John & Vanessa Alfonso
Croydon Service Centre

John & Vanessa Alfonso are the new owners of this very busy site in Croydon, on the border of Isando. They have more than 100 account customers servicing over 750 vehicles, and the numbers are still climbing. Generally, the administration involved in managing his account customers plus a busy forecourt is very stressful. With the SmartFuel system they have a smooth running operation and total control.

Despite their hectic workload, they still keep their clients happy, especially the fleet managers who no longer have the admin hassle of doing fleet recons themselves. The SmartFuel system provides the fleet manager with transaction and cost breakdowns per vehicle, and also vehicle consumption reports.
Vanessa says,

" the SmartFuel system has eased a huge amount of our workload. Before installing SmartFuel, we were constantly working against dead-lines. We had to even face the possibility of employing extra staff. "

" Before, we spent every single weekend and evenings at the service station. But now, work no longer interferes with family time. And Vanessa works half-days only . The other half of the workday she invests in nurturing her family. She is also able to give her daughter quality time, thus ensuring a better future for her. And they are able to maximize quality family time by going away and enjoying their long weekends in a leisurely fashion! "

" It used to be a nightmare trying to collect money from accounts customers who have exceeded their limit " ,

" We now have peace of mind since SmartFuel controls the account-limits at the pump . "

Before, they would discover only the following day from the End-of-Shift Report, that the customer had exceeded his account-limit. They would then have to phone the customer to collect money. Now, as soon as the customer has reached his limit, the pump cuts out. The customer immediately personally comes into the office to find out what the problem is and when they are told that they need to settle their account, it is either done immediately, or arrangements are made to pay.

SmartFuel also helps provide to provide a positive cash flow. Some forecourt owners have reservations about implementing deposit collections for old customers who have had long-standing accounts. Twenty years ago the deposit required to run an account, was say, R200. Twenty years later that same customer is pumping about R4000 a month and the forecourt owner ends up illegally having to carry him for R3800. Multiply this amount by say, 100 customers and it becomes a serious threat to the cash flow of the service station. Most forecourt-owners feel that approaching the customers to increase their deposits could present the possibility of them losing them. This is how John solved that dilemma since installing SmartFuel:
John says,

" when we took over the site, we inherited R750,000 worth of customer accounts that were being carried over the years. I wasn't prepared to continue carrying customers for this huge amount of money, so in November 2001 I did major deposit collections. By December 2001 we reduced the outstanding balance of deposits from R750,000 to R25,000 and by January 2002 we had collected all the deposits and brought the balance down to zero! "

The SmartFuel Debtor Tag eliminates any possibility of fraudulent account transactions. The biggest problem with Card transactions is how open it is to fraud. The tag has a unique identity and it is assigned to an account customer. When used, the customer tag automatically books the transaction to the specific account and there is no human intervention or human error.

John says all his clients from R1,000 pm to R100,000 understand the SmartFuel system and appreciate what it does for them. And they like the tags because they can impose individual vehicle limits, e.g., a rep with a fuel allowance of R500 will have that set as his limit and the system will not allow him to exceed. And as an extra security measure, an individual vehicle can be set up to pump a specific grade of fuel, e.g.,  diesel or premium or unleaded. So a customer tag set up for diesel only, cannot fill up another vehicle that uses petrol.

One of John's fleet owners experienced SmartFuel's security element when he came to Croydon Service Centre one Sunday to fill up his wife's car. As her vehicle was not registered on the system as part of his fleet, the attendant politely refused to let him fill up her vehicle on his account. Although he was irate at the time, he phoned John the next day to let him know how impressed he was about the security on his account at Croydon.

Another large company recently moved to the Kempton area and had a choice of opening an account at a variety of filling stations but chose Croydon because of the debtors tagging facility and the security the system provides. He has just recently received his vehicle breakdown and consumption reports and is a very happy customer. Needless to say, John is a happy site owner as this customer alone has expanded his business by R100,000 turnover per month.