IFTA reporting is often a manual, time-consuming burden for organizations with fleets. The right fleet expense management tools can automate the legwork of IFTA tax reporting, so your team spends minutes instead of hours with receipts, spreadsheets, and calculators. 

This blog explains how a fleet card that’s integrated into a fleet operations platform can help you improve IFTA reporting efficiency.

How fleet card platforms automate compilation of IFTA data

To save time on IFTA reporting, you don’t need separate IFTA software. A fleet card embedded into an operations platform can help you track mileage and fuel use by jurisdiction and eliminate manual data entry for IFTA fuel tax reporting. 

Here’s how it works in Motive: 

  1. Mileage tracking is automated. The Motive Vehicle Gateway pulls in telematics data, such as the vehicle’s GPS location and odometer readings. 
  1. Fuel spend data syncs up. Motive Card contributes the spend data — where, when, and how much fuel was purchased. 

With these two data streams combined, Motive compiles accurate, jurisdiction-level IFTA reports so your team can generate reports in just a few clicks. 

Benefits of doing IFTA reporting with a fleet card

Managing fleet expenses with a fleet card and operations platform makes automating your IFTA workflow easy. The benefits include: 

  • Automatic capture fuel data and jurisdiction. Every purchase logs date, gallons, price per gallon, merchant, and location. Motive then matches gallons and taxes to the correct jurisdictions.
  • Less manual data entry and reconciliation. Instead of entering data into a spreadsheet, your IFTA report already contains what you need. 
  • Less time chasing receipts. Because fuel spend data is automatically captured, drivers don’t have to keep track of paper receipts. 
  • Quicker quarter-end workflow. IFTA prep becomes a short review and export of card and mileage reports.
  • Fewer errors and audit headaches. More consistent, system-generated data lowers the risk of misreported gallons or taxes that can lead to audits or require corrections.
Fleet managers save 20 hours per week with Motive, on average. Read the ROI report.

Fleet manager gets his weekends back with Motive Card and efficient IFTA reporting

Before switching to Motive Card, Architectural Surfaces used a fleet card that consistently reported spend inaccurately, which made IFTA tax reporting prep a nightmare. 

Mike Meeker, fleet manager and environmental health and safety specialist for Architectural Surfaces, explained: “It created a lot of chaos for our IFTA reporting, and ended up costing us when it came time to file.” He would spend long days and nights trying to figure out the accuracy of their spend reporting.

Now, with Motive Card, Architectural Surfaces creates IFTA reporting directly from the Motive Dashboard, and Meeker no longer has to spend his weekends figuring out billing.

Cascade Environmental saved 800 hours/month on IFTA reporting with Motive Card

At Cascade Environmental, IFTA filings used to be complicated and time-consuming. Alex Amort, vice president of risk and compliance at Cascade, recalled, “All of the drivers had to fill out reports every day, listing how much fuel they’d bought and how many miles they’d driven in each state.” He went on, “Now multiply that by several hundred drivers and factor in the administrative staff we needed to verify all of them. We’d have to calculate everything to come up with the IFTA report.”

Since using the Motive Card for IFTA reporting, they’ve calculated a time savings of more than 800 hours a month just from trip reports — along with increased accuracy.

Amort explained, “On our last state of Oregon routine fuel tax audit, the data from Motive for the selected months had zero errors in it, compared to previous months’ manual data entry which had mistakes that had to be fixed retroactively.”