Fuel Tracking

It’s that time of the year again where budget preparation is in full force. I find one of the toughest things to accurately budget for is fuel costs. No matter how many phone calls you make no one has the magic wand to tell you how much per gallon to buget for.

While fuel is something we have to use at our golf clubs regardless of what the costs are I believe we should be tracking it properly so we can spot trends, manage fuel usage, and be able to justify spikes in the amount we use. Over the years I have come up with an excel spreadsheet that I use to track our usage, the average cost per month for both gasoline a diesel per gallon, as well as our actual costs. I track all of this and incude a variance calculation to let me know how we are doing cost wise compared to the previous year. Please view the image below and you will see how it is done.

I utilize the number of gallons used each month as well as the average cost for the year to help me with planning the budget for this line item. I believe while it is certainly something we can’t control we should be able to control the amount we use and justify it when we use more based on certain projects that month. It can also quickly have you wondering if fuel is going missing. As a means of helping everyone else track your fuel I have added a template of what I use to my files for download on the site. Happy budgeting!