What A Fuel Card Really Does

By appearance only a fuel card looks like just another rewards credit card that is marketed for fuel savings. But that’s really the last thing is fuel card is. So what does fuel card do?

To understand what a fuel card does, you must first understand the problem it solves.

Drivers need to buy fuel for the company trucks/vehicles, but how can you manage the payment process?

Now you could hand out cash, but then your driver needs to give you change and a receipt. Multiply that by 10, 100, maybe even 1,000 drivers a day and you start to spend your whole day collecting and entering fuel receipts. Not to mention if you happen to have a driver through a few convenience store purchases on your fuel bill or just plain take the money you’ll start losing money quickly.

Credit card is a little better because you get an online portal to keep track of the transactions, but if you need a 10k-100k monthly credit line to cover your fuel purchases every month and someone decides to make some large purchases on the card you’ve lost big money quickly.

For drivers it’s simple, a fuel card will let your driver purchase at almost any gas station, truck stop, or commercial fueling location. So no matter where you go across the US you can always buy fuel.

For manager’s it’s a little more complex, they need to utilize the tools a fuel card provides to efficiently manager the fuel buying process. Here’s how a fuel card helps a manager control and track every fuel purchase;

1) Fuel Cards Only Allow Drivers to Purchase Fuel
No donuts, no sandwiches, no lost change, etc.. This eliminates 80% of a manager’s headache.

2) Fuel Card Controls Can Limit When, Where, How Much and What Type of Fuel A Driver Can Purchase

Let’s pretend you have a driver name John. He works 7am to 4pm Monday through Friday and drives a diesel truck with a 75 gallon tank. You would limit his fuel card to only work 7am to 4pm and only be able to purchase 75 gallons of diesel per transaction. Now you don’t have to worry about John buying the wrong type of fuel for his personal vehicle, or fueling off the clock.

3) You’ll Receive Fuel Receipts Via Email Immediately After Every Transaction
Fuel receipts enable the manager to see what a driver purchases immediately after the transaction. It’s like you are standing there right with the driver. So in case something does look suspicious you can call the driver to find out what happend or cancel a fuel card immediately to prevent further misuse.

4) Fuel Cards Automate Fuel Reports

Fuel cards collect all fuel transaction data at the pump and spit the data out into reports that can help fleet managers find out operating cost per vehicle, create IFTA reports, etc.

These reports will also save your accounting department a ton of time in creating monthly fuel expense reports. The work is already done, it just need to be downloaded and copied into your accounting software.

Now that you understand what a fuel card does, here’s some results we’ve seen from companies that have implemented a fuel card program into their organization.

Expected Fuel Card Results

• Cut overall fuel cost because you will be cutting out any driver fuel spend misuse or theft
• Manager spends less time handing out cash or credit cards and collecting receipts
• Accounting spends less time creating fuel expense reports
• All data is stored in case a government agency wants to validate your drivers logs
• Scalable program with no more guessing how much and where fuel money is being spent
• From viewing data that wasn’t collected before you may find other ways to improve operational efficiencies such as rerouting drivers