Get the Most Out of Fuel Expense Reporting
Keeping a record of your fleet fuel management is critical to making business decisions—from budgets to staffing. However, it can be a very manual process between all the trip reports and receipts. When you multiply that across all your drivers, each of their trips, and total fuel transactions, you’re suddenly staring down a mountain of paperwork.
By implementing a fleet fuel card, these previously labor-intensive steps are automated. No longer are the days of hanging folders and boxes of paperwork to reimburse drivers.
Online reports deliver granular detail like tracking, mileage, fuel economy and cost, tax, and merchant name and location. This information is great to have, but how do you know what to look for? Here’s how to get the most out of your fuel expense reporting.
Suspicious Volumes or Incorrect Type of Gas Purchased
Establishing your fleet’s monthly volume average and type of gas purchased is the first step in spotting fraudulent behaviors in the future. Without a baseline, it’s hard to determine what’s normal and what’s unusual.
Look out for spontaneous events like drastic peaks in usage or unapproved gas purchases. For example, if your trucks require diesel fuel, but you spot a purchase for regular gas, you can quickly determine it’s an unauthorized transaction and track down the culprit. Once you confirm transactions were performed for personal use, professional consequences are justified and can be implemented.
Accurate, Relevant Data in Real Time
No employer wants to distrust their workers, but it’s important to know that between 1.5% and 3% of commercial fuel budgets is dedicated to theft. With automated reporting, you’ll get instant notifications to evaluate transactions as soon as they happen, not weeks after.
Instant access to real-time data reduces the amount of unauthorized purchases and ensures your total spend is never inflated. As a fleet manager, you have complete control and insights in to how each dollar is spent, what is purchased, and by whom within seconds.
However, it’s easy to get lost in a sea of numbers. Your report should only populate the numbers that matter to you. Whether you need a quick scan or an in-depth analysis of your overall spending, customize and filter your report to get the answers you need.
Accidental Transactions and Errors
Although theft is a very real threat to each fleet, accidents can happen either by human error or technological malfunctions. Before fleet cards, these blunders had to be reviewed across hundreds of sheets of paper, which is no guarantee that they’ll even get flagged, much less corrected.
The best way around this is by automating the data in to one, consolidated report. This makes it easier for fleet managers to catch duplicate transactions or missing information, all in one place. Plus, it saves you paper!
Choosing the Right Fleet Fuel Card Partner
Fuelz, the industry leader in fleet fuel cards, was built by a petroleum company, not a credit card company. Fuelz offers purchase controls, comprehensive online reporting, exception alerts, discounts and more to fleets of any size. Contact us today to get started or call 1-855-GO-FUELZ to speak to a specialist.
