A fuel card is a way for businesses and organisations to cover the costs of petrol and diesel. This solution can be used to control travel costs and streamline administration. In this article, you will learn:
- How fuel cards work
- The benefits of using fuel cards
- How fuel cards can save money for companies
- Which businesses can use fuel cards
- Where business fuel cards are accepted
- Why fuelGenie is a great choice of fuel card
How does a fuel card work?
Employees, directors or contractors can use a company fuel card to fill up on petrol or diesel at participating petrol stations, presenting the card as payment. The company is then billed directly, eliminating the need to use cash, company credit cards or debit cards.
This is the process when paying using a fuelGenie fuel card:
- Visit a participating petrol station
- Fill up on petrol or diesel, as required (you can also purchase oil and car washes)
- Present your fuelGenie card to the cashier at the point of payment
- Sign to confirm the transaction
- Collect paper receipt (optional – transactions are recorded digitally and accessible via the online management system Manage My Account)
What are the benefits of a fuel card?
From employees’ point of view, fuel cards are great because it means they can avoid paying for work-related fuel out of their own pocket before later submitting and waiting for an expense claim.
From the organisation’s point of view, fuel cards have a wide range of advantages. fuelGenie offers the following:
- Savings of over 3p/litre by always directing drivers to low-cost supermarket petrol stations*
- Free to own and use
- 24/7 online account management for easy management and admin
- HMRC-approved invoices for easy VAT reclaim
- Competitive credit facility with no minimum spend
- Unlimited number of free fuel cards
- Drivers can also gain personal reward points using supermarket loyalty cards
How can a fuel card save your business money?
fuelGenie helps organisations to save money in four different ways:
- Lower fuel costs: fuelGenie is partnered with a nationwide network of supermarket petrol stations, where prices at the pump are more than 3 pence per litre – on average– cheaper than at other petrol filling stations.
- Less administration time: Automatically generated digital records mean less time – spent on manually reconciling fuel purchases and receipts.
- Simpler, quicker accounting: VAT reclaim is made easy and simple as fuelGenie combines all of your company’s fuel card transactions into an HMRC approved invoices.
- Spending control: Unlike company bank cards, or pay and reclaim, fuel cards are restricted in what they can be spent on. Employees can only use fuelGenie to pay for fuel and – if authorised – certain vehicle maintenance services, keeping expenses under control.
Who can use a fuel card?
Almost any type of business or organisation can use fuel cards to cover and manage fuel expenses. Subject to an initial credit check, fuelGenie is available to a variety of UK-based entities including sole traders, partnerships, limited companies, corporations, charitable bodies and public sector organisations.
Where can a fuel card be used?
Fuel cards can be used to pay for fuel at approved, participating petrol filling stations. For fuelGenie cardholders, these include more than 1,370 Tesco, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s petrol filling stations up and down the country. Charges at these stations are more than 3 pence cheaper than the national average, helping to keep costs down.
