New system keeps distributor on top of fuel-price changes

By RICHARD PAMATATAU

A web-based accounting system is helping Mobil petrol distributor Waitomo Petroleum manage see-sawing oil prices that affect 5000 customers and 6000 delivery points.

Leanne Milligan, Waitomo Petroleum administration manager, said each time the price in what is called "the rack or daily buy" changed, everything in the accounting system had to be changed.

Waitomo Petroleum is a Mobil fuel distributor whose fleet of 15 tankers and six mini tankers deliver fuel and lubricants to rural service stations, commercial operations and agriculture operators in Auckland, Waikato, Coromandel, Bay of Plenty and King Country.

It also operates a customised "into machine" mini-tanker service in the Auckland metropolitan area, plus two truckstops and three lube depots.

Milligan said a delivery point could be anything from a service station to a small 340-litre "farm tank on legs", so the accounting process was particularly detailed and the information needed to be passed out as quickly as possible.

It could also manage up to 3000 fuel card transactions in a day, which also had to be billed at the right rate.

A few years ago there might be 12 changes in a year, she said, but there were four last week alone.

Before the new system started each price change meant 2 1/2 hours of manual work entering data into a number of spreadsheets before it could be extracted to billing, customer service, delivery and other systems, Milligan said.

Now the new figures were entered into one field and the changes made through the system down to the automatic faxing of changes to customers in the field.

In the past there was more room for error, she said. "You get that with a lot of data entry."

Milligan said that with 34 price changes already this year the system had saved her more than 60 hours in manual administration.

The system is a customised version of ACCPAC accounting software developed by Hamilton's Business Enabling Systems and Pacific Technology Solutions.

Expected benefits of the new system included reduced risk to the business through a wider system support choice; efficient reconciliation of major supplier accounts; reduced administration time and cost; improved relevance, reliability and timeliness of management information; improved and more detailed reporting; and improved supply chain management and transportation planning.

Milligan said the system coped with the quirks of tracking liquid product sales plus the inherent complexities of the pricing system, site monitoring, fuel reconciliations and automated daily fuel and payables reconciliations.

The company was also automatically generating digital reports to major customers without having to conduct any extra processes, so a "group account" such as a farming co-operative received daily updates on members' buying activities direct to their billing systems, allowing them to on-bill individuals in a timely manner with minimal effort, said Milligan.

"Things like that mean quite a lot to the rural community."

The system is also tied into mobile data terminals on the trucks, which lets the company assess individual truck profitability.