How to monitor business vehicle maintenance with a fleet card

Filed Under Business

If your company has a fleet of cars and trucks at its disposable, making sure all of those vehicles are running smoothly and are up to standards can be a huge headache, especially if the number of vehicles in the company fleet is large. If you are dealing with a hundred vehicles, it can be cumbersome to maintain accurate logs of when each vehicle last received an oil change, new tires or general tune-up. It can be even more nerve-wracking to keep track of the different expenses associated with maintaining the fleet. But if you switch over to a fleet card for all your vehicle maintenance needs, then keeping track of which vehicles need to be repaired, when they need to be looked at and how much each vehicle is costing will be unbelievably easy.

When you think of a fleet card, you most likely think of discount gas. And while this is one of the main benefits of using a fleet fuel card, there are many other advantages the card offers, especially when it comes to maintaining your fleet. With the use of a fleet card you will be able to better monitor your company’s vehicle maintenance.

Keeping track of money spent on vehicles

If you use a company credit card to maintain your fleet, then your finance department will most likely have to go through a pile of receipts or look over the credit card statement line-by-line in order to figure out exactly what was spent on the vehicles. A fleet fuel card , however, can be configured so that only gas and repair expenses are added to it. This means that at the end of the month you will be better able to balance your books.

Better prices

When you use a fleet card for your company vehicle repairs, quite often you will be able to get the work done at a discounted cost as part of a loyalty program. This means that you will be saving the company money without sacrificing the safety of the company vehicles.

Keep track of vehicle repairs

With the use of fleet cards, you will have different reports available to you, depending on your needs. Not only will you be able to keep track of how much gas is going into each vehicle, but you’ll be able to receive reports on vehicle maintenance, and which cars or trucks are receiving the most repair. If you are dealing with a large number of vehicles, this can be invaluable in helping you know when you may need to retire a certain vehicle.

Vehicle usage trends

Another advantage of the reports associated with the use of your fleet card is that you will be able to figure out vehicle usage trends. If a certain car always seems to need to go in to get its wheels aligned, you will be able to see if this is due to the age of the vehicle, the driver, or a certain route the vehicle constantly travels on. With this information you will be able to decide if the company needs to invest in more vehicles, retrain drivers, or pick alternate driving and trucking routes.

While a lot of this can be done when a company credit card is being used, it would take up valuable time and energy on the part of your financial department. And why would you want your employees to spend hours looking at data when fleet card reporting software can do it for them? With discount gas and top-notch vehicle maintenance, it only makes good business sense to switch to a fleet card for all your fleet needs.

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