Fuel and idle

Track fuel spend, MPG and idle cost, review suspicious fuel purchases, and import fuel-card transactions.

For admins

What the Fuel and idle pages are for

The Fuel & idle pages show what your fleet spends on fuel, its fuel economy (MPG) and cost per mile, how much time and fuel is lost to engine idling, and which fuel purchases look wrong (possible fuel-card misuse or entry mistakes). You can also register fuel cards and import transactions from any fuel-card provider's CSV export.

Open them from the Operations icon in the left rail, group Fuel & idle:

Note: Fuel and idle is an optional feature (Fuel & idle). If the pages are missing from the menu, the feature is not turned on for your company. Contact EZ Logs support to enable it.

Fuel purchases themselves are the IFTA fuel purchases: entered by drivers in the ELD app, added on the IFTA page, or imported from a fuel card here. See IFTA reporting.

Who can do what

• Owner and Carrier admin: everything (review anomalies, manage cards, import, change settings).
• Support (read-only): sees every page; actions are hidden.
• While your portal is read-only (see Billing and trial), actions are disabled for everyone.
• Drivers see only their own fuel and idle summary in the ELD app.

Fuel overview

Go to Fuel & idle > Fuel & idle.

1. Set the range with From and To (home terminal days; the default is the last 30 days).
2. Choose Group by: Day, Week or Month.
3. Optionally filter by Unit or Driver.

The tiles show Gallons, Fuel spend (with the average price per gallon), Cost per mile, Fuel economy (MPG), Idle cost (estimated) and Open anomalies, each compared with the previous period of the same length. Below are the Fuel spend and Fuel economy charts (Show the numbers per period opens them as a table) and the By vehicle / By driver tables.

The About these numbers box explains how the figures are calculated:

• MPG = miles divided by gallons purchased in the range, so short ranges swing with tank fills.
• Driver MPG divides the miles a driver drove (while signed in) by the gallons they bought; drivers who share trucks make it approximate.
• Purchases paid in CAD count in gallons but not in the USD spend.

Idle time

Go to Fuel & idle > Idle time. It uses the same From, To, Group by, Unit and Driver filters.

• An idle event is engine on and not moving (at most 1 mph) for at least the Idle event after (minutes) setting (default 5 minutes).
• Tiles: Idle hours, Idle share (percent of engine time spent idling), Idle events (with the average length), Fuel burned idling and Idle cost, all estimates.
• Estimated gallons = idle hours x idle burn rate (the vehicle's own rate, else the carrier rate, default 0.8 gal/h). Estimated cost = gallons x fuel price.
• By vehicle and By driver tabs list idle events, idle hours, engine hours and the longest idle.
• The Idle events list shows each event with its start, duration, unit, driver and a map link to the location. Use Load more idle events for older ones.

For per-day idle details to export, use the idle report under Insights > Reports. See Reports.

Reviewing fuel anomalies

EZ Logs checks every fuel purchase when it is entered, changed or imported, and flags it when:

To review:

1. Go to Fuel & idle > Fuel anomalies. The tabs To review, Confirmed and Dismissed show their counts.
2. Filter by Kind or Unit if needed, and select an anomaly to open its details (time, gallons, amount, vendor, location, card, fill MPG, receipt).
3. Optionally type a Review note (optional).
4. Select Confirm when it is a real problem (wrong entry, card misuse), or Dismiss when it is explained (for example a reefer or a second tank filled on the same card).
5. To undo a decision, open the anomaly and select Reopen.

To correct the purchase itself, use Open the fuel purchase in IFTA (shown when IFTA is turned on).

Note: When you change an anomaly limit or a tank capacity, purchases of the last 90 days are re-checked. Open anomalies that no longer apply disappear; confirmed and dismissed ones are kept.

Fuel cards

Registering cards lets imported transactions match the right truck and driver.

1. Go to Fuel & idle > Fuel cards & imports.
2. Select Add card.
3. Enter Card last digits (4 to 8 digits or letters, for example 4417). Only these last digits are stored, never the full card number.
4. Optionally add a Label (optional), a Vehicle (transactions on this card are matched to this truck) and a Driver. Leave Any vehicle (use the unit number) to match by the unit number in the file.
5. Keep Active ticked and save.

Use the row actions to edit, activate or deactivate, or delete a card. To stop matching new transactions but keep the history, deactivate the card rather than deleting it. Purchases already imported keep their vehicle.

Importing fuel-card transactions (CSV)

Any provider's transaction export works (WEX, Comdata, EFS, Fleetcor and others). Direct WEX, Comdata, EFS and Fleetcor integrations are listed under Card providers as Coming soon: import their CSV export meanwhile.

1. On Fuel cards & imports, select Import transactions.
2. 1. Choose the file: pick the CSV file, or paste the CSV text. Choose the Date format (Detect automatically, YYYY-MM-DD, MM/DD/YYYY or DD/MM/YYYY).
3. Select Check file. Nothing is saved yet.
4. 2. Match the columns: check the suggested mapping. Date and Quantity are required. Map Card number or Unit number so rows match a truck; the other fields are Time, Transaction ID, Driver, Unit of measure, Price per unit, Total amount, Currency, Fuel type, Vendor, City, State / province and Odometer. Pick Not in the file for columns you do not have.
5. 3. Preview: the counts show new, duplicate, unmatched and error rows. If you changed the mapping or date format, select Check again.
6. Select Import N purchases. Only new rows are imported; duplicates, unmatched rows and rows with errors are skipped.

How rows are matched and de-duplicated:

• A registered card's last digits give its vehicle and driver; otherwise the unit number; otherwise the driver (ELD username or first and last name) and their only assigned vehicle.
• A row is a duplicate when the provider transaction id was already imported, or a purchase of the same vehicle exists within 10 minutes with the same gallons (for example the driver already entered it in the app).
• Up to 5,000 rows per file.

Imported transactions become IFTA fuel purchases and are checked for anomalies straight away; the result tells you how many anomalies were found. The Recent imports table lists each import with its rows, imported, duplicates, skipped and who ran it.

Fuel settings

Go to Fuel & idle > Fuel settings. Defaults are in brackets.

• In Auto mode the price is the average USD price per gallon of your purchases of the last 90 days; the fixed price is used only when there are no purchases. The page shows the price Used now.
• Select Save settings.
• In the Vehicles table, set each unit's tank capacity (gallons, needed for the over-tank-capacity check) and an optional idle burn rate override, then select Save on that row.

Alerts for fuel and idle

With the Alerts feature also on, you can add alert rules of type Excess idle time and Fuel purchase anomaly (the latter resolves when the anomaly is reviewed). See Alerts and geofences.