The many benefits of fuel cards

Are you an employer who offers the use of company cars? Or perhaps you are an employee who drives one? Are you aware of the benefits fuel cards offer to both employer and employee?

What is a fuel card?

First of all, what exactly is a fuel card? Well, a fuel card can be compared to a credit card; however, a fuel card can only be used for fuel or fuel-related payments, such as tolls and gas station purchases. Business owners usually have to pay a small annual card fee.

Fuel card benefits for businesses

Whether you own a single business car or an entire fleet, a fuel card will always be beneficial to your business.

Save money

If your employees use fuel cards, as a business owner, you can easily manage your fleet’s fuel usage, as all fuel transactions are recorded. This means you can easily spot any discrepancies. Is one car using more fuel than others? It might be that it needs servicing!

And, if you opt for a fixed price card, the fuel price is set at a weekly rate, which means that even if the prices change during the week, you will pay the same amount.

Save time

Using fuel cards will save you time. Just think, you will no longer need to collect your employee’s fuel receipts or expense forms. You will no longer have to worry about missing or lost receipts, which means you can reclaim the full VAT amount due. And speaking about VAT, fuel card invoices are tax compliant, meaning reclaiming VAT will be easier and faster than ever.

A fuel card also makes it easier to forecast your future fuel costs, as account management software will allow you to identify fuel trends, saving you budget-planning time.

Protection

If you are worried about your employees refuelling their own cars with the company’s credit card or cash, a fuel card will be beneficial for you as they are PIN protected and can be assigned to an individual driver. You will also be able to see where and when the card has been used.

Moreover, a fuel card can feature a daily spend cap, which means nobody will be able to go over budget.

Flexibility

A fuel card gives you more flexibility. Most fuel cards you can cancel at any time, without any obligations.

Fuel card benefits for employees

Fuel cards will also benefit employees who make use of their company’s cars.

Save time

It can be a hassle to save every fuel receipt. They can get lost or misplaced. And what about all that time you spend filling in expense claim forms? If your employer opts for fuel cards, you will no longer have to worry about that. Doing all this extra administration will be a thing of the past!

Safety

Are you on the road a lot with your company car, travelling with large amounts of company cash, and worried about your safety? Fuel cards lower the risk of theft considerably.

How to choose a fuel card

You can choose from many fuel cards. Some will be more suited for small businesses, while others will be beneficial to large businesses. So, how do you choose which one is best for your business? No worries! If you can’t see the forest for the trees, there are sites that offer help, such as www.icompario.com/en-gb, where you can compare the most popular fuel cards of today.