Online Business Primer

Are you still using cash to fund your drivers’ fuel purchases? Or do you give them regular charge cards with no controls on them? There is a better solution. Fleet cards allow your drivers and yourself the convenience of charge cards but with more control over purchases than either cash or regular credit cards can offer.

There are two basic types of fleet cards. Some of these cards are limited to fuel purchases only, while others allow your drivers to pay for parts and service as well.

Fuel Only:

Fleet cards that allow fuel purchases only are perfect for fleets where you don’t want your drivers paying for parts or service on a regular basis. These cards offer you a powerful tool to ensure that your drivers are not wasting your fuel budget on unauthorized purchases. Drivers can be limited to only paying for fuel with their gas card, virtually eliminating petty fraud. No more worrying about drivers buying themselves soda, cigarettes or snacks on your company’s dime.

In addition to the limits these cards allow you to put on your employees, they also enable you to keep close tabs on each vehicle’s fuel consumption. When you get fleet cards, the general idea is to assign one to every vehicle. Every purchase is recorded in detail so that you get not just the total cost of the sale, but also the number of gallons, price per gallon, and location of the fueling station where the gas was purchased. Some cards are set up to prompt the driver for the odometer reading at the pump, but you can also get the information from the driver at the end of every day.

Fleet cards offer all of this information in detailed reports that you can view in real time. By keeping an eye on each vehicle’s gas mileage, you can quickly identify potential problems, whether mechanical or driver training. Also, because transactions are immediately recorded in the system, you don’t have to wait for your statement to arrive. Fleet cards allow you to not only control your drivers’ purchases but also to keep better track of your vehicles.

Fuel and Maintenance:

Fleet fuel management is hard enough but on top of that, you also have to keep up with the regular maintenance of all of your vehicles, as well as the unscheduled repairs that need to be done. Luckily, a fuel and service fleet card can help you to better do your job.

This type of fleet card allows drivers to not only pay for fuel, but also to pay for parts and services needed for vehicle maintenance. For instance, a driver with a slow day could stop to get an oil change for their vehicle or they could pick-up windshield wipers. In addition to the benefits listed above such as limiting your drivers’ purchases and allowing you to keep track of fuel consumption, fleet cards also offer you the same detailed reporting regarding maintenance.

With this type of card, you should assign a different card to each vehicle. Since all of your drivers’ purchases are tracked and reported in detail, you can easily check to see when a truck last had an oil change or whether it has gone in for its scheduled tune-up yet. This can help make the burden of maintaining a large fleet easier on you as a manager. In addition, the ability to track fuel economy can help you to quickly identify problems as they arise and send your driver to have their vehicle serviced as soon as possible.

There are a variety of other features available with fleet cards. For instance, some cards offer bulk discounts on fuel. Ultimately, the biggest choice you need to make when choosing the type of fleet card is whether you want your drivers to be able to pay for just fuel or parts and service as well.

Technorati Tags: fleet cards, fleet fuel management

Are you still using cash to fund your drivers’ fuel purchases? Or do you give them regular charge cards with no controls on them? There is a better solution. Fleet cards allow your drivers and yourself the convenience of charge cards but with more control over purchases than either cash or regular credit cards can offer.

There are two basic types of fleet cards. Some of these cards are limited to fuel purchases only, while others allow your drivers to pay for parts and service as well.

Fuel Only:

Fleet cards that allow fuel purchases only are perfect for fleets where you don’t want your drivers paying for parts or service on a regular basis. These cards offer you a powerful tool to ensure that your drivers are not wasting your fuel budget on unauthorized purchases. Drivers can be limited to only paying for fuel with their gas card, virtually eliminating petty fraud. No more worrying about drivers buying themselves soda, cigarettes or snacks on your company’s dime.

In addition to the limits these cards allow you to put on your employees, they also enable you to keep close tabs on each vehicle’s fuel consumption. When you get fleet cards, the general idea is to assign one to every vehicle. Every purchase is recorded in detail so that you get not just the total cost of the sale, but also the number of gallons, price per gallon, and location of the fueling station where the gas was purchased. Some cards are set up to prompt the driver for the odometer reading at the pump, but you can also get the information from the driver at the end of every day.

Fleet cards offer all of this information in detailed reports that you can view in real time. By keeping an eye on each vehicle’s gas mileage, you can quickly identify potential problems, whether mechanical or driver training. Also, because transactions are immediately recorded in the system, you don’t have to wait for your statement to arrive. Fleet cards allow you to not only control your drivers’ purchases but also to keep better track of your vehicles.

Fuel and Maintenance:

Fleet fuel management is hard enough but on top of that, you also have to keep up with the regular maintenance of all of your vehicles, as well as the unscheduled repairs that need to be done. Luckily, a fuel and service fleet card can help you to better do your job.

