Coach fleet fuel tracking: consumption and cost per kilometre

Tracking fuel for a coach fleet means logging every refuel with its litres, its cost and the kilometres shown on the odometer, coach by coach. Those three figures give you the numbers that matter: cost per kilometre, consumption in litres per 100 km, and how both change by week, month, quarter or year, for the whole fleet or for each coach.

Here is what to record, how those figures are calculated, what happens to the receipts the driver sends in, and why a spreadsheet falls short as the fleet grows.

What to record at every refuel

Three pieces of data are essential for each refuel, and two more are worth having. The three essentials are the litres, the cost and the odometer reading at the moment of refuelling. The other two, the date and the filling station, help you check the receipt afterwards.

In Bus Center each refuel is logged on the coach's record with its date, litres, cost, odometer kilometres, station and a note. The odometer does a second job too: if it has moved forward, it updates the vehicle's kilometres, which is what the kilometre-based maintenance alert uses.

The odometer is the figure that turns a list of receipts into a record of fuel consumption. Without kilometres you know how much you have spent, but not how much the coach uses.

The figures: cost per kilometre and consumption

Both figures are calculated the same way in any fleet, and this is how Bus Center calculates them:

Figure	How it is calculated
Cost per kilometre	Cost for the period divided by the kilometres for the period.
Consumption	Litres for the period times 100, divided by the kilometres for the period: litres per 100 km.

The kilometres for each period come from the difference between the highest and the lowest odometer reading logged in that period, coach by coach, and are then added up. That is why it matters to log the odometer at every refuel: a refuel without an odometer reading adds litres and cost, but not kilometres. If a period has no kilometres, the program does not give a cost per kilometre, and if litres or kilometres are missing, it does not give consumption: it does not invent the figure.

By period and by coach

Bus Center gives litres, cost, kilometres, cost per kilometre and consumption by period, where you choose week, month, quarter or year, for the whole fleet or per vehicle. When you look at the whole fleet, the per-coach list comes sorted from highest to lowest cost.

Comparing coaches with one another is what teaches you most. Two similar coaches with very different consumption call for an explanation: different routes, a driver with a different driving style, or a mechanical problem. The program does not supply the explanation, but it puts the difference in front of you. What you do about it in the workshop is covered in preventive maintenance for coaches and buses.

A monthly review

The figures are useful only if someone looks at them calmly. A monthly review can come down to three questions: which coach has the highest cost per kilometre, which one has changed its consumption most compared with last month, and which refuels were logged without an odometer reading.

The first two tell you where to look, in the workshop or on the road; the third tells you where data is missing. In Bus Center the month-by-coach view answers the first two, and the fleet list, sorted from highest to lowest cost, shows the coaches that spend most at the top.

The receipts the driver sends in

The driver sends in expenses from the mobile portal with a photo of the receipt: diesel, tolls, parking. Without signal they are saved and sent automatically, without duplicates. In the office, each expense is accepted or rejected, with a reason; to reject one or ask for a correction, you have to tell the driver why.

When the office approves it, the expense goes into the fleet accounts. One thing is worth knowing: consumption and cost per kilometre are calculated from the refuels logged on the coach's fuel record, which is a separate record from the expenses. An approved diesel receipt appears in the expenses; for it to count towards consumption, the refuel has to be on the fuel record. There is more on how receipts flow in driver expenses on the road.

Why a spreadsheet falls short

A spreadsheet is fine for getting started, and for a fleet of two coaches it may be enough. It falls short for practical reasons, not because of the formula:

• Receipts arrive piecemeal, sometimes by message, and someone has to copy them in by hand.
• Each coach ends up on a different tab, and comparing the fleet means rebuilding the table.
• A mistyped odometer reading throws off the whole month's consumption, and nobody notices.
• The refuel is not tied to the coach's record, its maintenance or its kilometres.

If you are coming from a spreadsheet, bear in mind that Bus Center does not import Excel files: refuels are logged in the program. To start, the refuels for the current month are enough: consumption will be calculated from the odometer readings you log from that day on. You will find a summary of the coach record in the Bus Center features (in Spanish).

What Bus Center does not do

Bus Center does not read the odometer or the fuel tank: it has no GPS or fleet tracking, and the data comes from what you log. Nor does it import refuels from a spreadsheet. And the consumption it calculates is only as good as the odometer readings that are logged.