This case study provides a detailed scenario and various applications of fuel cards. In this digital age, the online payment industry is growing rapidly. It is largely driven by shifting consumer behavior and preferences. The main reasons behind this shift are social media, innovation technologies, and smartphones transforming the consumer experience. A fuel card is just like a credit or debit card given to company drivers for fuel, repair and maintenance of company’s vehicles. Many fuel cards are credit cards which are issued by particular gas station chains like Conoco or Shell oil. These fuel cards can only be operated by drivers at Conoco, Shell, or its sub-branch gas stations.<

This case study provides a detailed scenario and various applications of fuel cards. In this digital age, the online payment industry is growing rapidly. It is largely driven by shifting consumer behavior and preferences. The main reasons behind this shift are social media, innovation technologies, and smartphones transforming the consumer experience. A fuel card is just like a credit or debit card given to company drivers for fuel, repair and maintenance of company’s vehicles. Many fuel cards are credit cards which are issued by particular gas station chains like Conoco or Shell oil. These fuel cards can only be operated by drivers at Conoco, Shell, or its sub-branch gas stations.

How can a Fuel card help you to grow your business?

If your company has a large number of the vehicle for business purpose, getting fuel cards to your drivers may help to grow your business. These cards let your drivers make fuel payments in a timely manner, due to this you can also ensure that drivers arrive at a destination on time.

Fuel cards also help to save expenses which are associated with paper-based receipts. When you are using a fuel card to operate your business, you can monitor all transactions made by your driver. It also helps to save company money so that you can focus on growth.

Benefits of fuel cards

• Purchase Control: The role of fuel cards for company expenses ensures strict purchase controls. For every transaction driver need to input PIN (Personal Identification Number) so it becomes easy to track all the details, and limits can be set for several parameters, comprising dollars per day, week, and month. You can also set time restrictions. Business managers can monitor how cards are used.
• E-Reciepts and Alerts: You can set alerts for your business transactions like an hour, day or weekly transactions. With such timely alerts, you can also set notifications alert for when purchases made outside of the certain regional area.
• Level III Data: It is not easy to get level III data simply, but some cards provide you all detailed records which can help you to prevent thefts. Level III data offers additional information such as MPG (Miles-per-Gallon), CPM (Cost-per-Mile), driver & vehicle identification.
• Universal Coverage: To minimize the time of vehicle operation and driver time, use the low-priced and most convenient fuel stations with a universal fuel card. These cards allow access to upto 320,000 fuel. With Universal coverage, your drivers can easily refuel at any place along their routes.
• Online Account Management: All card-related problems can be managed through an online process, including cancelling or updating existing cards, card orders, downloading vehicle usage or driver related reports, and others.
• Centralized Billing: If your company vehicle is operating out of several locations, fuel cards service provides a central billing statement and individual branch invoices.
• Custom Reports: Fleet card reporting can be customized to fulfill multiple management needs.
• Electronic Data Files: The use of fuel cards provides e-reports directly to your counting and management systems. Electronic data files can be used to fit all the software needs, and you can make a pivot table in Excel sheet to run necessary reports.

Who benefits the most from fuel cards?

Any businesses that have several vehicles or number of employees who use the company’s vehicles as a part of their business work can benefit from fuel cards. These fuel cards can help companies to save their time as well as money while fueling their vehicles. In large scale companies, the use of fuel cards helps in track and managing fueling expenses.

Case study Description

Case 1:

The Challenge

Castelli Oil & Gas is one of the leading company that delivers site water management and any other required services at competitive prices. The company found that a combination of fueling over the bulk tank and on the road while managing a number of fuel vendors and the system was not effective for growth of their business. “We were spending more than $1000,000 for diesel every week. Our report from several vendors failed to provide accurate information of transactions which were made by our drivers,” Nancy Kubistek, Accounts coordinator at Castelli Oil & Gas has stated. This high transparency contributed to the company’s susceptibility to unauthorized fueling from both over the road and bulk tank transactions.

Solution

Guttman Energy Inc. is a top wholesale fuel Distributor Company that provides fuel management solutions to commercial and retail markets. Guttman worked with Castelli to improve a plan to combine all driver transactions by a unique system. Guttman suggested installing a fuel card reader at Castelli’s vehicles. Drivers that are using the Guttman fuel card at both over-the-road and the bulk tank fueling stations, a weekly report could be created which offered a comprehensive, clear look at all activities or transactions made by their drivers.

Benefits

Castelli can now track and monitor all vehicle fueling data on a single report that can be useful to manage the company’s overall expenses and prevent from fraudulent activities.

Conclusion

“From the installations of the fuel card reader and combine all activities into a single report, it becomes easy to maintain all expenditure activities without any issues. We have also condensed our administrative costs as all fueling activities are recorded on our weekly reports.” Said Nancy.