This type of fleet card allows drivers to not only pay for fuel, but also to pay for parts and services needed for vehicle maintenance. For instance, a driver with a slow day could stop to get an oil change for their vehicle or they could pick-up windshield wipers. In addition to the benefits listed above such as limiting your drivers’ purchases and allowing you to keep track of fuel consumption, fleet cards also offer you the same detailed reporting regarding maintenance.

With this type of card, you should assign a different card to each vehicle. Since all of your drivers’ purchases are tracked and reported in detail, you can easily check to see when a truck last had an oil change or whether it has gone in for its scheduled tune-up yet. This can help make the burden of maintaining a large fleet easier on you as a manager. In addition, the ability to track fuel economy can help you to quickly identify problems as they arise and send your driver to have their vehicle serviced as soon as possible.

There are a variety of other features available with fleet cards. For instance, some cards offer bulk discounts on fuel. Ultimately, the biggest choice you need to make when choosing the type of fleet card is whether you want your drivers to be able to pay for just fuel or parts and service as well.

Technorati Tags: fleet cards, fleet fuel management

Online goals to maximize branding hopefully leads to profitability. By increasing the usability of your website, you’re more likely to find online success

It has been reported that most users of the World Wide Web are seeking answers to questions. They would like to know more about what’s happening in the world, so they do a search about the latest news story. Their favorite celebrity might have passed away, so they go online seeking to learn more about what happened to him or her.

The same concept is true about visitors who find their way to your business’ website. They are probably not initially looking for you to try and buy whatever it is you are selling. Conversely, many site visitors are mentally opposed to being sold to at all. They simply want to have their questions answered. The easier you make it for them to procure the knowledge they seek, the better your chances are of making a sale to them before they leave, or at some point in the near future. People like to support others who help them find the answers they want.

If your online presence is nothing more than an Internet brochure, you are probably missing a great chance to take advantage of those looking for the products or services your company offers. Instead of a flat, few pages, why not develop better website usability that offers your visitors knowledge and a reason to come back?

Following are 4 very simple steps you or your website developers can implement. Once you have integrated these ideas, your site will be well on its way to converting those curious knowledge seekers into life long customers.

4 Easy, Must Do Tasks To Increase Your Website’s Usability

1. Simplify On Page Navigation: Overwhelming your website visitors with too many options when it comes to navigation will only convince them to click on one thing: the back button to leave your site fast. Reduce the choices of where they might go from page to page. Make the navigation consistent across all your pages. Consider using navigational bread crumb style links located to the top and left of your content areas.
2. Redesign Fonts, Colors, Images: By redesign, what is meant is reduce, limit, and delete! Too much of anything is simply too much in your visitors mind. By using commonly expected font styles, you ensure a welcome mindset for visitors. Fewer color combinations on the page as well as less images also make for a page that is warmer, and more inviting.
3. Provide Effective Search: Depending upon the type of site you have, including a strong on-site search function can be extremely easy. A number of add-on modules and plugins are available. Some of the major search engines even have easy to install widgets which can provide your visitors with effective site indexes that when searched on provide quick answers (if they exist in your site, of course.)
4. Replace “Jargon”: This can be one of the most challenging concepts. It’s tough for you the site owner/operator because you know that this language is important in your trade or industry. Its a challenge for some of the website visitors who may very well need whatever you’re offering, but they simply don’t possess the knowledge to get beyond your technical speak. By eliminating, or at least reducing the jargon to an absolute minimum, you still maintain a professional attitude without alienating a large percentage of your customer base.

This article covers but 4 of the easy to implement, simple steps you can take in just a few hours time. Refining your website’s usability is an ongoing, some may say, never ending process. Even so, making it a priority to enhance your visitors experience is something most businesses realize should be at the top of their Internet task lists.

About the Author

Shelly Towns is a writer and avid blogger, who often finds herself writing about usability testing, user experience, and website development.

Technorati Tags: medium sized business, small business, user design, user experience

Before there was a global positioning system (GPS) in place, managers were very ineffective at tracking the progress vehicles in their fleet service were making.

If you have a fleet of vehicles in the marketplace, you need an effective way to track and plan for your assets in the field. With use of the latest advancements in telematics, you can gain control of your mobile assets for near real-time access to even the most minute details of daily fleet operations.

Before GPS units became as common as they are today, the only way you could keep track of your drivers was if they chose to check in via CB radio or phone calls to the office when they stopped for fuel.

Today, you have the luxury of following the progress your vehicles are making as they travel through their daily delivery schedules. Hardware and software development is providing ways to decrease operational costs, reducing the fuel your vehicles are consuming and even helping to increase employee productivity. By simply adding time card and payroll functionality, you can streamline the effort and energy your drivers need to put in for managing their work hours.

