make sense of this data, whether it’s to generate reports, analyze driver spending, or assess expenditures for problems like theft or abuse.
Traditional methods of reporting vehicle expenses need additional man-hours without providing a dynamic tool for early detection of spending problems.
Businesses may save time and money by using fuel cards, which upload data automatically when drivers make purchases. This information can then be seen, analyzed, and utilized to create unique reports from any computer or mobile device with internet access.
Automatic Problem Detection
A corporate fuel card has capabilities that may surprise you. With the data provided by your drivers’ cards, the most sophisticated cards will include near-real-time analytic capabilities.
In a nutshell, these qualities can aid in the following:
- Identifying anomalous gasoline expenditures and raising the alarm.
- Avoiding costly breakdowns, delays, and extra fuel use by keeping an eye out for potential maintenance problems before they occur. Many maintenance faults can be detected in advance of a catastrophic breakdown if you look for automobiles that use more gas than their odometer reading indicates.
- Identify fuel usage or inefficiency immediately, not months later.
However, there is more to a business fuel card than just streamlined record-keeping; it also gives companies more oversight of card spending without restricting drivers’ access to fuel.
Your vehicle expenditure reporting system may go from a manual data gathering drudgery to instantaneous tracking, data analysis, and management toolset with the help of a high-quality business fuel card, which will not only enable more efficient and granular data collection.
Using a business fuel card, a company may limit not only the overall amount spent but also the types of travel costs that can be made with the card. Restricting a card’s use to specific days of the week, periods of the day, or locations might also be helpful.
Altogether, these capabilities not only make it much easier to keep tabs on car costs but also assist mitigate some of the more tangible threats to budgets, such as fuel theft.
Fuel Cards Can Help Prevent Gasoline Theft
Fuel is an essential cost for a wide range of organizations, both big and small, and theft poses a serious risk to all of them. There are several different contexts in which fuel theft happens. One tool that can help put a stop to it all is a business fuel card.
- Inappropriate usage of a fuel card might result in the driver filling up their own vehicle at the company’s cost or in someone else gaining access to their unattended vehicle. Misuse of company fuel cards is greatly simplified by technologies like real-time mileage and fuel expense tracking, predetermined limitations on gasoline and driver’s license numbers.
- If your credit card is lost or stolen, the fraudulent charges may not show up on your statement for weeks or months. In addition to real-time monitoring, other benefits of business fuel cards include automated issue detection, individualized spending caps, and prompt deactivation for misplaced or stolen cards.
- A common method of fuel theft involves siphoning off the fuel directly after it has been purchased. A fuel card may not be able to stop siphoning, but it can assist in immediately detecting the problem through mileage analysis.
Tips for Defending Against Fuel Theft
- Don’t leave your gas cap unlocked and your car keys lying around.
- Always park cars in well-lit, secure garages or driveways.
- Instruct workers about the hazards of gasoline theft and the correct use of fuel cards.
- To ensure that everyone using a fuel card is following the correct procedures, use rewards and punishments as needed.
- Extra safeguards are provided by fuel level monitors, anti-siphoning hardware, and anti-theft equipment.
How to Get the Most Out of Your Business Fuel Card by Picking the Best Service Provider
It’s important to do your research before settling on a business fuel card supplier. If it doesn’t have the characteristics necessary, a business fuel card is just a glorified credit card. If you’re considering a certain service provider, be sure to inquire about how their solution will enable the following advantages.
A Benefits Checklist for Business Fuel Cards
- Reporting of Gas Costs Can Now Be Done Mechanically. With a fuel card, you won’t need to spend time inefficiently updating spreadsheets or making reports; you’ll have all the information you need come tax time; and you won’t have to go through your old invoices to input the information (while simultaneously collecting detailed spending information that is impossible with a standard credit card).
- Better Control. Managers should be able to control fuel cards remotely from a computer or mobile device, as well as impose spending caps on drivers, see detailed spending reports by employees or vehicles, and monitor fuel levels.
- Avoid taking unnecessary risks. A fuel card may greatly reduce fuel theft by alerting the firm to any suspicious purchases made with the card.
- Convenience for the Driver. In the future, chauffeurs shouldn’t have to manually add up their expenses or log their distance.
- Actionable Data. With the use of advanced data analysis tools, fuel cards may be used to keep tabs on trends and spot potential savings before they become a problem.
When looking at several options for business fuel cards, it’s important to bear in mind the following essential details:
- When running a business, how many automobiles do you need? Can you tell me the total number of motorists? The number of fuel cards you’ll need to purchase can only be calculated with this data in hand. Cards might be linked to either drivers or cars, depending on how you run your business.
- In general, how many gallons per month do you spend on gas? There are commercial fuel cards that provide savings based on the total amount of gasoline purchased.
- What fuel do you typically use, and why? Additional savings may be available with a branded business fuel card.
- Last but not least, when picking a card, you should think about whether or not the supplier has a tried and true method for a quick and painless deployment for your company, in addition to the underlying technological capabilities and features.
Bottom Line
Common fleet cards may only be used at a limited number of participating gas stations and shops. Some fleet fuel cards, for instance, are designed for use only at BP or Speedway stations. Some fleet fuel cards are only good at a limited number of truck stops across the country or can only be used with a certain fuel brand.
There are a variety of incentives that come with fleet fuel cards that may increase their value to any company.
Consider the following extra benefits of fleet fuel cards for your business: fraud loss coverage incentives on fuel transactions, fuel savings, business identity protection, maintenance discounts; roadside assistance; and more.