Mileage Expense Management - The Amazing Feature in a Fleet System

What is fleet mileage?

Fleet mileage refers to the total distance travelled by a fleet of vehicles within a specific period. It is a critical metric for assessing vehicle usage, monitoring fuel consumption, determining maintenance needs, and overall operational efficiency, and is usually measured in kilometres.

What is fleet mileage expense tracking?

Fleet mileage expense tracking is the practice of keeping a log of the distance travelled by each vehicle in a fleet for tax deduction purposes and to help fleet managers optimise routes, reduce operational costs, and improve overall fleet management. It involves monitoring the money spent on every business kilometre driven by a group of vehicles in a fleet, including deliveries, maintenance runs, and other work-related activities. It includes the tracking of expenses related to fuel, maintenance, repairs, and other operational costs directly related to the distance travelled by fleet vehicles. Fleet mileage expense tracking can be done manually or through the use of fleet management software that automates the process and provides an array of information to manage a fleet more efficiently.

The benefits of fleet mileage expense tracking

Fleet mileage expense tracking is a beneficial tool for the effective running of your fleet. Here are a few benefits of this next-level innovation:

1. Cost management:

Fleet mileage expense tracking is crucial for helping you accurately budget and forecast fleet expenses, including fuel costs, maintenance, and other vehicle-related expenses. By accurately monitoring mileage expenses, you can ensure that your fleet operates within its budget, while also identifying areas of inefficiency that require cost-saving measures. These measures can range from optimising routes and minimising fuel consumption to scheduling preventative maintenance and reducing vehicle usage.

2. Reduce mileage:

Fleet mileage expense tracking plays a crucial role in reducing vehicle mileage by providing valuable insights into vehicle usage patterns and operational inefficiencies. By analysing detailed mileage data, fleet managers can spot areas for optimising fleet efficiency. An example of this is making use of real-time GPS tracking to implement route optimisation strategies, which helps you avoid traffic congestion, something that can significantly increase fleet mileage and vehicle wear and tear.

3. Track driver performance:

Fleet mileage expense tracking plays a big role in knowing how your drivers are operating behind the wheel. By spotting and addressing the root cause of increased mileage, whether it be inefficient driving behaviour or unauthorised vehicle usage, fleet managers can ensure that their drivers are operating safely and efficiently. To provide more detailed reports, this can be integrated with other systems to provide a comprehensive solution for tracking and managing driver behaviour. This simplifies managers' calculation of fuel consumption and costs associated with each driver, enabling performance comparisons and creating driver-specific solutions.

4. Optimise operations:

Fleet mileage expense tracking gives fleet managers comprehensive insights into vehicle usage rates and the associated expenses. This makes it easier for them to identify inefficiencies, streamline their processes, and make data-driven decisions that play an important role in maximising fleet productivity and efficiency. For example, Sarah notices that her fleet’s mileage has increased significantly over the last two months. The upside is that Sarah makes use of these insights, which helps her identify the source of the increase, which is an increase in deliveries. With this knowledge, she can decide whether she needs another vehicle, or optimise her delivery routes.

These benefits of keeping track of fleet mileage expenses can leave quite a positive impact on a fleet, and the best way to reap these benefits is to implement a fleet management system.

What is a fleet management system?

A fleet management system is a comprehensive software solution that is designed to streamline and optimise the management of a fleet of vehicles. It allows businesses to track vehicle locations, mileage, and other data, which helps simplify the process of fleet management. Fleet management is the process of overseeing and coordinating a wide range of fleet vehicles. Key aspects of fleet management typically include vehicle tracking, vehicle acquisition, maintenance, tracking and driver monitoring. A fleet management system simplifies all these processes, bringing them all to you through a simple, easy-to-use platform, and helping you increase your fleet efficiency.

What are the elements of effective fleet management?

1. Real-time tracking: As an essential element of effective fleet management, real-time tracking involves making use of GPS technology to monitor the speed, location, and performance of fleet vehicles in real time. It plays a crucial role in giving fleet managers a comprehensive view of their entire fleet operation, making it easier for them to make informed decisions and optimise fleet performance.
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2. Route optimisation: This element is closely linked to real-time GPS tracking. It is focused on finding and choosing the most efficient and cost-effective routes for fleet vehicles to travel on for business purposes. By making use of GPS technology, advanced algorithms and real-time road data, this element not only identifies the shortest, fastest, and most fuel-efficient routes for drivers to reach their destination, but also prevents route deviation, which is a significant cost generator for fleets.
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3. Tax compliance: Tax compliance refers to the adherence to tax regulations and requirements set by the South African Revenue Services (SARS). It involves several aspects, including accurate record-keeping and the timely filing of tax returns. Fleet managers need to keep accurate records of their fleet’s expenses, including fuel, maintenance, and repairs. This can seem very time-consuming, but effective fleet management helps simplify the recording and storing of these records.
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4. Fuel monitoring: Fuel monitoring is a crucial element of effective fleet management, as it directly impacts operational costs and environmental sustainability. By closely monitoring fuel consumption, fleet managers can identify areas for improvement and implement strategies to reduce fuel usage, which subsequently leads to cost savings. Keeping track of every litre of fuel being consumed can be very difficult, but a fleet management system’s capabilities can give you real-time fuel consumption insights, simplifying the whole process.
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5. Driver monitoring: Your drivers are a crucial part of your fleet, with their behaviour having a significant impact on its success and efficiency. Effective fleet management needs to integrate driver monitoring as it helps fleet managers gain real-time insights into driving behaviour, vehicle status, and operational efficiency, which ultimately leads to improved safety, reduced costs, and enhanced fleet productivity.