In addition to the above benefits, GPS-based fleet tracking provides an excellent mechanism for providing security for you fleet’s assets. From knowing where your containers are, whether or not their doors have been opened, to what the current temperature of your refrigerated units are, GPS units can provide you with all the information you need.

Deciding whether you want to hook your fleet vehicles up to a wireless tether should be a rather easy one to make. The cost of implementing GPS is easily justifiable. When you begin to see the reports from your diesel fuel card, you’ll quickly determine that the fuel savings alone from better routing and tracking capabilities is likely to pay for your new system in no time at all.

It is not unheard of to experience 10 to 15 percent reduction in fuel consumption with the use of GPS tracking. As the fleet service manager, you could save upwards of another 10 percent or so on fuel costs by switching your fleet vehicles to fuel efficient radial tires.

Using GPS with your fleet can also positively affect your bottom line profits as well. If you’re able to see when vehicles are not being moved, it may come down to poor employee performance. If you’re paying for work you are not getting, the GPS can help ferret out the slackers in your organization. Replacing that employee with a more productive one will definitely benefit your payroll charges.

Unfortunately, vehicles get stolen. With embedded GPS tracking capabilities, you’ll be able to report to the authorities exactly where your vehicle is located, and likely before any of your valuable cargo has been removed from the container.

Having these sort of capabilities is why many insurance carriers are providing healthy discounts to fleet owner/operators who install GPS in their rigs. When you add the fuel savings from optimized routing (especially on-demand traffic control systems) your company can be proud that it’s doing its part to reduce carbon emissions due to less mileage traveled.

At the end of the day, the more control you have in your fleet services, the better you’ll be at your job. Plus, being a more effective fleet manager is going to look better on you and your entire fleet of drivers as well.

Technorati Tags: fleet management, fleet service, GPS

Whether considered an excise, a VAT, or hypothecated for specific projects and subsequently considered user taxes, fuel tax can be confusing. Get fuel tax facts.

In the U.S., motor fuel taxes vary from state to state as well as regionally. If you’re in the business of transporting goods from place to place, one of your biggest challenges can be centered around the concept of identifying which taxes you’re obligated to pay, which you can be expected to have refunded, and how to deal with all the paperwork associated with fuel taxes.

If you’re responsible for a number of vehicles which your company operates, the use of a fleet gas card can be a great way to help consolidate your purchasing information. Additionally, the various taxes collected, as well as the necessary reporting, will be consolidated in one location.

Your fleet of drivers have enough to worry about regarding the safety and scheduling of delivering their loads. Taking the stress out of their work equations, at least as it relates to dealing with taxes, helps to ensure they are focusing where they need to. But as a controller of the books, you may need to have a better understanding of what to do with all the information and data that comes with your drivers’ usage of a fleet credit card.

One of the first things to know about fuel tax, whether considered an excise or user tax, is that it is simply a way of life. Here in this country, we do have the right as well as the responsibility to elect representatives who can adjust and affect the levy of taxes.

It should also be known that much of the revenue generated at the federal, state and even local levels on fuel purchases are hypothecated, or dedicated to specific uses. For instance, it’s not unusual for a county to levy a few cents on every gallon of gas sold at stations within its boundaries. Those taxes are then used for the repairs and maintenance of the county-owned roadways.

The same concepts go with the state highway and federal interstate highway maintenance programs. The revenue generated from consumers traveling across the state or from one part of the country to another are collected and used to budget repairs and build infrastructure like bridges, safety markings and other road related projects.

It is important, as a fleet manager, to understand what your responsibilities are to the government for properly reporting your company’s purchasing habits. Certain percentages of the taxes your drivers spend with their fleet gas cards can be returned to the company when year-end (or quarterly) reporting is performed.

In order to facilitate this reporting, you will want easy-to-use documentation that clearly delineates the taxes paid to various institutions: federal, state, local, special levies, etc. This information, combined with your fleet routing will also allow you to plan better for instructing your drivers where they should stop for refueling and other necessary purchasing.

You may discover that a driver on a particular route has a choice of several locations where they could = refuel their vehicles. By having the historical purchasing data, along with current and projected fuel tax rates, it will be easy to discern the most financially advantageous stops.

Armed with this kind of knowledge, you’ll be doing all you can to eliminate financial waste and streamline your business’s operations.

While taxing may be inevitable, understanding that it’s necessary to repair and maintain the roadways and other related infrastructure is important. It’s also important to understand the laws as they relate to how your business must report on operations.

Technorati Tags: fuel tax, fuel taxes, gas cards