Ask the Fuel Expert

There’s really nothing very fun about managing a fleet fuel budget. Nothing simple about figuring out where all of last year’s fuel dollars actually went. There’s the stack of receipts and the pages of invoices and a few spreadsheets that try to summarize it all. But there’s a lot those papers can’t tell you.

Shouldn’t we know how efficiently fuel is being used? Determine which trucks use the most fuel or which are using too much fuel? How about being able to check if last month’s higher fuel costs came from an increase in consumption or a jump in the price at the pump? How about knowing if more fuel consumed means more margins earned – or less?

Fuel is the highest operating cost after labour. And with labour, we’re used to tracking the productivity so we can decide if we need to pay more, train more, employ more or fewer.

There’s human resources software to help us manage all this and automate much of the filing and reporting.

Actually, fuel management software does exist but many fleet managers are either unaware of it or too stuck in their old ways to investigate it.

However, a growing number of companies are using online fuel reporting systems and discovering that it not only saves time and frustration, but eases the administrative burden and helps employers re-allocate their staff to more satisfying or productive work.

One system that seems to lead the pack (if almost 4,000 clients is any indication) is Fuel Management Online. FMO was created five years ago and has grown from an online docket posting system into a full-blown management tool for all things fuel. In this time, it has also attracted imitators but it has never been copied.

In case you’re one of the Fortune 500® companies already using FMO, I’ll keep my summary brief and focus on the new innovations instead. Very simply, FMO organizes fuel transaction data (collected from wheel-to-wheel fuellings, from card-locks or fuel tanks or uploaded from data files) so that managers can analyze it all in one place, in a single format. This may not sound impressive, but if you’ve tried to merge data from several sources in different formats, you’ll know this means enormous savings in time, frustration and hair pulled out. So, with everything in one place, all organized in sensible reporting fields, you can now do some really exciting things.

Increase accuracy – Reduce administrative busy work

With FMO in place you first save the time spent gathering fuel data and second get the accurate data you need to manage your fuel better. The guess work is eliminated so you have exact information to calculate each project’s fuel expense and eliminate the waste.

How many pieces of equipment and vehicles do you manage? How many projects do you have each year? Where are those projects located? No two companies are the same, but the same problems exist when it comes to fuel management. With many projects operating in a number of locations, FMO centralizes reporting because data is captured when refuelling occurs. An RFID chip is attached to each piece of equipment and measures the fuel pumped, date and time. FMO works whether you use your own fuel tanks or enjoy 4Refuel’s convenient on site refuelling service.

FMO Import Tool™ - rapid headache relief

If you use card-locks, good news! FMO accepts data from any card-lock. This means that if half of your fleet is short haul, filled wheel to wheel, and the other half is long-haul and fills at card-locks, you can now consolidate all your fuel records in one place. FMO can import data from different sources and present the information you need in one spreadsheet. This makes it simple to manage fuel by vehicle, by project, by week, by month, by year.

FMO Forecast Tool™ - instant crystal ball

When it comes to budgeting you will automatically have a template to work from that’s based on last year’s results. Tax calculations are easier too, because all the information you need to file accurately is organized and provided. All of your data can be imported or exported to and from any accounting software and FMO is compatible with your operating system of choice.

FMO IFTA Reporting Tool™ - minimizes red tape

I mentioned earlier that FMO makes it easier to reconcile tax payments. If you operate across the country and cross provincial and state borders, the International Fuel Tax Agreement (IFTA) dictates that you must pay a fuel tax to each jurisdiction. It is the law and it can be a real hassle. Think about what you have to do to separate each region’s tax payment, before you write the cheque. You get hammered with time costs and then the tax payment. FMO eliminates the time spent gathering the amount of provincial and/or state tax payable. It is right there on a separate line on your spread sheet. We only wish we could help eliminate the tax. Right. Rub a lamp.

In addition FMO can help you calculate the Greenhouse gas emissions emitted by each unit so you can manage and reduce your carbon footprint too.

There’s other software apps showing up on the market, but none that are as functional, as intuitive or as user friendly as 4Refuel’s FMO. I stake my reputation on it!

Jack Lee, President/CEO
4Refuel Inc.