Even in the best of economic times, your company should always be striving to reduce its cost of doing business and increase its revenues and profits. If you have a nationwide fleet of vehicles traveling across the country or in specific geographical regions, being able to save upwards of 15% or more with the use of fleet fuel cards will shine brightly on your bottom line efforts.
One of the quickest ways to see those profits drain away from your company is to have no controls in place to contain unauthorized spending by your fleet drivers. If you currently issue standard fuel credit cards that provide drivers the ability to make any type of purchase, you have very little recourse if and when those employees buy things they don’t need for the job.
In fact, some nationwide fleet travel companies have seen 10 to 15% savings month after month when they start using fleet fuel cards and subscribe to fleet services to help control their driver’s travel expenses.
That’s an average cost savings. Some companies see much more when the safeguards are put into place. In addition to being able to see current purchase activities with your nationwide fleet of drivers, you can instantly identify who’s buying what, and whether or not they should be doing so. With fleet fuel cards you have the ability to set up instant notifications whenever your employees attempt to buy unauthorized items, or even spend more money on gas or fuel than your company has determined to be appropriate for their needs.
Simply being able to spot rogue drivers spending more money, or even buying approved items in frequencies that seem suspicious can help you contain your costs and reduce or eliminate this unwanted activity. And remember, your company is responsible for making payment on this activity so the sooner you can nip it in the bud or eliminate it completely, the better your bottom line is going to look at the end of each month.
The accounting procedures a nationwide fleet must use can often be time consuming and inefficient. By using a fleet service your company can take advantage of technology and a number of other money saving opportunities.
Having instant access via your online account will provide your office with the ability to know what’s happening with your expenditures 24 hours a day. In addition to the afore mentioned prevention savings, your accounting department will save time and money by being able to access all of your drivers and vehicles monthly expenditures in one easy to use interface.
Start using fleet services and gone are the days of needing to collect every receipt, wait for everyone’s expense reports. Now you’ll be able to electronically reconcile your accounts at just about any time. If a late purchase is made that should be accounted for this month, no worries. Your fleet system simply adds that activity into the data base along with the others for that reporting period, a click or two of the mouse and you have a downloadable Excel spreadsheet.
Whether you only have 2 trucks or 2,000, having one simple, easy place to wrangle all their activity doesn’t only make sense; it now makes you dollars!
