How fuel cards could save you money
Fuel cards can provide a business with more than the ability to just purchase fuel. With a fuel card you can take back control of your business’ fuel spend by setting spending limitations, getting discounts on fuel, increasing your cash flow and more - all helping you to save your business money.
Here’s a look into how fuel cards could help you to save money.
Savings on fuel
Fuel cards can offer savings on fuel and can often mean the price you pay is less than the price you see at the pump. With so many fuel cards available on the market it’s important for you to find the right product, with the pricing option that suits your needs. Pricing options vary from fixed weekly pricing to pump price – some fuel cards even offer discounts off of the pump price at select sites.
With fixed weekly pricing through a fuel card supplier the cost of fuel is set and communicated with you weekly, you pay one price for fuel, so you know for that week exactly how much your drivers will be paying when they fill up at fuel sites. Fuel cards generally offer savings of around two to three pence per litre on the national average pump price which, when multiplied across a fleet of company cars and vans, or a HGV haulier, could amount to significant savings every year. However, they do often restrict where your drivers can fill up with fuel.
Alternatively, some fuel card suppliers offer a ‘pump price’ service. You simply pay the price that you see at the pump. While this leaves the business open to fluctuations in fuel prices and higher charges at motorway service stations, it does offer lots of flexibility. The best of these cards may offer access to low cost supermarket sites or savings on pump pricing at some sites across their network.
Greater control over fuel spend
A key part of how fuel cards can help you to save money is through providing you with greater control of your business’ fuel spend. This can be done through having access to online account management tools with 24/7 access, so you can check on your fuel spend at a time that suits you.
Online account management tools also provide you with visibility of where your drivers are filling up, be it at low cost supermarket sites, or at more expensive fuel sites such as motorways. If you see that it is the latter, as a result of having the visibility to this information, you can encourage your drivers to refuel at low cost sites and you can set limitations on where your drivers can and can’t refuel to ensure this happens.
It isn’t just savings on fuel where the use of fuel cards can help you to save money. With a fuel card, you can also set purchase category limitations, so you can rest assured that your drivers can only buy specified vehicle related products such as AdBlue using their fuel cards. This prevents drivers from trying to claim back money on any lunch break snacks.
Help to ease cash flow
For many businesses that operate a pay and reclaim system with their drivers, they don’t know how much their drivers are spending and so they are potentially met with a large bill from employees at the end of each month. Some drivers might not hand in their claims each month either and so a sudden payment to your drivers could affect your cash flow.
However, fuel cards help to increase cash flow as you’re able to keep tabs on your fuel spend each month via online account management tools. Having visibility of your fuel spend ensures that you’re able to budget your fuel costs, helping to manage your cash flow more effectively.
Save on administration time and cost
Fuel cards can bring benefits to all aspects of a business, even your admin team. With a fuel card, your drivers don’t need to keep receipts, saving you time, reducing your business’ paperwork and admin headache. All of the transaction data is collected at the point of sale and you receive a single HMRC-compliant invoice. Thanks to this, you can be sure that a fuel card will simplify your expenses and help you to claim back VAT more efficiently as you won’t miss out due to loosing receipts.
With all of the data available in one place, via online management tools, you can download reports of your choice at your convenience, lightening your administration load.
Save time on fuel expenses
‘Pay and reclaim’ payment processes are a thing of the past, as with fuel cards your drivers don’t need to pay for fuel or other vehicle related products out of their own pocket, before reclaiming against the company. With a fuel card process implemented within a business, you’re in control of the products your drivers buy and so you can ensure you’ll have no unexpected claim requests for items outside of your fuel card policy.
To find out more about how our fuel cards could help save your business money click here.