Fleet managers must contend with a never-ending series of challenges, but there is help at hand thanks to range our range innovative services and technology. Here are seven of the most common problems fleet managers face and how we solve them.
1: Paying fuel card transaction charges
If you’re using a fuel card with transaction charges, then you will be over paying for fuel. Every time one of your drivers refuels, the card operator charges a fee even though they also receive another fee from the fuel outlet through the merchant service charge. Effectively, you end up paying twice for the same service. On a typical fuel fill of 50-litres with a transaction charge of around 4p per litre, you are paying £2 more than you should.
Multiply that by across the entire fleet and the costs are huge.
However, by switching to a fuel card that does not charge a transaction fee, such as Barclaycard Fuel+ in association with TMC you can instantly save money on your fuel bills. Fuel+ also has the advantage of being backed by VISA so it can be used at over 98% of UK fuel stations as well as across Europe.
2: Reconciling data for processing payroll
Reconciling fuel spend data with private and business usage can be a serious issue for fleet, finance and payroll departments. Trips and fuel spend need to be reconciled in order to correctly process fuel reimbursements from employees. For many companies, this is a laborious administrative process involving multiple spreadsheets and a lot of human intervention. Administrators spend too much time correcting reports due to drivers submitting claims too late, making mistakes or omitting data. Many of these problems are down to outmoded processes and the limitations of paper forms and spreadsheets used by drivers to submit claims.
To resolve this, TMCs Mileage Capture, Audit and Control solution is essential. By capturing trip data using a smartphone app, SMS or a web based platform, it eliminates the need for paperwork or spreadsheets. Instead, the driver logs their trips using easy to use technology throughout the month before submitting a final monthly odometer reading. Fuel card spend is automatically imported via a data feed and is reconciled against trips. The system will then generate the required payroll file, ready for processing. Not only does this streamline repayments, but it lets the fleet manager identify further savings on fuel spend.
3: Eliminating fuel fiddles and fraud
None of us like to think we’re being duped, but it’s a common problem for fleet managers and one that can be hard to spot. Whether it’s organised criminals ‘cloning cards’ or a driver filling up friends’ and family’s cars with the company’s fuel card.
This is another area where a system such as TMC’s Mileage Capture, Audit and Control can have a major impact. By using built-in real-time algorithms and micro-auditing, TMC’s system quickly spots any fiddle or potential fraud and flags it up for resolution by TMC’s auditing team who will then contact the driver or fleet manager direct in order to investigate and rectify.
4: Ensuring grey fleet duty of care compliance
Many fleets run a mix of vehicles that includes grey fleet. While grey fleet offers financial advantages to the company and driver, it can be a headache for fleet manager when it comes to ensuring duty of care compliance. In order to be compliant, fleet managers need processes in place to check driving licence status, insurance, MoT, service record and road worthiness.
A neat solution is to incorporate all of this into a single activity that all drivers need: claiming mileage expenses. If grey fleet drivers do not submit their documents, then they cannot claim mileage.
By using TMC’s Visa To Drive solution, fleet managers can outsource the document collation and checking whilst ensuring high levels of compliance. To receive an expenses payment, the grey fleet driver must ensure vehicle details are up to date. Once submitted, TMC’s team of expert auditors will check through the documents to make sure everything is compliant.
5: Not seeing savings from fuel rebates
Fuel rebates sound like a great idea in principle, but the reality can be very different. For one thing, the size of the discount offered depends on the volume of fuel you buy from the brand in question. So only fleets that use millions of litres normally qualify for a seemingly worthwhile rebate.
Secondly the rebate may not be any better value than you’d get from simply encouraging drivers to fill up at low-price sites like supermarkets.
Thirdly – and most importantly – the networks of petrol stations run by fuel brands that offer rebates do not cover the whole country. That means that drivers frequently have to waste fuel and time diverting from their route to reach one of their outlets. In the trade, it’s known as ‘route diversion’. When the financial director of one of TMC’s customers added up the cost of a driver, vehicle and fuel, he worked out it only took two minutes-worth of this route diversion to nullify the benefit of a rebate he’d been offered..
TMC offers a simpler way to cut fuel bills. We can offer a fuel card that can be used at almost any filling station, including all supermarkets – who typically price their fuel at 2-3p per litre below the national average.
We also steer driver behaviour into the lower priced outlets. TMC’s fuel card offers clear reports that make it easy to monitor whether drivers are filling up with needlessly expensive fuel. Better still, it has built-in Mileage Audit whose advanced control and calculation features can cut fuel bills by 17.2% or more: saving far more money than a rebate and for much less aggravation.
6: P11D Reporting
Companies have to submit a P11D form at the end of the tax year for every employee detailing expenses and benefits. While there is fleet software that can help with this, the fuel and mileage information is often non-existent.
You can sidestep this painful situation with a fuel and mileage system that captures the relevant data on a monthly basis. TMCs Mileage Capture, Audit and Control solution not only collects the right information in a robust way, it also generates report-ready information to be submit to the tax office well ahead of the deadline.
7: Reclaiming the correct amount of VAT
Wading through swathes of paper receipts to calculate VAT payments and driver reimbursements is a nightmare of every fleet manager. It’s essential to get this right so the company can reclaim VAT, yet many drivers can forget to ask for a receipt or lose it.
This is resolved by using our Fuel+ card that lets drivers buy fuel as needed, reimbursing the company for any private fuel. It means the company can claim all of the VAT and send HMRC a consolidated VAT invoice using data from the fuel card.
As you can see, TMC have the expertise, the technology and the solutions to make a big difference to your bottom line. As an all-encompassing fuel management solution, we save our customers an average of 17.2% on their fuel bills. We also offer a unique guarantee, If we don’t save you twice the cost of our service, we will happily refund the difference.
Start taking control of your fleets fuel spend by contacting us today.
