Whether you are a small business owner managing a handful of trucks, vans, delivery cars and other fleet vehicles or you are a business owner with a sprawling fleet of semi trucks and other large vehicles, a fleet card is one of the most powerful tools in your business toolbox.
Managing a fleet of vehicles is really about managing the drivers and their activities while driving your fleet. While fleet vehicles need regular maintenance, necessary storage facilities and regular repairs to perform at their best, it is your drivers who are the key to your fleet’s operational success.
One way to ensure your drivers are maximizing efforts that positively affect your business is arming them with the simple power of a fleet card. That’s right: fleet cards are both simple and powerful. They’re simple because they are easy to introduce to your drivers while being intuitive to use and powerful because they provide valuable information so you can make the best decisions for your business.
There are an array of reasons why a Wawa fleet card is a powerful tool for businesses of all sizes. From controlling spending to customized reporting, a fleet card is one of the most reliable ways to monitor and track fleet success.
Fleet Cards are Simple and Powerful
The purpose of a fleet card is to streamline and control various points of spending. Fleet cards are often mistaken or confused with credit cards. Fleet cards are not credit cards. In fact, fleet cards improve upon and enhance many of the features of a regular credit card for a more robust experience.
Fleet cards improve upon and enhance many of the features of a regular credit card for a more robust experience.
Key features of a fleet card that can transform how a business owner understands their fleet are many:
- Date of fuel purchase.
- Time of fuel purchase.
- Fuel purchase location.
- Fuel grade purchased.
- Fuel type purchased.
- Amount of fuel purchased.
- Purchase price of fuel.
There are various other data points that can be pulled from the analytics of a particular fuel card used by a driver. Being a member of a fleet team is a unique position. The size and strength of a fleet can dictate the success of a business.
Healthy Fleets are Vital to a Business
The most common definition of a fleet has to do with vessels in the sea: a fleet of ships, for instance. But another definition of a fleet gets at the heart of businesses who use fleet cards with their driver teams: a large group of vehicles or automobiles moving or operating together.
Moving and operating together is an important way to understand a business owner’s fleet. If one vehicle or driver is out of commission, the entire fleet is affected. When a driver is out, another driver has to substitute or work overtime. When a vehicle is out for lack of regular maintenance, the routes are affected. The trickle down effect is that the business suffers when a fleet does not operate together.
Fleet Cards Guide Fleets to Operate with Efficiency
Because it is so important for fleets to operate efficiently, a fleet card is one of the most sought-after business tools. Fleet cards are able to track so much more than what is spent with it:
- Fleet cards can track driver routes and help with efficiencies for future routing.
- Fleet cards with telematics allow business owners to track how a vehicle is being used and run, especially in terms of accelerated speeds and brake-slamming.
- Fleet cards deter drivers from sharing it and potentially risking abuse of the card since personal identification numbers are assigned with each card.
- Fleet cards put the work of accountability back into the hands of drivers which ultimately empowers them to take ownership of their purpose on the road and as part of the fleet.
- Fleet cards add a level of security out in the world and on the road that was not available even 20 years ago.
- Fleet cards take the guesswork out of expense reporting.
- Fleet cards keep employees honest.
Without a fleet card, a business with a fleet of vehicles will run the risk of losing to competitors who invest in a fleet card program.
The Wawa Fleet Card Advantage
The Wawa fleet card advantage is that it is one of the smartest ways to keep a business moving. Other features of the Wawa fleet card:
- Follow the Money. With the Wawa fleet card, you will know exactly where business money is going.
- Data Tracking. The Wawa fleet card allows you to see which driver is spending how much at which station. This type of data is excellent for tracking and finding pockets for improvements and efficiencies.
- Details, Details, Details. Fleet cards offer deep dives into purchase details and capture the data in a way that answers all the questions before they’re even asked (about where and who and when).
- Make it Simple, Smarty. The online and mobile app structures for tracking that come with a fuel card make managing a fleet and the drivers easier.
Fleet card programs offer the ability for business owners to keep an eye on spending.
- Watching the Spending. Fleet card programs offer the ability for business owners to keep an eye on spending. There are sometimes even spending controls that help give guidance for a fleet.
- Spending Limits. One feature that has made a huge difference for business owners with fleets of any size is using the fleet card’s feature to place spending limits on cards. This allows for better awareness of spending. Limits can be turned on, turned off and communicated to drivers.
- Expanded Spending Limits. Not only can owners place spending limits on cards, it can be as specific as limiting spending to a certain time or day, on certain products and even by employees.
- Curbs Card Misuse. Fleet cards lessen the chance for cards to be misused, shared or manipulated in an abusive manner.
- Paperwork? What Paperwork? Introducing a fleet card to your business makes the drudgery of paperwork a thing of the past.
- Automated Accounting. Automated accounting is music to a business owner’s ears. A fleet card in the hands of your drivers makes expense tracking and accounting breezier and easier.
