Introduction
Is the rising cost of fuel posing a major challenge to your accounts team? The benefits of providing your employees business cars and fuel reclaims are undeniable. But the costs of doing this can be pretty expensive for most business owners. You might think there is no way of saving money on fuel expenditures. After all, you don’t have control over the cost of fuel, right? Wrong! It’s true the price of fuel is not within your reach. However, your business can make significant savings by switching to fuel cards. But the question is, how? In this article, we explain how UK fuel cards save your business money.
What is a Fuel Card?
UK fuel cards resemble credit cards in many ways. They enable your drivers to pay for the fuel they need without using cash or being required to submit fuel reclaims. Each fuelcard is linked to an account to which fuel costs are charged when a driver fills up. The amount owed then gets deducted from businesses’ linked accounts, which is paid off once a month, just like a credit card.
Fuel cards provide a great way for keeping tabs on the fuel expenses of your business, and it comes with lots of added advantages. For example, each fuel purchase is not only recorded but also itemized on one tax statement. This means there is no need for keeping your fuel receipts.
Also, fuel cards allow you to purchase petrol or diesel at great discounts. This makes UK fuel cards an invaluable asset to your company especially if you want to reign in on runaway operational costs.
The Business and Savings Benefits of Fuel Cards
For any business, it is crucial to keep track of the activities of your fleet of vehicles. That is because no one wants to be paying more than they have to. Not only do UK fuel cards offer discounts and savings, but they also eliminate the issue of fuel fraud. If your business relies on a large fleet of cars, it is not easy to track and monitor your fuel expenses if you only use the receipts method. Another benefit of fuel cards is that they give businesses invaluable data such as location, mileage, time, and fuel drawn. This keeps you in the know and in charge of your business vehicles. Also, the data help you avoid overspending.
The ability to monitor fuel activity and look at your monthly fuel reports enables you to analyze the costs and the date, which enables you to budget more accurately for your fueling costs. And the fact fuel cards can be integrated with odometer and GPS readings help you to understand routes better, and decide whether taking different routes could save your business money.
Through UK fuel cards, you will get insights into your fleet like telling if a particular vehicle’s fuel efficiency has reduced and if it needs service. When your fuel card has odometer readings, it saves money for your business because it keeps records of every kilometer with each transaction. This way, it makes it easier to monitor the cost of maintenance and plan regular vehicle maintenance. And with odometer readings showing on your fuel card reports, you can quickly see any problem in your vehicles. Also, it enables you to know the vehicles that aren’t performing as efficiently as possible.
Other Fuelcard Benefits
Discounts and Savings
The best thing about fuel cards is that they allow you to buy fuel at discounted prices. These discounts in terms of fuel price, card fees, and non-fuel partners like roadside assistance, vehicle servicing, and more. When your company has higher fuel requirements, you can negotiate discounts off the pump rates of up to 2c per litre. This does not include eye-catching promotional discounts usually offered that are typically valid for a specific period.
Reduced Fuel Fraud
Fuel fraud is a serious issue for companies that rely on fleets of vehicles for service delivery. But with fuel cards, it is very difficult for your employees to engage in this vice. Fuel cards enable you to easily track all payments and notice as well as stop any fraudulent activity quickly.
Improved Transparency
Fuel cards allow you to easily understand how much your fleet is costing you. In the same way, you can budget better for the costs. Thereafter, you can make changes where necessary.
Better Cash Flow
Another advantage of fuel cards is seen by your accounts team, which will undoubtedly experience less headache. A fuelcard provider will send you a single monthly invoice containing all the details of the entire fleet fuel purchases throughout the month. It means doing away with the annoying paper receipts and the receipt errors.
Flexibility
The simple option would be to give your drivers a company credit card to use for purchasing fuel. However, fuel cards give you the utmost flexibility in terms of purchasing limits. These cards allow you to set a maximum daily limit of filling up. They also limit the items your employees can purchase using the fuel card. The advantage of this is that there will be reduced chances of fraudulent activities, as well as a better way to manage the cost of your fleet.
Save on administration cost and time
Switching to UK fuel cards is advantageous to all areas of a business, and this also includes your administration team. Since drivers need not keep receipts when they use a fuel card, the company saves time and there is reduced paperwork. It captures all the transaction data at the point of sale, leading to the generation of HMRC-compliant invoices. This way, a fuel card simplifies your expenses and also helps you to claim the VAT back more efficiently. There will be no more missing out as a result of lost receipts.
Conclusion
With a fuelcard, you get all the transactional data in one place. They come through online management tools that you can download at your own time. This lightens your administrative load. UK fuel cards have many benefits, and it makes every sense to switch to them.