Fuel Management

Fuel Management is the module for the fuel your vehicles and equipment take. Each time fuel is bought, someone records a fill: the vehicle, the litres, the price, the meter reading and where it was bought. Fuel Management turns each fill into a vehicle cost and a meter reading in Fleet Management, works out the fuel economy, checks the fill for signs of a mistake or misuse, and counts it against any fuel quota (an allowance of litres or money) that applies to the vehicle or its driver. Managers review flagged fills, decide on requests for extra fuel and report on consumption.

Fuel Management needs Fleet Management: the vehicles, drivers, meter readings and costs it uses are the Fleet ones, and an organization cannot have Fuel Management without it. A fuel station that uses this system can have a credit account with you, record the fuel it dispenses to your vehicles and invoice you for it; the invoices arrive as bills. The station's own side is described in Fuel Station Management.

#What you can do

• Record a fill by hand, correct it, void it, or bring many in from a CSV file. See Fills.
• Understand fuel economy, the checks that flag a fill, and the exceptions queue where a manager accepts or rejects a flagged fill. See Economy and exceptions.
• Give a vehicle or driver an allowance of litres or money per trip, day, week, month or period of your choosing. See Quotas.
• Ask for extra fuel when a quota runs out, and approve or reject the request. See Fuel requests.
• Keep the list of fuel stations you buy from. See Stations.
• Review the invoices linked fuel stations send, accept them as Finance bills or dispute lines, pay them and see each account's statement. See Bills.
• Give drivers one simple page to log a fill and ask for more fuel. See My Fuel.
• See spend, litres, economy, open exceptions and quotas at a glance, and run the seven fuel reports. See Fuel overview and reports.

#Before you start

1. Enable the module. Fuel Management must be enabled for your organization, and so must Fleet Management.
2. Set up Fleet first. Register the vehicles and drivers and assign drivers to vehicles. Give each vehicle its Fuel type and Tank capacity: the checks for a wrong fuel and for a fill larger than the tank cannot run without them. A vehicle's type decides whether it is measured by distance or engine hours.
3. Review the Fuel settings. An Owner or Admin opens Settings › Module settings and, in the Fuel card, selects Fuel settings. Decide whether a receipt photo and a meter reading are required, which checks are on, what a quota does when a fill would go over it, and who the fuel managers are. See Fuel settings.
4. Set the expected economy. On each vehicle type (or on a single vehicle) give the lowest and highest fuel economy you expect, so a fill with an unusual economy is flagged. Without a band no fill is flagged for its economy.
5. List your stations, if you want fills to name them. See Stations.
6. Add quotas, if you limit fuel. A team with no quotas can still record fills.
7. If drivers log their own fills, link each driver to a login and give them the Drivers permission group, which includes My Fuel. See My Fuel and The Drivers permission group.

#Permissions

In an organization that uses permission groups, Fuel Management has eight rows in the matrix. Owners and Admins have every permission, and in an organization with no active permission groups every member has full access. Fuel permissions are separate from Fleet permissions: to see a fill's vehicle you also need to be able to see that vehicle (Vehicles › View in Fleet).

"Own" means records you created, plus: for a fill, one whose driver is you; for a request, one made for you as the driver. A quota's owner is the person who created it.

Five more permissions sit under their rows as separate ticks:

Notes on the matrix:

• Delete is offered for Quotas, but no screen deletes a quota: a quota you no longer want is suspended. Station Delete works from the list.
• Fills › Edit is offered, but a fill is never deleted: it is voided.
• Fuel Requests › Edit is offered, but a request is never edited: it is decided.
• To ask for extra fuel from the Quotas screens you need Quotas › View; a driver asking from My Fuel does not.
• Fuel reports: the Fuel Reports page opens with any Fuel permission, and each report needs the View permission of its row (Bills by station needs Bills › View). See Fuel overview and reports.
• Fuel settings are for Owners and Admins only, whatever the permission groups say.
• The Drivers permission group made in Fleet settings gets My Fuel, creating fills and requests and viewing the driver's own, once Fuel Management is available. A Drivers group that already existed does not get these by itself: an Owner or Admin selects Create Drivers permission group in Fleet settings again to add them. See The Drivers permission group.
• A fill, and its exception, is only shown to someone who may also see its vehicle (Vehicles › View in Fleet): fills on other vehicles are left out of the fill list, the exceptions queue and the reports, and their pages cannot be opened.

#Notifications

Fuel Management sends eleven notifications, to the fuel managers chosen in Fuel settings (Fleet's managers when none are chosen there) unless noted. Everyone who is told something must also hold the permission for what it is about, so a chosen manager without it is not sent the notice: Exceptions › View for a fill that needs review, Quotas › View for a quota alert or a fill over quota, and Requests › View for a request needing a decision. The person who made an extra-fuel request must hold Requests › Create to hear the decision. A notification you receive belongs to the organization it is about, so it is listed under that organization in the bell even if you have since switched to another. You choose how each reaches you (in the app, email, push) under Settings › Notifications; see Preferences.

#Business units

When your organization uses business units, fills, quotas and requests take the business unit of their vehicle (or, for a quota or request on a driver, of the driver). The number of each one carries the prefix of the unit's legal entity. The fill, quota and request lists have a Business unit filter and column, and the fuel reports are filtered by unit, and a bill from a fuel station takes the unit of the vehicles it fuelled (else your default), with a Business unit filter on the bill list and on Bills by station. The Fuel overview is not filtered by unit. Without business units nothing changes.

#Number formats

Litres, amounts and economy follow the organization's number settings. Litres and economy show two decimal places.

#Current limitations

• Gallons. Litres are the only volume. Economy is distance per litre or litres per 100 distance units.
• Quotas and money. A quota counts against fills only. A fill with no quota in place is saved unless Allow fuel without a quota is off in Fuel settings, in which case it is refused (an imported one is saved and flagged Over quota).
• A fill cannot be deleted, only voided, and a quota cannot be deleted, only suspended.