Start with yesterday, not last month
The 10-minute check is triage, not investigation: look at yesterday’s exceptions in risk order, sort them into investigate today, correct and log, or clear, and log who owns what is left.
Fuel-card problems rarely start with one huge transaction. They show up as small patterns: a card away from its vehicle, a fill larger than the tank, a purchase outside a shift. A morning check catches them while the details are still fresh.
This routine assumes transactions are already matched to telematics, as described in Fleet Telematics Combined With Fuel Card Integration For Effective Fleet Management. It is narrower: what to look at, in what order, for ten minutes. If a transaction is not an exception, leave it alone. Sort exceptions into: investigate today, correct and log, or clear.
The 10-minute routine
The Trigger: Vehicle not at the station, gallons over tank capacity, or a hard flag
Start here, with the highest-risk mismatches, and split the two tank checks. (a) Gallons over usable tank capacity: investigate today. (b) Gallons versus tank-level increase: a weak signal only — check sensor lag and the next reading before escalating.
Also check three hard flags. Wrong fuel type or grade: investigate today. Impossible travel — the same card at two distant stations too close together, or a card used while its vehicle is in the shop or sold or retired — points to a shared or cloned card, not a single driver error. If a driver has a receipt but GPS contradicts the card location, check for skimming or cloning before blaming the driver, and cancel and reissue the card if cloning is suspected.
Check the Time, GPS presence and shift
Was the vehicle present near the station around the purchase, within a radius and time window? Was there an ignition-off/on sequence around it? Ignition off at the pump is expected, not a flag — do not test for a running engine at the station. Was the purchase within the driver’s shift or route? A purchase well outside a shift needs a question, not an assumption: emergency fill, borrowed card, or container fill. For weekend patterns, see Fleet Telematics: Essential Alerts to Effortlessly Catch Costly Weekend Miles.
Look up the Driver, vehicle and odometer
Check driver on the card against the driver assigned to the vehicle, or the vehicle itself if cards are assigned to vehicles. For pool or crew trucks, compare to the shift log, not only to a single assigned driver — a mismatch against a fixed assignment is expected on a crew truck. Then check odometer at purchase against telematics distance since the last fill. A large gap, or a stalled odometer, is a flag. A blank odometer is usually a prompt or system failure, not driver fraud: fix the prompt. Shared cards usually appear here, and are not always fraud.
Non-fuel items, partial fills and missing fields
Finish with lower-risk items: non-fuel purchases, if shown separately; partial fills that do not fit distance driven; and transactions with a missing field. Most will be data errors. Correct, log and clear the rest.
Log it, clear it, escalate it
Write down how many exceptions you cleared, which items are still open, and who owns them. Note any pattern to watch tomorrow. If nothing is open, that is a successful check. Ten minutes is triage and logging, not investigation and resolution: if the exception list is longer than about ten items, triage by dollars first and carry the rest, with an owner, to tomorrow’s list.
What each mismatch usually means
A mismatch is a question, not proof. Sort it here, then check the receipt, telematics record and driver together.
No GPS presence around the station. Usually a card without the vehicle, a wrong vehicle, or a GPS gap. Investigate today if the vehicle was elsewhere on a recorded route; correct and log it if the log shows an outage. Ignition off is normal, and a device asleep at the pump is normal. A GPS distance can also be a geocoded merchant address error or a large truck-stop lot — check the actual station location before escalating.
Gallons exceed tank capacity. Usually a wrong vehicle, container filling, or a tank-size error. Investigate today, especially if it repeats. Check tank capacity on file first.
Gallons exceed the tank-level increase. Usually sensor lag, a partial fill recorded as full, or fuel going elsewhere. Correct and log it if the sensor catches up next reading; investigate today if the gap grows.
Wrong fuel type or grade. A hard flag. Investigate today: a diesel truck buying gasoline, or vice versa, is clearer than a tank-level wobble.
Impossible travel, or a card used for a vehicle in the shop or retired. Usually a shared or cloned card. Check for skimming or cloning before blaming the driver, especially if the driver has a receipt and GPS contradicts the card location, and cancel and reissue the card if cloning is suspected.
Container or equipment fill. Legitimate work if coded separately. Treat an uncoded container fill as a data problem first, not as suspicious by default.
Purchase outside the driver’s shift, or time matches the station but not the shift. Usually an authorised extra shift, a borrowed card, off-hours use, or a time-zone or clock difference. Investigate today if the shift record does not explain it, or if the time gap also puts the vehicle elsewhere.
Driver on the card does not match the driver on duty. Usually a shared card, a driver swap, or a card assigned to a vehicle. Correct and log it if the swap is documented; investigate today if different drivers use it with no record of who had it.
Odometer does not match telematics distance. Usually a missed or mistyped entry, an estimated reading, or a vehicle change. Correct and log it if the next reading brings distance back into line; investigate today if the odometer stalls.
Non-fuel purchase, or a partial fill that does not fit distance driven. Usually a card setting, a coding error, a top-up, a split fill, or a missed second transaction. Correct and log it if you can find the second transaction or correct the coding; investigate today if policy is fuel-only and it was not an emergency, or if fills stay small while distance stays high.
How to handle a flagged driver fairly
A flag is not a finding. Check the data first, from more than one field, before you speak to the driver, so you are not acting on a single faulty sensor.
Then talk to the driver with that evidence, and ask what happened. Keep it short and specific: this transaction, this station, this time. Drivers often have a simple explanation — a swap, a second station, a faulty pump reading — and it should be recorded with the flag, with the outcome documented in the same log.
If a pattern continues, use your normal process for repeat issues, covered in Managing Non-Compliant Fleet Drivers: From Intervention to Termination, and not repeated here.
Morning checklist
- Open yesterday’s exceptions only.
- Vehicle not at station, gallons over usable capacity, wrong fuel, impossible travel: investigate today.
- Time, GPS presence and shift mismatches: check the shift record.
- Driver, vehicle and odometer: check shift logs, swaps, shared cards, mistyped readings.
- Non-fuel items, partial fills, missing fields: correct, log, clear.
- Log open and cleared items, and who owns open items.
- Note any repeating pattern to watch tomorrow.
- Stop at ten minutes — triage only. If more than about ten items, triage by dollars first. Open items go on tomorrow’s list, with an owner.