Fleet Costs

There are four groups. Fixed costs such as lease payments or depreciation, insurance, and vehicle tax. Variable costs such as fuel or charging electricity, tires, maintenance, and repairs. Damage costs, including deductibles and vehicle downtime. Finally, administrative costs: the working time spent on orders, invoice checks, deadlines, and documentation.

Because it is not posted anywhere as a separate cost category. Hours spent checking invoices, tracking appointments, and answering queries are spread across the personnel costs of different departments. That does not make them smaller, but they do not appear in fleet cost reports.

The same applies to downtime: a vehicle kept in the workshop for three weeks creates costs for replacement transport and missed appointments, without those costs being assigned to the vehicle.

By assigning costs to each vehicle instead of only to an expense account. Only when lease payments, fuel receipts, workshop invoices, and damage costs are attached to the vehicle can you compare costs per kilometer and identify outliers. This is the prerequisite for any Total Cost of Ownership analysis and for determining which vehicles really pay off.