Fuel Card
Fleet management requires control systems to ensure your operations are running seamlessly. To remain functional throughout your business life, you need to constantly review your expenses on spare parts supplies, vehicle service job cards, and other workshop duties.
Aside from your administrative duties in the workshop, you must ensure that your vehicles can make trips without drivers worrying about fuel. Not having enough fuel in your trucks or pool cars can make your operations grind to a halt.
So, you must implement the best fleet management techniques to control your operations and enhance efficiency in your business. You can use fuel cards as a control tool to monitor various operations, like fuel consumption, for your fleet. Your operations will run uninterrupted and remain productive throughout your business.
This article will highlight six main ways a fuel card can make your business operations more efficient.
1. Promotes Accountability
Perhaps, the most crucial part of fleet management is providing accountability to the finance department. You must present your fuel expenses, accompanied by receipts showing particulars of all the fuel transactions, against the budget.
Fuel cards can simplify financial auditors’ work by matching expenses and fuel budgets against each vehicle in your fleet. You need not worry about your business operations since the fuel cards will keep records of your fuel pump transactions. You can then print statements to show how much your business spent on fuel.
Other benefits of using fuel cards include getting discounted prices at the fuel pump, which most gas stations use as customer loyalty incentives.
2. Safety Net For Drivers
Fuel cards can work as your bank credit cards that enable purchasing items on credit. Also, you can use them to keep your money safe while on transit. However, you must control the limits of what fuel cards you can purchase and which vehicle can use the cards. Otherwise, your drivers can misuse the cards on personal items.
Therefore, clearly state the purpose of the fuel cards to your staff and discourage unnecessary expenditure. The fuel cards have innovative safety elements, like a personal pin, to control the card users, and you can set them up to send notifications of all fuel pump transactions.
3. Convenient Travel Partner
If your fleet travels for long distances or unfamiliar roads, the chances of using more fuel are high. Consequently, your truck might empty the fuel tanks along the way, forcing your drivers to park vehicles.
Fuel cards can help them avert such mishaps and continue with the journey in such scenarios. Your drivers can fuel trucks wherever they are, and ensure your operations remain on course as expected.
At the end of the trip, you can review the fuel cards’ statements to determine the fuel consumed by each truck. You can budget better for long delivery trips and bill your customers accordingly.
4. Cost Cutting Tool
Overheads in fleet management can be challenging to support and may frustrate your operations. You’re constantly reviewing quotations to get the best prices for spare parts, engine oil, fuel, and other workshop functions that contribute to your business operations.
Fuel cards are data sources that can help cut costs. Most fuel cards, such as the Texaco fuel card, offers an online portal to track fuel consumption, pricing, and volumes. Such data will allow you to identify vehicle problems by looking at the fuel consumption rate, perhaps, because fuel is the constant cost centre that makes your fleet move from your business yard to make deliveries.
5. Cutting Unnecessary Paperwork
Having fuel cards for your fleet is a time-saver, and it reduces the long list of approvals to get tank refills. It streamlines your operations by centralization of authority to approve fuel refill matters.
Also, it promotes delegation of approval duties to your juniors to avoid delays in your operations. For instance, drivers can refill their trucks without filling in job cards and other manual entry records for accountability. Fuel cards cut unnecessary paperwork previously needed for fleet management.
6. Promotes Flexibility
Fuel cards give you access to fuel refill stations that can help your truck in time of need. Your truck drivers can get a refill at their convenience, provided they produce a valid fuel card.
Also, the drivers can adapt to trip changes on the road by stopping at the nearest refill stations. The fuel cards give them peace of mind, knowing that they can reach their destinations on time.
Conclusion
Fuel cards offer dynamic options to your fleet management and can take the headache of looking for the cheapest fuel station for a refill. Your business operations can run seamlessly by ensuring that your fleet has the correct fuel type, consumption rates, and budgets. However, you must take control measures to avoid misuse by your staff.
