First of all, you might be thinking, what is a fuel card? And secondly, you might be wondering is it going to be beneficial to your small (or large) business? Let’s have a look and see how a business fuel card works and where to get the best value fuel cards.
5 Important Tips For Your Business Fuel Card
What is a fuel card?
Fuel cards are an alternative payment method for drivers, mainly within businesses, that allows accounting departments to track fuel spend, limit the usage and file your travel expenses more efficiently. Additionally, it can help to manage your business vehicles’ fuel costs. Irrespective of if you have one vehicle or multiple in your fleet there are many benefits to managing your costs through the usage of a fuel card.
Also known as a fleet card, it is used as a payment card for fuels at petrol stations, typically a fuel card is a charge card. These fuel cards are relatively unique because of the convenient and comprehensive reporting that comes from them. Fuel cards enable the management and accounting team to receive real-time reports and set purchase controls with their cards. Which helps to manage business-related expenses.
Is a fuel card going to benefit my business?
In short, if you have employees on the road helping to run your business whether this be a sales rep, drivers delivering goods, taxi service or any other use of a fleet car then these 3 features may be beneficial.
Control over businesses spending
As previously mentioned it is a benefactor when it comes to managing spending. It allows you as the business owner total control over your driver’s spending. Because the fuel card restricts purchases to only fuel, it gives complete peace of mind that your spending is only used appropriately. On some fuel cards, you are able to add on unavoidable extras, such as toll road costs or emergency tyre repair.
It can help cut costs
You’ll be able to further review costs and make vital savings to your business. From reviewing how much has been spent across however many fuel cards your business has, you’ll be able to see where you can potentially make savings.
Although fuel cards are widely accepted at most stations across the UK some cards allow you to customise where drivers can top up. You can create your own ‘network’ so to speak of stations that drivers can use so that you can accurately calculate your journey distance and how much petrol per mile you’ll require so that you can plan for better fuel efficiency, meaning less spending.
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Fuel Card Invoices are HMRC approved
By ensuring that your entire fleet uses fuel cards for payment for fuel it limits the number of variables when it comes to miscalculating your expenses. You won’t have receipts missing or search through old invoices for the correct fuel transactions to add up as the fleet of fuel cards run on one invoice which is HMRC approved, making accounting more simple.
Where to get the best value fuel card?
This is a tricky question to answer as your businesses specific requirements may be totally different from another, however, www.icompario.com allows you to compare different fuel cards based on your requirements, including fuel cards for the size of fleet or business formation, fuel types accepted, your location and more to really find the best cards for your business.
Have you used a fuel card for your business? I’d love to know how easy you’ve found it (or if you faced any challenges) in the comments section below. As always if you’ve found this article of any use then I’d love you to share it across social media
