Fleet and Fuel Expenses

Fleet expenses are a significant AP category for businesses in construction, mining, resources, transport, and field services. The category covers: fuel purchases (diesel, petrol, aviation fuel), vehicle maintenance and servicing, tyre replacements, insurance, registration and licensing, toll charges, and vehicle hire for project or site operations. Each of these requires different coding treatment for both P&L classification and GST purposes, and fuel purchases specifically require additional data capture for fuel tax credit calculations.

Fuel invoices require the AP team to capture more than the standard invoice fields. For fuel tax credit purposes, the type of fuel (diesel, petrol, etc.), the quantity purchased in litres, and the intended use (on-road vehicle, off-road equipment, stationary engine) must all be captured to calculate the correct credit. Fuel card statements from suppliers like Ampol, BP, Shell, or Viva Energy typically aggregate multiple transactions and may show purchases at different sites, with different fuels, for different vehicles. Extracting the necessary level of detail for fuel tax credit calculation from a fuel card statement is a materially more complex AP task than processing a single-line invoice.

Vehicle maintenance and capitalisation decisions

Vehicle maintenance invoices regularly raise capitalisation questions. Routine servicing -- oil changes, filter replacements, tyre rotations -- is clearly an operating expense. Major overhauls that significantly extend a vehicle's useful life may be capital expenditure under AASB 116. The replacement of a major component (engine, gearbox, differential) in a vehicle that would otherwise need to be replaced may be capitalised if the replacement extends the vehicle's remaining useful life materially. The AP team should flag vehicle maintenance invoices above a defined threshold (commonly AU$5,000 to AU$10,000) for review by the financial controller before processing, rather than defaulting to an expense account for all maintenance costs.

Toll and parking expenses

Toll charges and parking fees are typically processed through credit card statements rather than individual supplier invoices, which creates a different AP challenge. Credit card statements must be reviewed line by line, with each toll and parking charge coded to the correct project, cost centre, and expense category. For businesses with active credit card programs, the credit card statement processing is effectively a high-volume, low-individual-value AP task that benefits significantly from automated transaction categorisation. GST treatment varies: most toll charges include GST and are claimable as ITCs; some third-party parking operators do not include GST if they are under the GST registration threshold.