BUSINESSES could be saving on average eight hours a month on business administration time by switching to using a fuel card system, according to fuelGenie.
On average SME businesses spend 33 hours or almost four-and-a-half days each month undertaking paperwork, such as tackling issues such as tax, insurance, accounting tasks, health and safety paperwork, as well as completing fuel expenses.
The research found that a third of 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.
This 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.
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 just processing monthly fuel expenses, with the lost time is costing companies more than £1,500 per year.
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.
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.”
Supermarket fuel stations offer an average saving of over 3p per litre at the pumps when compared to the national average so even with a single vehicle savings can soon add up.
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