Fuel Receipt Capture: Photographing Fuel Receipts Into the IFTA Return

Fuel Receipt Capture works as a fuel receipt app inside the driver app: it puts the fuel half of your IFTA return into the same platform as the distance half, from a photo the driver takes at the pump. An IFTA return needs two numbers per jurisdiction: distance travelled and fuel purchased. Telematics produces the distance from continuously logged position. Fuel has to come from purchases, and a fleet without a single fuel card usually collects paper receipts at month end, has someone key them into a spreadsheet, and matches them to trucks and states from memory. A faded receipt from an Ohio truck stop with no jurisdiction recorded is hard to support at an audit, because IFTA expects each fuel record to show the seller's name and address.

Fuel Receipt Capture runs in the driver app. The driver photographs the receipt at the pump, and the add-in reads the date, station, litres or gallons, fuel type and amount. It files the purchase against the vehicle the driver is logged into and the jurisdiction the GPS places the truck in. The office sees purchases as they come in and corrects any field the reader got wrong. At quarter end, fuel by jurisdiction sits beside distance by jurisdiction in the same platform, and the receipt image stays attached to the record. IFTA requires you to keep these records for four years, so confirm your retention settings and exports cover that period.

Fleets on a single fuel card program already get purchases electronically, so for them the add-in handles the exceptions: a cash purchase after the card was declined, a station off the network, a driver paying with a personal card on a weekend. Fleets running several cards, or paying drivers back for fuel, use it for every purchase. In both cases you want every litre in the platform with a jurisdiction and a vehicle attached, before anyone has to rebuild the quarter by hand.

An IFTA auditor asks for fuel purchases by jurisdiction, with receipts, tied to a vehicle and a date, plus the distance those vehicles travelled in the same jurisdictions. If you can export both from one platform with the receipts attached, you can answer in an afternoon. High Point GPS sets up Fuel Receipt Capture alongside IFTA distance reporting for carriers across Canada and the United States.

The reader handles the standard printed fields, and the fields that vary by station deserve a quick look. On a clean printed receipt it picks up the date, total amount and volume, and the office corrects any field it misses. Fuel type reads correctly when the receipt names it and defaults to the vehicle's fuel type when it does not. The reader picks up the station name, but the jurisdiction comes from the GPS position, by design. The office's weekly check takes a few minutes: any purchase flagged for an unreadable volume, any where the litres exceed the tank, and any logged to a vehicle that was somewhere else. Faded thermal receipts and handwritten cash receipts need a person, and the app keeps the photo so that person has something to read.