Fuel cards: keep a lid on expenditure, says Total
Wasteful expenditure claims cost time and money
THE COST of diesel has been steadily rising since Christmas, adding to the cost base of business van operators.
However, the price of diesel is more than the money you pay at the filling stations, according to fuel card supplier TOTALCard, because of the additional wasted admin and paperwork spent on manually processing fuel claims.
A recent study by TOTALCard found some 52% of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) administered their business van fuel expenses this way. Meanwhile one in six business van managers cited fuel as a key operational cost, but were not taking action to control and monitor the fuel expenditure incurred by their van fleet.
TOTALCard said that one in five of the SMEs surveyed believed they did not need to use a fuel card. And a further 20% believed the number of their business vans was too few to realise any benefits on the bottom line.
Eric Fanchini, card services manager at Total commented: “Fuel cards are designed to help monitor expenses by measuring vehicle performance, but our research shows that business van managers are not exploiting these benefits by using one for their company’s van fleet.”
For those businesses having to meet carbon reduction targets, Mr Fanchini added: “We have launched TOTALCard Green, which helps businesses track and ultimately reduce the CO2 emissions of their business vans by measuring vehicle performance.”
Included with TOTALCard Green, said Mr Fanchini, was a supporting web package that provided business van managers with online card management and e-billing. It also allowed monitoring of miles per gallon and product usage to enable SMEs to track and reduce expenditure where relevant.
