How do you really know whether your fuel levels and reported usage is accurate? Well, you need to measure it in real life. Yes this is time consuming and difficult, but if you're buying and using hundreds of thousands of dollars of fuel each month it may well be worth doing at certain points in time.

Conducting a fuel audit typically begins with gathering all sources of fuel data—fuel-card transactions, bulk-fuel invoices, asset activity records, and maintenance logs. Teams consolidate these disparate records into a central system or spreadsheet, aiming to capture every litre dispensed, consumed, or reordered.

Once data is collected, auditors reconcile volumes purchased against reported usage, looking for discrepancies such as unrecorded refuelling events, fuel theft, or inefficient routes. Finally, the audit concludes with a summary of findings, highlighting areas of overconsumption, potential fraud, and opportunities for cost savings.

Despite sounding straightforward, this process often hits several roadblocks:

• First, data fragmentation is common: fuel transactions may be logged in different formats or by multiple providers, requiring manual normalization before analysis.

• Second, manual entry and reconciliation are time-consuming—teams must cross-check individual line items, resolve mismatches, and dive into paper invoices or PDF statements.

• Third, without real-time visibility, by the time errors or anomalies are spotted, the opportunity to correct driver behavior or adjust routing has typically passed, limiting the audit’s usefulness for proactive decision-making.

Seasonal and operational complexities can also come into play, further complicating the picture. Fleet size and geographic spread mean that fuel use can vary dramatically by region, load type, or weather conditions. Maintenance issues such as clogged filters or underinflated tires may go unnoticed for weeks, subtly inflating consumption. Auditors must account for these variables when setting benchmarks and interpreting deviations, which can be challenging if underlying vehicle data (e.g., engine hours, idle time) isn’t readily available or integrated into the fuel records.

As a key input into this process, high quality and complete fuel purchase and usage data helps auditors to overcome some of these hurdles. Telematics systems providing real-time odometer readings, engine performance metrics, and exact GPS locations can also add significant value to the process. The challenge is bringing this all together in a consistent and managable way.

The Nuonic platform offers tool to make this easier, by providing access to nicely structured and combined data from these sources that auditors can integrate in to their workflow, allowing them to focus on the exceptions and insights coming out of the data rather than the collection and preparation of it.

Looking ahead, we'll be adding new workflow tools to further support the ongoing assessment of fuel usage and its alignment to purchasing. If this is important to your business, we'd love to hear from you!