Fuel management systems reduce fuel spend, waste, misuse, and theft for fleets. This guide explains how these systems work and how you can reduce fuel consumption for fleets.

Fuel Management System

Being aware of when and how fuel is used is essential since fuel represents such a large percentage of a fleet's expenses. Besides better-controlling fuel costs, it will also give you a better picture of your fleet's health. 

It provides managers with real-time visibility into fuel consumption, maintenance issues, and transactions related to fuel.

Automation improves data accuracy and reduces time to insight. Managers will also be alerted if fueling occurs outside geofencing parameters, over-fueling, or at unapproved vendors. Monitoring fuel theft in real time allows fleets to respond quickly.

Inefficient routing can be identified by this tool. You can reduce unnecessary fuel spend by optimizing routes. By comparing fuel spend, you can make informed adjustments.

Besides tracking true idle time, fuel management systems also track operational idle time. By tracking idle time, you can discover where and when drivers spend most of their time on their routes, allowing you to catch problems early on. In contrast, tracking operational idle time can help you identify discrepancies between active time on job sites and fuel expenses.

This should be a useful tool for fleet managers. Here, we'll explore the top benefits including how to implement positive, data-driven changes, in more detail.

Boost Fuel Economy

If you're evaluating fuel economy, establish a baseline for comparison by identifying the asset's age and type. By doing this, you can pinpoint which assets are underperforming in fuel economy. Monitoring fuel consumption over time can be easily done with the help of fuel management systems, which collect odometer readings and fuel purchase data. 

You can determine how closely an asset is performing by comparing its baseline fuel economy to its consumption. This can be used to determine the cause of low fuel economy and take action to improve it.

Improve Driving Habits

As a result of implementing this process, with the ability to collect and disseminate data, fleets can pinpoint causes of increased fuel consumption, such as driver behavior. Behaviors such as speeding and harsh acceleration can tank fuel economy in addition to causing mechanical issues. 

Using telematics or GPS integrations, fleet managers can track driver behavior and receive alerts in real-time around dangerous driving.

Keeping Fuel Theft At Bay

Fuel management systems alert fleets to fuel theft and misuse in real-time. Managers are alerted when fuel purchases exceed the listed fuel capacity of assets by monitoring fuel capacity. 

With this software integrated with GPS solutions, fleet managers can be alerted when a vehicle's GPS location differs from where it was fueled.

What Is The Purpose Of Fuel Management Systems?

Fuel cards, telematics, or fleet management software (FMS) can all be used in fleet management systems. Data collected from fuel cards include odometer readings, driver IDs, amount pumped, cost per unit, fuel grade, and location and time of fueling. 

Devices that plug directly into an asset collect fuel-related data to provide detailed fuel information, including driver behavior, DTCs, and idle times. Location tracking is also possible with telematics.

FMS allows users to import historic fuel data from spreadsheets or legacy software and track fuel economy. Using a mobile app, fleets can track the per-mile operating costs of fleet assets. Fuel cards and/or telematics can help you better understand your fleet's fuel usage. 

Consequently, you can monitor fuel consumption in relation to daily operations, such as fuel used by workers on job sites, fuel spent by operators, and fuel spent by assets.

Fuel Data Collection

For more actionable insights, this tool automates data collection and improves data accuracy. Once the data has been collected, you can sort the reports by asset, depot (for fleets with multiple locations), date, etc. 

Automating fuel data collection reduces errors associated with manual collection, improves data reliability, and reduces the time it takes to retrieve, sort, and analyze fuel data.

Fuel Transactions

It can be time-consuming and tedious to reconcile fuel receipts. Fuel data will be less accurate if drivers are late getting receipts in or lose them. 

A fuel management system captures that data automatically. Drivers can also photograph and submit receipts via a mobile app if the business needs that documentation separately.

Exception Reports

Reports about overcapacity and GPS location transactions are provided by the software. Fleets can use the reports to identify repeat offenders and pin down the culprit. 

You can confirm whether fuel discrepancies are caused by exceptions or mechanical or driver behavior issues by comparing overall fuel data with exception reports.

Manage Fuel With Fleet Management Software

The fleet fuel card can be considered fuel management software, but it does not provide a complete picture of fuel expenses and activities. When fuel cards are integrated into FMS or telematics, they can provide robust insights into fleet fueling. FMS can improve operational management and cost analysis when fuel cards (or telematics) are integrated with fuel cards.

Fleet management software tracks data related to maintenance and repairs, inspections, issues, usage, productivity, downtime, and fuel usage, as well as expenses. This data is collected, consolidated, and aggregated in real-time by FMS so you can have at-a-glance insights for quick analysis so can hone in on fuel issues. 

With FMS, fleets can identify mechanical problems and theft, and misuse by comparing fuel reports with service histories, inspection histories, preventive maintenance (PM) compliance rates, and exception reports. By finding out the total fuel cost per asset, companies can determine if a rise in fuel expenditure is caused by the asset itself, poor maintenance practices, or driver behavior.

In addition to monitoring fuel expenses, FMS calculates the total cost of ownership (TCO) for fleet assets using fleet data so managers and stakeholders can better understand fleet health and productivity and determine acquisition and replacement cycles. To improve fuel management and increase fleet profitability, fleets can use this tool in FMS to analyze fuel expenses by job type, asset, and within the fleet as a whole.

Reduce fuel expenses with Falcon Trackers' fuel management system.
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