Fuel management software provider FuelerLinx is unveiling its latest advance, a digital payment interface known as Vendorlinx. Now in beta testing for entry into service in the first quarter of next year, the new product tackles the problems associated with the current transaction auditing processes.
Traditionally flight departments would have to sort through old price quotes, removing non-fuel related line items from the invoices, a time-consuming task for the pilot or dispatcher responsible for it.
California-based FuelerLinx’s (Booth N4026) Vendorlinx uses a single automated payment tool that will enable flight departments to streamline past accounting and reconciliation processes. “What we’re doing is allowing digital payment within the system, much like you would have in an Amazon transaction where you can select different payment options,” said company president Kevin Moller. “You have a digital wallet, so we’re taking this santiquated process and bringing it into the 21st century.”
Customer-service Element
Currently, approximately 22,000 transactions, covering some 12 million gallons of fuel worth $50 million, are funneled through the FuelerLinx website each month, with 39 vendors including suppliers, resellers and larger chain FBOs integrating their fuel quotes and pricing into its software. It exists as a flight planning and fuel management module in most of the major scheduling and dispatching systems on the market. Moller describes the new VendorLinx program as “the hub that lies between FuelerLinx, the flight department and the vendor’s invoice and accounting system.”
It will allow fuel vendors to digitally invoice customers within the Fuelerlinx system, which automatically reconciles each transaction by comparing the quote to a price check at the location one hour before scheduled uplift.
According to Moller, the vendor will receive a copy of the reconciled invoice, and if there is a discrepancy between what the customer was promised and the actual charge, the transaction will be flagged, allowing the vendor to either correct it immediately, or proactively notify the customer as to why the price had changed, through the system’s two-way messenger service.
“We feel that this will greatly reduce discrepancies and misunderstandings between vendors and flight departments by allowing a vendor to take corrective action or notate it before it’s presented to a customer,” Moller told AIN. “We hope that will take fuel beyond just a commodity and bring in a service aspect that makes the flight department’s job easier.”
The system will also have archiving capabilities, such as a digital repository of transaction invoices. It will automatically link each vendor invoice to a corresponding fueling in the transaction ledger section of FuelerLinx. That allows a flight department to organize, archive or query all of its fuel transaction history.
FuelerLinx is constantly receiving queries from vendors regarding their volume sales, and according to Moller, they will soon be able to use the analytics tools in VendorLinx to run a host of reports and metrics on their fuel network. “We look at that as their data,” he explained. “It's their customers, they got the legitimate orders, so it gives them the transaction tool they need to 'do it themselves.'”
At the convention, FuelerLinx will be demonstrating the new functionality to flight departments and its vendor clients.