Fuel is often the largest variable cost for asset-intensive businesses and the price can be volatile. Having an accurate handle of asset and job level costs is essential for keeping margins healthy, quotes competitive and operations running smoothly. With your fuel records in Nuonic, and optionally your GPS tracking data, you can make cost analysis much more accurate and timely.

How cost analysis is central to business performance

Costs often drive business performance in asset-intensive industries. Many contracts are won by the bidder that offers the best cost per unit, so quoting at the best rate you can while maintaining profitability is just the entry price. Increase profitability by widening margins often requires finding ways to reduce costs, because once contracts are priced there is usually little scope to change them, even if they are sending you broke (see the success of Rio Tinto or the failure of Scott's Refrigerated Transport as examples of this even at the top end of town)!

With fuel being a constantly changing and volatile cost component, it is critical to keep track of its true contributions to your outcomes, ideally at multiple levels such as cost-per-hour, cost-per-job, cost-per-asset and cost-per-km. The problem is that fuel cost isn't incurred continuously, fuel purchases occur at certain points in time and must be apportioned as best you can to the activity, requiring assumptions to be made in most cases. This problem increases in complexity when you consider multiple sources of fuel supply at different cadences (such as fuel cards for some vehicles while also using bulk tanks of site filled monthly) or fuel transfer between assets (such as filling on-site equipment from vehicles).

Traditionally, this analysis lives in spreadsheets patched together month by month. You export fuel purchase data, compile invoices, add odometer readings, job details and other items to estimate the cost per activity. It works in a pinch, but it’s laborious and hard to scale or execute quickly. Moreover, it becomes less reliable as margins get thinner, because there is less margin for error.

All this means that there is both risk and opportunity for those that can use their fuel purchase and asset activity data to increase the accuracy of their cost allocation and quoting for future work.

Levelling up your cost insights using Nuonic

Better fleet cost analysis delivers three powerful benefits:

• Fiinding hidden savings: By comparing purchases and usage between assets, you can find those that are costing more or less than you expect (in fact we have a scoreboard with the exact content) or which fuel cards are being over or under-used. This can help you trim underperforming assets, keep control of card use and provide broader insight into your contracted fuel services and how well they fit your needs.

• Sharpen quoting accuracy:: Armed with your fuel records, Nuonic lets you easily find cost-per-unit figures and compare costs for completed jobs with expected costs so your team optimise your job quoting and bids to win more work, at rates that work. With our GPS integration add-on you can overlay vehicle activity to more precisely allocate fuel usage and determine where cost reduction might be possible without affecting delivery.

• Drive operational efficiency: Nuonic provides cost dashboards that are automatically populated with your latest fuel purchase data, as it is uploaded. you don't have to wait for your team to prepare new spread sheet models, you just flick pages to see how your costs are moving so you can act quickly when you need to.

Nuonic’s Cost Analysis module brings these advantages to life in a few clicks. Rather than wrestling with disconnected spreadsheets, you just upload your fuel statements and (optionally) connect your telematics service, then let Nuonic automatically ingest and analyse every transaction.

What this means for you

Moving beyond spreadsheets to modern, data-driven cost insights not only saves time — it uncovers savings, unlocks smarter pricing and fortifies operations against surprises. With Nuonic, you gain full visibility into every dollar spent on your vehicles and equipment, and the power to turn that insight into measurable bottom-line results.