Giving employees fuel cards for their company cars and vans doesn’t offer them the freedom to spend without thinking – in fact it’s quite the opposite.
A fuel card should help you save money by allowing you to take control over purchasing, to access the UK’s refuelling network easily and reduce administration.
Crucially though, with fuel cards such as those from Allstar, you are able to obtain discounts on fuel too, which means your business is maximising every opportunity.
Here’s how fuel cards can save you money. Watch our video or read the full article below:
1. Understand what you are spending on fuel
Without seeing all fuel expenditure and where it is being accrued, it is impossible to take the actions that will help save you money.
By using an Allstar fuel card, you will have all this information at your fingertips through a simple to use online portal allowing you to understand if certain departments, drivers or vehicles are costing your business more than expected.
You can drill into the data to discover inefficient working practices, vehicles that are not delivering the requisite economy and drivers who spend too much or don’t drive economically.
Once you truly understand what, why, and where you are spending on fuel, you can make changes to your business operation and fleet strategy that will save you money, such as ensuring drivers avoid filling up more expensive sites such as those on motorways, changing vehicles for more efficient ones, or cutting out unnecessary journeys.
2. Control purchasing and mileage
With a fuel card, you can keep tight controls on fuel purchasing and business mileage, giving you the opportunity to claim back more of the VAT on fuel bought for work purposes.
Also, with Allstar you can put in place measures about where and when fuel is purchased and limits on certain types and volumes of fuel, ensuring you only buy what you want.
A fuel card can allow you to keep control of actual business mileage too, highlighting any drivers who were abusing the system by adding mileage on when they should not, and reducing fraud.
So as well as being more tax-efficient, having tight purchasing controls in place means you can be confident that every mile driven and every pound spent is necessary to your business.
3. Save on administration
By using a fuel card, you can collate fleet data in one place and avoid the burden of managing fuel expenditure yourself.
With an Allstar card, you will automatically be able to receive VAT-compliant invoices rather than having to chase drivers for paper receipts, and then match mileage to spend easily. With a simple-to-use online portal, you are able to create reports about your fleet’s fuel card use, saving significant time and effort.
Also, with HMRC-compliant invoicing you can submit returns quickly, claiming back VAT you are owed more efficiently.
4. Guide drivers to lower cost fuel sites
Buying cheaper petrol and diesel is the central strategy to saving your business money through fuel cards. By driving down the average cost per litre by a few pence can save thousands of pounds in the course of a year. Fuel cards facilitate a number of actions to help this happen.
The first is discounts. With an Allstar fuel card, for example, you can save on every litre of diesel purchased across Allstar’s exclusive Discount Diesel network.
Then there’s understanding where the cheapest fuel is being sold. Access to all major low-cost supermarket fuel stations is important because those outlets generally tend to be among the cheapest.
But when those sites are not practical to use, drivers need to be able to make good purchasing decisions. By using Allstar’s interactive online fuel price checker, up-to-date information on nearby fuel prices can be shown, helping drivers find the cheapest possible petrol and diesel every time.
Even if nationwide fuel prices are low, this is important, because ensuring your purchasing is as efficient as it can be gives you a competitive advantage over other businesses in your sector who are buying fuel less effectively. Allstar fuel cards allow you to operate a procurement policy that proactively drives down cost.
5. Make travel more efficient
Key to getting the most out of fuel cards is making business travel more efficient. It is counter-intuitive that, if in the process of using one, drivers are required to do more miles in search of particular fuel brands.
An Allstar fuel card, with an unrivalled network of more than 7,700 stations covering over 90% of UK fuel sites, offers drivers more choice and opportunities to refuel, meaning they don’t have to use specific stations.
Consequently, they aren’t required to make lengthy deviations off their route to buy fuel, which costs your business both time and money.
At Allstar, we can offer you fuel cards, business credit cards or full expense solutions. You'll find that we have a card to suit your business requirements perfectly, and help you drive down your fuel bill through:
Savings on fuel*
Streamlined administration
Price-checking tools
*Savings on diesel can be made at participating Discount Diesel sites on our network when the card is swiped
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