Fuel Management in FOS - From Import to Report

FOS has several features that can help your flight department manage fuel expenses and communicate value to your owners/management. This article will attempt to walk you through the process and capabilities of importing fuel prices, selecting and communicating fuel vendor selections to your crew, post-trip expense entry and reconciliation, and reporting options. 

FUEL PRICE IMPORT UTILITY 

First, many departments are collecting and/or receive pricing files each week from contract fuel vendors and FBOs. FOS has created a way to import all those pricing files into one location (in FOS) where dispatchers can easily compare the pricing and options available at any given airport. 

See the Fuel Import Guide to start.

Once the fuel pricing is imported, you will be ready to put that information to good use and continue to the trip setup process. 

There is a helpful report (easfuel.rpt ) utilizing the imported data that can also be run for scheduled legs. This report shows all the fuel vendor options and associated pricing for each departure you have scheduled in a selected date range. 

SETTING UP FUEL FOR A TRIP 

There are a couple things to consider when setting up fuel in a trip. First, let's start with simply viewing the pricing options for a given airport. 

From within a Trip Leg, you can access the fuel prices by clicking on the button next to the Dep Fuel Vendor. 

These can be sorted by cost by simply clicking the 'Cost 1' column header. You can also just select the preferred radial next to 'Sort By:'. Whichever column the information is sorted by will be reflected with blue text. You can also view historical prices by clicking the box next to 'Show Past Prices'. 

If you select (or double-click) a vendor option, it will then bring that information back into the Trip Leg. It additionally creates an FBO comment for dispatch and the crew to see. The information included in that comment is vendor, price breakdown by volume, and effective date. If an FBO is linked to that vendor price selection, then it will auto-populate the Fueler/FBO field as well. 

If there is no FBO linked or an incorrect FBO linked to that fuel vendor, you can simply open the fuel vendor info (click on 'Dep Fuel Vendor' button) and change the FBO selection noted in the FBO field. 

Once the proper link is made and the correct information is populated in the Fuel Vendor and Fueler/FBO fields, dispatch can add additional notes as desired below the pre-populated notes in the comment field. Just keep in mind that FOS auto-populates the information between the "<" and ">" characters. Any changes in fuel vendor selection made after will only automatically change/update that information and will not affect the notes you might have added below it. It will, however, append the revised fuel vendor information below any notes you made. 

If there is no fuel vendor option available, you can create your own (i.e. airport with no contract fuel available, base airport locations, or locations where you have direct pricing but do not receive an import file). To do this, simply click the "+" button form within the Fuel Vendor section of the Airport Data. 

You can then enter all applicable information (at a minimum select the effective date, Vendor, FBO, Quantity, and Cost). 

Having the Fuel Vendor selected will now allow for proper planning and expectations for each location where fuel is arranged. That information is communicated to the crew through the FBO comments in FOS Mobile providing direction on how to pay and what price to expect. 

FBO RETAIL PRICE 

If you would like to report on fuel savings, it will be important to update and record the retail price of fuel for each FBO you use. This information is stored within the FBO window. 

Entering a 'Cost' (which is determined to be retail by FOS) and an effective date will allow for proper field population as you will see later below in the fuel expense section. 

There are a couple company settings that must be selected in order for this to work as advertised in this article with regard to the retail price. First, in the COMPANY DATA / OPERATIONS tab you will need to select 'Retail' for the 'Flight Log Fuel' section if you would like the retail to automatically be pulled into the fuel expense within the flight log (see example further below). Although not necessary, I'd also recommend selecting 'Fuel Expense defaults to Departure' in the 'Flight Log' section if your fuel expenses are normally correlated to the departure Fueler/FBO of a given leg. 

Secondly, in order for FOS to treat the 'Cost' field in the FBO as the retail price for fuel, you will need to select 'None' for 'Update Fuel Cost' on the COMPANY DATA/AIRPORT tab. 

FUEL EXPENSE 

When a fuel expense is created manually by dispatch (through clicking 'New') or when submitted via FOS Mobile by the crew, certain fields will now pre-populate once Quantity and Total Cost has been entered. Notice below that an 'Estimated Cost' (or expected PPG), the 'Retail' and 'Retail Date' (from the FBO cost), and the 'Vendor' are each pre-filled based on the information dispatch chose for Fuel Vendor. 

This becomes very helpful in quickly comparing what was paid to the expected price per gallon. Dispatch can now react timely to any discrepancies they find. NOTE: The 'Estimated Cost' is driven by the volume as seen in the vendor price list. As the quantity increases and reaches the next volume levels, the 'Estimated Cost' will change to reflect the corresponding price. 

FUEL REPORTS 

Now that the information has been collected, there are several reports you can consider using to reflect the fuel transactions. These reports help identify the amount of fuel purchased for any given aircraft, as well as fuel savings (as long as you are tracking retail price) based on the price you paid compared to retail. Here are some examples of those reports. If you are interested in a modified version of any of these, our reporting team is happy to help customize. NOTE: Some of these reports require the legs to be at a logged or verified status in order to appear. 

fuelanlys.rpt 

fuelbyac.rpt

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