- Solves Paper Receipt Fiascos. The days of gathering sheaves of paper receipts or trying to track down, find or otherwise organize receipts are behind you when you choose a fleet card. Employees will have a new sense of trust knowing spending is automatically tracked.
- Simply Awesome Reporting. Fleet cards make reporting a dream. Imagine pushing a single button and being met with organized, accurate, insightful reports. They are yours with a fleet fuel card.
Why Choose the Wawa Fleet Card
With all of the fuel card options available, why choose Wawa’s fleet card? Depending on the Wawa card you choose, the location of accepted stations is vast. In an area of fleet and business parameters in regions with Wawa stations, a Wawa fleet card makes the most business sense.
For businesses with fleets that traverse the country or extend beyond Wawa-specific regions, their fleet fuel card is accepted at 95% of gas stations in the United States. These types of cards are the biggest asset to a company looking to use a fuel card for their robust features.
Advantages of Fleet Cards
Fleet cards have so many advantages. Including them in a business plan is a way to forge ahead into a more defined and inspired future for a business. Discover all the additional ways a fuel card can transform a company.
Expense Management
One of the top priorities for businesses is managing their expenses. With a fleet card, cost savings is one of the top draws for companies. Fleet cards can offer discounts on fuel from gasoline to diesel. They can also offer rebate programs that allow business owners to recoup some of their expenses.
Reduced Administrative Costs
A little known feature is how the introduction of fuel cards to a fleet of vehicles and their drivers is the reduction of administrative costs. When you no longer need the additional employee to track paper receipts and manage spreadsheets and data, resources could be used in other ways to enhance business or improve operations.
Enhanced Controls
To say that spending controls is empowering does not begin to convey how important they are. When the power of a control is in your hands, the worry over the fleet and the drivers may begin to lessen. Without having to be surprised by spending at month’s end, you can begin to focus on other areas of your business because of a fleet card’s enhanced controls created for busy business owners.
Enhanced Reporting
Reports for a business, especially a fleet, need to tell a story. Reports need to quickly and simply share both a snapshot of a moment in time but also allow for robust data. Data informs business decisions. Without concrete and clear data, guessing informs a business owner. Enhanced reporting thanks to fleet cards, can allow a business owner to watch the landscape of their fleet while also analyzing the data overtime to offer informed business choices in the future.
Real-Time Expense Tracking
If ever there was a time to harness the power of a fuel card, it is now. One feature that can enhance the business owner of a fleet is the ability to track expenses in real-time. That means an owner could track Vehicle 1 with Driver 2 to learn their habits, routes and spending in real time. If ever a red flag occurs, the ability to understand how and why an event is occurring is now available with the features of a fleet fuel card.
Customizable Spending Limits
It may appear at first glance that spending limits placed on a fuel card is restrictive and draconian. The reality for business owners is that employing the customizable spending limits feature on a fleet card is actually ideal. The ability to move freely in space (driver in your fleet) within communicated boundaries (spending limits) is freeing because spending limits can be customized to location, times, days, person, products.
Fuel Cards Help Streamline Fuel Management
Simply put: fuel cards make lots of things easier. The fuel management piece of fleet cards means two things. One, they reduce unauthorized spending. Spending can get out of control with traditional credit cards and even business credit cards that don’t have the controls and robust features of a fleet card.
Two, fleet cards also simplify fuel purchases in general. No longer is there a complicated receipt-tracking step drivers have to perform. Instead, since tracking is embedded in fleet cards, fuel purchases have returned to being a routine, easy transaction.
Who Benefits from a Wawa Fleet Card?
Any business or organization that maintains a fleet of vehicles can benefit from a Wawa fleet card. There are commercial fleets that use fuel cards to easily track routes and spending. Government fleets can benefit from fuel cards to help keep strict reporting records clear and up-to-date.
Some non-profit organizations with fleets like delivery vehicles can benefit from the spending limits available via fuel cards. Municipal fleets for cities and states can also benefit from the transparency of the reporting data from fleet cards to show efficiencies to their citizens.
Join the Wawa Fleet Card Family
With so many businesses and organizations taking full advantage of the offers fleet cards bring, now is the time to take the leap and sign-up for a card. Applications are easy to fill out and there are customer service representatives ready to answer any questions you may have about fleets, fleet cards or fuel cards from Wawa.
If approved for a Wawa fleet card, the savings start immediately in the form of peace of mind that from a fuel card, efficiencies will come. They will come in the form of saved money from spending limits, better accounting from expense tracking or more accountability with anti-fraud features.
Wawa Fleet Cards as Business Solutions
Choosing to add a fleet card to your business portfolio is an excellent step in the right direction for a successful business. Businesses who commit to the full suite of features offered by fuel cards are consciously making smarter business decisions that ultimately improve their bottom line.
Learn more about the different fleet card options from Wawa and start your application today.