UK businesses could save on average eight hours a month on monthly business administration time by switching to using a fuel card system, according to research carried out by supermarket fuel card provider FuelGenie.

On average UK SME businesses spend 33 hours each month on business admin, which equates to almost four and a half days undertaking paperwork every month, suggests the fuel card provider. This time includes tackling issues such as tax, insurance, accounting tasks, health and safety paperwork, as well as completing fuel expenses.

The recent FuelGenie research found a third of UK businesses are still operating a traditional pay and reclaim system where employees pay for fuel and then reclaim the expense, often completing paperwork and submitting a paper receipt. Because a traditional pay and reclaim system not only requires the employee to submit each fuel receipt, it also needs someone within the business to process each claim and ensure payment is made, said FuelGenie.

With the average UK SME businesses operating a fleet of three or more vehicles and visiting the pump between six to ten times a month, companies are losing up to eight hours of working time per month processing monthly fuel expenses, it claimed.

In fact, this lost time is costing companies more than £1,500 per year in lost employee time alone without considering the cost of lost business income, it said.

Fuel cards can further reduce business admin time by helping to simplify collecting VAT from HMRC through the use of transparent online reporting and a single monthly invoice, says FuelGenie.

Most fuel card providers offer online reporting methods to help take the hassle out of collating monthly or end of year reconciliation reports, removing the need for keeping fuel receipts all year.

Robert Pieczka, managing director of FuelGenie, said: “With great pressure being placed on UK businesses to work longer and faster, finding ways to work more efficiently is vitally important. Switching to a fuel card not only helps save companies money on fuel bills each month, but also a great deal of admin time can be saved as well.

“Recovering almost one day of working time every month can make a huge different to the level of service a company can provide to its customers and have a major impact on the overall monthly revenue figures as a whole.” 

In addition to saving businesses time, Supermarket fuel stations offer an average saving of more than 3p per litre at the pumps when compared to the national average so even with a single vehicle savings can soon add up, said the fuel card provider.

The FuelGenie fuel card is accepted at more than 1,350 Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons forecourts nationwide. FuelGenie does not charge transaction fees or surcharges and offers unlimited free cards with no minimum monthly spend. It can also be set up to only allow fuel purchases, however this can be extended to enable card holders to also purchase oil and vehicle washes from supermarket forecourts as well.   

More articles on: