Customizing fuel cards can aid in making them benefit your business as much as possible. Plus, the more customized your fuel card solution, the more control and security you’ll have along with fuel expense savings. Here’s how to customize the best fleet fuel cards to meet your company’s unique needs.
Why Is Fleet Card Customization Important?
Fleet card customization aids in avoiding overdraft fees, protecting finances from over-fueling, analyzing spending habits and preventing unauthorized spending. Managers face challenges in spotting unusual spending by reviewing a list of transactions because many fleets require complex transactions. It could take weeks or even months to spot suspicious or unauthorized behavior.
By setting spending limits and clear authorization for what types of transactions are permitted, you’ll make your team’s job easier and protect your finances. Using fleet credit card customizations and controls will be like having someone watching every transaction around the clock.
But if it’s your first time setting up a fleet card, you might not know where to start in customizing it. Read on for more tips on the top customizations to consider.
6 Ways To Customize Fleet Cards
Fuel cards are outstanding tools for securing fuel discounts and managing expenses. You’ll just want to customize the settings to protect your finances and avoid unauthorized use. Here are some of the most important customizations you can set up to get the most out of your fleet fuel card.
Real-time Alerts
Only 54% of businesses are somewhat confident they could detect fraudulent activity in time. Having the right resources can increase your confidence in detecting and stopping fraudulent credit card activity before your business has to pay the price.
Real-time alerts will make you aware of overspending immediately. That way, you can stop fraudulent behavior before it harms your business. Turn on alerts for suspicious behavior. You might also want alerts about expenses above a certain threshold to give you a clear view of spending.
Unique Reporting
Manually transferring expenses from your fuel card statements to accounting statements is not anyone’s idea of fun. Unique reports can make accounting simpler and provide your team with the information necessary to manage your finances with ease.
Request reports that include all transactions or specific types of transactions to review where your money is going. You can categorize and understand your expenses.
Seeing subsets of spending types might also further aid in preventing fraudulent activity and detecting unauthorized use cases.
Purchase Spending Limits
The clearer you outline permitted spending types and limits, the easier it will be to prevent unauthorized use of your fleet card. Customize purchasing limits and consider limitations for use, such as:
- Time of day
- Days of the week
- Maximum gallons of fuel per week
These controls will prevent fraud and help your company maintain a budget by preventing your team from overspending.
Flexible Card Settings
Fleet spending needs are constantly changing. Before you sign up with a fuel card provider, ensure that you’ll have full control over the card’s settings to make changes as needed. Whether you want to add or remove restrictions on spending, you should be able to do so from the admin panel on your card.
That way, you only pay for the services you need as your business ebbs and flows. When gas prices or routes change, so should your fuel card settings to ensure optimal use and ease of ongoing management of the card.
Security Control
You should be in total control of whether your fuel card is on or off. You can activate and deactivate cards as needed from your dashboard to ensure your team is using them correctly. Or if a team member leaves your employ, you can quickly deactivate their card to avoid covering their expenses for a competitor’s load.
While fuel cards offer incredible convenience for businesses to supply drivers with corporate funds to cover expenses, you want to know that you have full control over how and when those cards can be used.
Location Restrictions
Most drivers take on the same lanes week after week and month after month, and many regional carriers only serve a specific territory. If those situations apply to your business, setting location restrictions for your fuel card can provide additional protection.
Whether the location is specific to the lanes each driver runs or the states your company operates, making sure the card can’t be used outside that territory can reduce the chance of fraud.
Getting the Most Out of Your Fuel Card
Customizing fuel cards helps transportation companies get the most out of this valuable resource. You’ll still take full advantage of fuel discounts but will have greater control over what your team is spending and where you purchase fleet fuel. Take time to review your card setting’s options to maximize its effectiveness.
FAQ
The benefits of a fleet card include fuel savings and rebates, expense tracking, wide acceptance at fuel stations, security, spending controls, automated reports and easy online and mobile access.
A universal fleet card is usable at a variety of fuel stations and not just one brand or network.
Some fleet cards offer the option to preload the card with funds that drivers can use to get cash at fuel stations without incurring a fee.
Sign up for a FreightWaves e-newsletter to stay informed of all news and trends impacting supply chain careers and operations.