Having a fuel card doesn’t mean you just get another credit card so you can buy your morning coffee at the service station. Properly used it can be a vital working tool, says John Oxley
If you’re working in a big company, it allows you (and your company, if they give you the card) to work out just how much fuel you use, enabling proper calculations in terms of L/100km, as well as keeping track of other purchases you might need, such as a battery or a new tyre.
If you’re an individual claiming running costs or GST, it will help you to keep a proper logbook – although you’ll need to separate out your private mileage.
Most fuel cards offer fleet management tools, such as IRD approved tax invoicing and online reporting with card management options.
But there’s lots of competition in the fuel card industry, and so we’re seeing more and more innovations to tempt you to choose.
Take pay at the pump. Z Card has this, and it’s really great to just swipe your Z Card at the pump and pay right away instead of waiting in line inside the service station – especially early in the morning when people are queueing to pay for coffee!
Other benefits offered by the Z Card include a discount of 6c a litre at service stations and 11.5c a litre at truck stops, Flybuys, and 15 percent off the cost of a WoF and CoFs at VTNZ (up to 3.5 tons).
BP has just announced a couple of changes. One of these is a new look to its online portal, with much-improved reporting, but the most important from the card user’s convenience viewpoint is probably the ability to pay for your fuel from your car.
Called BPMe, it’s available to selected BP Fuelcard customers, and is an app that can be downloaded to your Smartphone.
When you get to a BP station it recognises you, you confirm your pump, and fill up.
The app does the rest, including paying via your card account and keeping a record. No more queuing, and you don’t even have to get your card out!
BP is also a participant in the AA Smartfuel programme, which offers AA Smartfuel or AA membership benefits in terms of discounts. AA Smartfuel membership is free.
One of the biggest benefits of the Mobilcard is its centralised pricing policy, where you pay the same price throughout the country – unless the site you’re filling up at has a lower price than the national average, in which case you’ll pay that price.
In addition Mobilcard has programmes with Pak n Save and Countdown to enable you to get discounts when you shop; it also has a full suite of fleet management tools.
The Caltex StarCard for fleets offers the benefits of easy online fleet management, as well as AA Smartfuel.
Gull also offers a fuel card, with total control over purchases as well as itemised statements.
And finally there’s CardSmart, the only fuel card which is accepted at all major service stations nationwide.
This means only one petrol card for all vehicle needs, including online RUC and rego payments, WoF, servicing, repairs and more, and only one invoice, no matter where the vehicle has been refuelled or serviced.
All very interesting – and a little confusing. So what do you have to look out for?
- If you’re going for fuel price specials, make sure your chosen card takes them into account.
- Compare the fees and charges. This is where there’s most variance, and you don’t want to be paying lots of charges if your fuel use, and thus your savings, are not as high as the card fees.
- Check your coverage. Obviously you need to make sure you’ve got a local service station, but if you travel a lot, you need to make sure you’ve got coverage on the routes you use so you don’t have to deviate just to fill up.