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What are the top 3 benefits of a fleet management solution?

A fleet management solution is the secret to a highly effective fleet, yielding a wide range of benefits. Here are the top three benefits that can elevate your entire fleet operation:

1. Improved driver behaviour:

   Fleet management makes use of different mechanisms designed to monitor driver safety and efficiency, including in-cabin cameras and GPS tracking technology. These enable real-time monitoring of driver performance metrics such as speed, acceleration, and braking. By triggering real-time alerts when harsh driving is detected, drivers can quickly correct their behaviour. Along with this, fleet managers can review these events, helping them build specific training for drivers, and helping them improve driver behaviour and overall fleet safety.
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2. Improved customer service:

   One of the biggest selling points of fleet management solutions is the full visibility it gives managers. By helping fleet managers know exactly where all their vehicles are at all times, they can give accurate information to their customers in regards to deliveries and estimated times of arrival (ETAs). Along with this, they can optimise their routes based on real-time traffic and weather conditions.

   Let’s take Michael for instance. He runs a custom-made prescription glasses business. With a full overview of his vehicle and the road conditions, he can ensure his drivers avoid traffic-congested areas, delivering clear vision to his clients as quickly as possible. Talk about 20/20 vision, right?
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3. Increased fuel efficiency:

   Manually keeping track of fuel consumption can be quite challenging, leading to costly inaccuracies. However, a fleet management solution provides detailed insights into how much fuel each of your vehicles is consuming. No more running to each of your vehicles at the end of the day to play the guessing game of what level your fuel gauge is on. By helping you assess driver behaviour, you can spot and eliminate fuel-wasting behaviour, such as excessive idling, ensuring that your fleet remains fuel efficient.

How can fleet management help simplify mileage expense management?

• Automated mileage tracking: Fleet management systems automate mileage tracking by using GPS technology to track the location and distance of each vehicle. This data is automatically recorded and stored on the fleet platform, which eliminates the need for manual mileage logs. Not only is this more convenient, but it also ensures accuracy in your mileage tracking.
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• Real-time vehicle monitoring: Powered by GPS tracking technology, fleet management systems give fleet managers access to real-time data on vehicle location, speed and status. This helps fleet managers conveniently verify mileage claims and ensure compliance with the company's policies.
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• Route optimisation: By providing real-time data on a vehicle’s location, fleet management systems can suggest or optimise routes based on factors such as traffic conditions, distance, and fuel efficiency. This plays a crucial role in reducing mileage by finding the most efficient routes for drivers.
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• Expense reporting: By automating data collection, fleet management systems can generate detailed mileage reports for each vehicle or driver, simplifying the tracking and recording of mileage expenses and facilitating the reimbursement processes.
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• Integration with accounting software: Many fleet management systems integrate with cost management platforms, which helps streamline the reimbursement process by automatically transferring mileage data and expense reports.

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Achieve accuracy in your vehicle mileage measurements with Cartrack’s solutions

Say goodbye to the guessing games and human error. With Cartrack on your side, calculating your vehicle’s mileage will be a breeze. These are a few solutions that’ll give you the edge:

1. Fuel monitoring system:

   An increase in fuel consumption can be indicative of increased vehicle mileage, so keep track of your fleet’s fuel consumption with Cartrack’s fuel management system. This industry-leading solution makes use of advanced telematics and real-time visibility to provide detailed fuel monitoring. By providing you with metrics on fuel consumption per kilometre travelled, and per job completed, we help you spot any significant increases in fuel consumption, alerting you that your vehicles are experiencing an increase in mileage.
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2. Driver behaviour monitoring:

   Keep track of harsh driver behaviour with Cartrack’s driver scorecards. Driver behaviour can significantly impact vehicle mileage, with harsh driving behaviours such as speeding and harsh acceleration decreasing fuel economy by up to 30% at highway speeds, and by up to 40% in stop-and-go traffic. Make use of our driver scorecards to monitor high-risk driving behaviours such as excessive speeding, harsh braking, long idling, and sudden acceleration. By giving you these detailed insights into driver performance, you can identify what behaviours may be causing an increase in vehicle mileage, and create driver-specific solutions to correct these.
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3. MiFleet:

   Know exactly how much money your fleet needs to run effectively with Cartrack’s MiFleet. This easy-to-use vehicle cost accounting software makes efficiently managing fleet vehicles, drivers, and operating costs simpler. By integrating, digitising and automating fleet admin and cost analysis, this tool helps you know your fleet’s exact running costs, helping you accurately determine your mileage expenses at the touch of your screen. Unlock full insights into this with a wide range of reports ranging from vehicle performance and fuel usage to on-road hours automatically emailed to you.
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4. GPS Tracking:

   Know exactly how your vehicles are operated with our real-time GPS tracking. Our system does more than just let you know where your vehicles are in real time. With access to your vehicles’ full trip history, you can track exactly where your drivers have been, along with gaining insights into the vehicle idling status, fuel levels and engine diagnostics. By knowing exactly how long your driver operated a vehicle, you can get an accurate report on mileage expenses.

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Calculating your entire fleet’s mileage expenses can be daunting and time-consuming. But that was before Cartrack. Our industry-leading solutions are here to help you streamline the entire process, turning your stress into peace of mind.

‍Contact us today to find out how