With all the crazy fuel price spikes since 2008, employee fuel theft seems to be a reoccurring theme for companies that own and operate vehicles. This problem has forced many companies to implement fleet fuel management programs to control their company’s fuel purchases. One option that is often considered is a fleet card.
What is a fleet card? Fleet cards may look like a credit card or personal gas card, but they are very different. Here’s everything you need to know about what a fleet card is and how it works.
What Is A Fleet Card?
A fleet card also known as a fuel card or a gas card is used as a payment method by companies to control and track fuel purchases at the pump.
Any company that operated vehicles ranging from small plumbing companies to large trucking companies use fleet cards to purchase fuel. If you have more than a couple company vehicles to keep track of, fuel cards would definitely be worth looking into.
How Does A Fleet Card Work?
Fleet cards look and operate much like credit cards, however they are not credit cards because they can only be used to purchase fuel and collect different data at the point of purchase than a credit card does.
Here’s how a fleet card works from start to finish.
1) Manager sets up controls to make sure drivers can only purchase fuel when they want them to, such as time frame limits, transaction limits, gallon limits, etc.
3) Driver swipes fleet card at the pump and to enters pin, truck number, and odometer to activate pump
5) Manager receives purchase alerts or e-receipts while the driver is fueling up
6) Online fleet card account collects key data to enable manager and administration to run transaction reports, IFTA quarterly tax reports, etc.
6) Manager and accounts payable receive a detailed fuel invoice
Why Use A Fleet Card?
The two main benefits of using a fleet card are controls that help you eliminate employee theft and reports that save administrative time.
If you own or manage a fleet, you probably deal with employees that fuel their personal vehicles, or drivers who buy donuts, drinks, etc.. Fleet cards have controls that enable managers and business owners to make sure drivers are only purchasing fuel for their company vehicle and eliminate costly employee fuel theft and misuse.
Without an established fuel program, your accounting team spends time collecting fuel receipts and manually entering the data into your system. Fleet cards collect the data for you and with a few clicks you can get transaction reports, IFTA quarterly tax reports, etc..
What Is The Cost Of Using A Fleet Card?
It depends on the fleet card. Some fleet cards run on a retail network and offer pump price. Other fleet cards run on a wholesale network that can offer discounted fuel prices.
There are also other factor to include such as some fleet card companies charge transaction fees, card fees, membership fees, etc. that will drive up the fuel cost.
We hope that answers most of your questions about what is a fleet card. If you have any other questions please contact us or you can also schedule a demo to see how a fleet card works in action.
