The Challenges of Managing a Fleet with a Spreadsheet

It’s often perceived that larger fleets running into hundreds, even thousands of vehicles are the ones that have adopted specific fleet management software. Smaller fleets can tend to rely on a more traditional spreadsheet and paper-based style of management for recording and reporting. But this isn’t always the case.

There’s a surprising number of larger fleets that continue to manage their operation solely relying on fleet management spreadsheets. There’s the saying, ‘if it’s not broken don’t try to fix it’ alongside a consensus towards, ‘we’ve always done it this way,’ which often brings with it resistance to change. Whilst those managing smaller fleets of say, 10 or so vehicles, maybe right in thinking that the cost would outweigh the benefits, there are fleet managers with larger numbers of assets that continue to miss out on the benefits. Due to limitations that spreadsheets can provide, these managers could be potentially putting their fleet at risk both operationally and financially.

Managing a fleet with spreadsheets 

Despite the size of a fleet, spreadsheets such as Excel remain the choice of many fleet managers.

Benefits of managing a fleet with spreadsheets can include:

• Low implementation costs
• Easy to create and manage with limited knowledge
• A good general employee with the knowledge of using spreadsheets thus it is relatively easy to input data

But there’s no denying it, there are some serious flaws with using fleet management spreadsheets too.

Limitations of Managing Fleets using Spreadsheets include:

• Limited functionality and reporting capabilities.
• Records reactive rather than proactive in dated information being circulated for decision making and reporting.
• Data input delays can result in dated information being circulated for decision making and reporting.
• An increased risk of data inaccuracy due to input errors, illegible writing and missing or incomplete paperwork.
• The tendency for spreadsheets to be designed and created ‘in-house’ which can limit reporting functions
• Limited ability to integrate with external providers and services.
• The time-bound task to manually input, scan and file paper-based forms.
• Increased administration time to complete processes such as driver licence checking.