Four Ways Business Leasing Helps Your Fleet Management
July 15th, 2022
It might surprise you to know that many of the companies who reach out to us about leasing fleet vehicles don’t have a dedicated fleet manager. Instead, their fleet management is handled by people working in other functions, like HR or finance.
That means those teams (or sometimes a single employee) can have the complex and time-consuming task of managing a fleet of vehicles to handle in amongst an already busy workload.
If you’re in that situation, you’ll know it’s not an ideal situation for anyone involved. Thankfully, as specialists in fleet management and leasing, it’s one we’re ideally placed to support you with.
What are the benefits of business car leasing from a fleet management standpoint?
At GKL our leasing options and fleet management go hand in hand. These are four ways business leasing helps your fleet management:
1. Simplifies your fleet’s day to day operations
The vast majority of our customers take out our maintenance and tyres package, which effectively takes most of the strain out of a fleet’s operational running. It covers everything from tyre checks and maintenance to regular servicing and breakdown assist, meaning the person in charge of your fleet doesn’t need to get involved.
Instead, a driver can walk in to one of our pre-approved brands like Kwik Fit and National Tyres and give them their registration number. The maintenance company will then invoice us, without you even knowing it happened! It’s a similar case for servicing. Most cars these days will tell the driver when they need servicing, so all the driver needs to do is book it in with their nearest dealer. We’ll handle the rest.
Even in the case of punctures, which are typically classed as the customer’s responsibility, it’s the same process from an operational point of view; we’ll just invoice you at the end.
You also don’t need to be concerned about things like road tax. Because we hold the logbook for each car, we tax the vehicles. It’s yet another piece of admin we worry about so you don’t have to.
And because you know the car’s been serviced; been taxed; has the right tyres on, you don’t need to worry about staying on top of your admin, or unexpected fines if you forget. All of which saves you time, and lets you get on with the other parts of a busy role.
2. Keeps costs consistent
Variable costs can be a nightmare for finance managers, but automotive fleet leasing companies like us can take the headache out of the sums by keeping costs consistent. Knowing that your lease agreements are set for the next two, three or four years can make it much easier to budget for the future, meaning even if your business grows and your fleet expands, you can comfortably and accurately predict what its associated costs are likely to be. No guessing. No estimating.
Another cost benefit of the car lease fleet management approach is that while smaller fleets may not usually get the best prices, leasing companies like ourselves get more favourable leasing terms. At GKL, we make sure to pass those savings on to our customers, allowing your finance team to further reduce their yearly costs attributed to the fleet side of the business.
Additionally, there are no variable disposal costs with our leasing agreements. The only time you’ll get a cost is if the vehicle is damaged. Where those unexpected costs do happen, we won’t use a typical rigid tiered repair costs structure, where you pay a flat fee even if the repair doesn’t cost that much. Instead, we’ll always be fully transparent over repair costs, so you only pay for what’s needed. This approach is unusual amongst leasing companies, and has led us to one of the lowest end-of-life costs in the country – around two-thirds lower than some of the highest!
3. Easy access to replacement vehicles
While we are able to work with whoever runs your fleet to select specific suitable vehicles, we find most arrangements are ‘user chooser,’ where the driver gets a budget and chooses the vehicle themselves. At GKL we specialise in working directly with these drivers to select a suitable vehicle, meaning we cut out the need for your fleet’s operational manager to be the middleman.
4. Keeps your fleet up to date
The last benefit of the car lease fleet management approach is that because our lease contracts rarely run longer than four years, your fleet vehicles stay modern enough to run reliably. The older the vehicle the higher the mileage and on average the more the associated maintenance costs are likely to be. By leasing with us you effectively hand much of the fleet management side over, meaning you won’t need to proactively keep on top of renewals to stop your maintenance costs increasing. Instead, we’ll simply get in touch when it’s time for you to consider getting a new vehicle (which with current vehicle availability, is far earlier than it once was!).
Want to take the hassle out of fleet management?
Visit our new business leasing page to learn more or get in touch to tell us what support you need and find out how we can help.