Businesses that spend much on fuel, such as transportation or shipping, can save with fleet fuel cards. The advanced reporting and tracking they provide eliminate the need to reimburse drivers or collect receipts and streamline back-office processes.
Some cards also offer additional benefits like perks that can save the business money or reward its employees. Learn more about a fleet cards, why you might need one, and how they work.
Reduce Fuel Costs
Fleet fuel cards allow businesses to track, manage, and control spending. They also offer perks like rebates and detailed reporting features that help businesses save money on fuel.
Additionally, a fleet fuel card often features vehicle monitoring tools that use data from a fleet’s transaction records to generate reports and alerts about potential areas for improvement. For example, implementing rigorous preventative maintenance practices and encouraging drivers to drive responsibly can reduce vehicles’ premature wear and tear, negatively impacting fuel efficiency and leading to costly repairs and maintenance issues.
Additionally, reducing the time your fleet idling can drastically reduce wasted fuel. Fleet managers can implement various strategies to reduce idle time, including reducing the number of vehicles in the fleet, partnering with other construction companies to share resources and equipment, and establishing strict operating procedures and schedules.
Save Money on Maintenance
Fleet fuel cards can help you save money on maintenance costs. Many offer a rebate on all gas purchases and provide a wide network of truck stops. They also offer robust expense tracking and control, allowing you to set spending limits by card and generate accounting and expense reports. Some even include telematics tools that let you see each vehicle’s location and fuel level in real time.
Choosing the right card program is essential. A good one will require drivers to enter identifying information for every purchase, like a PIN and current odometer reading, which makes it easy to track who spends what and where. Some programs also limit specific types of fuel and days/times when purchasing is authorized, which helps reduce theft and unauthorized use of company funds.
Using a fleet fuel card can also lower your administrative burden by eliminating the need for receipts. You can easily monitor your entire operation through a single account and receive a monthly detailed invoice. By analyzing the data, you can spot opportunities to optimize routes and address driver behavior impacting your bottom line, like unnecessary idling or hard acceleration.
Track Your Expenses
With fleet fuel cards, all charges are consolidated into one monthly invoice that is easy to review and analyze. This allows you to gain full visibility of your company’s spending to know exactly where those precious company funds are going.
Some cards also offer tools that help you track vehicle and driver performance to make strategic decisions for your business. You can run purchase alert reports based on parameters you set, get transaction details for any specific vehicle or driver, and even use the odometer report to determine when your truck may need maintenance.
In addition, some cards offer a way to build up your business credit by reporting consistent and positive payment behavior to the business credit bureaus. With features like a secure PIN and geolocation technology, these cards can help you prevent fraud or misuse of your company’s funds.
Improve Your Credit Score
Fleet fuel cards offer perks that go beyond just saving on gas. Many include discounts on maintenance and services, vehicle lubricants, truck accessories, and hotels. Some also have advanced online expense tracking and reporting that help with accounting, budgeting decisions, and insights into fuel consumption and mileage per gallon.
A fleet card helps you manage your business expenses and improve your credit score. When you pay your bill on time, your payments are reported to the credit bureaus, and help you build or maintain a strong business credit profile.
Most fuel cards also require a driver ID number or PIN at the pump to prevent fraud and misuse. They also feature robust security measures such as transaction controls and a dashboard that makes it easy to identify patterns of abuse and take corrective action. The ability to revoke or reassign cards quickly and easily helps keep your business safe. When you use a fleet fuel card, keeping receipts and filling out expense reports can become a thing of the past. All transactions automatically load into one central platform, streamlining accounting and making it simple for drivers to access data.
Give Your Drivers Extra Perks
Fleet fuel cards provide many benefits that help your drivers save money and run their vehicles more efficiently. For starters, these cards allow you to itemize expenses, ensuring that all the costs of operating each vehicle are captured on one bill for easy reference and analysis. You can also set spending limits on each card to ensure that your company funds are used wisely, and you have control over the types of purchases that can be made on a given card.
The best cards will also simplify tedious accounting tasks like IFTA reporting. They can automatically associate each purchase with a driver, vehicle, and jurisdiction for quarterly reporting, so you never have to chase down receipts again.
Some of the most popular fleet fuel cards also offer extra discounts and expense management features, so it is worth checking out the options available before deciding which card suits your needs. With low monthly fees, no hidden charges, and great fuel rebates, these cards are well worth considering if you want to streamline your business’s fuel expenses.
