To turn a fuel card statement to Excel, make one row per transaction with the date, vehicle, driver, odometer reading, product, gallons, price per gallon and amount. Check that gallons times price equals each amount. Then a PivotTable gives cost, gallons and miles per gallon for every vehicle, which is what most fleet questions come down to.
What does a fuel card statement list for each fill-up?
A fuel card statement lists each purchase with more detail than an ordinary card statement: the vehicle or card number, often a driver ID, the station, the odometer reading the driver entered, the fuel type, the gallons, the price per gallon and the total. Those extra fields are the reason to put it in Excel.
An ordinary credit card statement gives you a date, a merchant and an amount. A fuel card statement adds what was bought and for which vehicle. Statements from different fuel card providers lay this out differently. Some group transactions under each card, with a subtotal per card. Others print one long list sorted by date, with the card or vehicle number on each line.
Fields to keep
- Transaction date and, if printed, time.
- Card number, usually masked to the last few digits.
- Vehicle ID or unit number, if the card is assigned to a vehicle.
- Driver ID or name, if drivers enter a PIN.
- Station name and location.
- Odometer reading entered at the pump.
- Product, such as unleaded, diesel or a non-fuel item.
- Gallons, price per gallon and amount.
Fields to leave on the PDF
Account summaries, payment slips, rebate notes and marketing panels stay on the statement. Copy the statement total and any account-level fees to cells above the table, since you will use the total to check the rows.
Vehicle and driver columns from a fuel card statement
Vehicle and driver columns let every fuel card line answer two questions: which vehicle burned this fuel, and who bought it. On statements that group lines under a card heading, the vehicle appears only once at the top of each block. Copy it down onto every row of the block before you sort anything.
This is the step that most often goes wrong after conversion. The converted sheet has a heading row, "Card ending 4471, Unit 12", followed by ten transaction rows with no vehicle on them. The moment you sort by date, those ten rows lose their vehicle forever.
Filling the vehicle down
- Add a Vehicle column to the left of the transactions.
- Type the unit number on the first row of each block.
- Select the column, use Go To Special to select blanks, type
=and the cell above, and press Ctrl+Enter. - Copy the column and paste it as values.
- Delete the block heading rows.
Cards shared between vehicles
Some fleets assign cards to drivers rather than vehicles, so one card fills several trucks. Then the vehicle comes from the driver's entry at the pump, if the provider records it, or from a separate log. Keep the card number column even after you have the vehicle, so a mismatch between card and vehicle can be spotted later.
If you manage the fleet from a Chromebook, the same fill-down works in Google Sheets, and the guide to converting PDF to Excel on a Chromebook covers getting the statement into a sheet without a Windows PC.
Gallons and price per gallon on fuel card lines
Gallons and price per gallon on a fuel card line should multiply to the amount, give or take a cent for rounding. Add a check column with =ROUND(Gallons*Price,2)-Amount and look at any row that is not zero. Non-fuel purchases, such as a car wash or oil, have no gallons and should get their own product type.
Why the check matters
The check catches conversion errors, such as a misread digit or a gallons value that slipped into the price column. It also catches lines that were never fuel at all. A 12.00 line with no gallons is not a fill-up, and counting it as fuel inflates the cost per gallon.
Non-fuel items
Many fuel cards allow, or restrict, other purchases at the station. Give each line a Product value: Unleaded, Diesel, DEF, Wash, Oil or Other. Then the fuel total is a SUMIFS on fuel products only, and anything in Other is easy to review. If your policy limits what drivers can buy, the Other list is the one to read each month.
Prices with three decimals
Pump prices are often quoted to a tenth of a cent, such as 3.459. Keep all three decimals in the price column. Rounding the price to two decimals before multiplying makes the check column show differences that are not real.
Are odometer readings on a fuel card statement worth keeping?
Odometer readings on a fuel card statement are worth keeping because they give miles driven between fill-ups, and miles are what turn fuel cost into cost per mile and miles per gallon. They are entered by the driver at the pump, though, so they contain typing errors. Check each reading against the one before it.
Using the readings
Sort by vehicle, then by date. The miles for a fill-up are this reading minus the previous reading for the same vehicle: =IF(B3=B2,E3-E2,"") with vehicle in column B and odometer in column E. A negative number, a zero, or a jump of several thousand miles in a week points to a typo, not a trip.
Records for tax purposes
For a business, fuel is one of the costs of running a vehicle. The IRS page on business use of a car, Topic 510 lists gas among the actual expenses you can use instead of the standard mileage rate, counts only the business-use portion of those costs, and says the law requires you to back up expenses with adequate records. A fuel card sheet with dates, vehicles and amounts is part of that record. Mileage logs and the split between business and personal use are a separate matter to settle with your tax adviser.
Fuel card totals by vehicle with a PivotTable
Fuel card totals by vehicle come from a PivotTable with Vehicle in rows and the sum of gallons and amount in values. Add miles from the odometer column and divide by gallons to get miles per gallon. A total row that equals the statement total proves the pivot used every line.
A worked example
The lines below are example transactions for two vehicles in one month, with made-up readings and prices.
| Date | Vehicle | Driver | Odometer | Product | Gallons | Price | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-02 | Truck 12 | A. Lee | 48,210 | Diesel | 18.400 | 3.459 | 63.65 |
| 2026-09-03 | Van 7 | M. Ortiz | 21,040 | Unleaded | 12.600 | 3.519 | 44.34 |
| 2026-09-09 | Truck 12 | A. Lee | 48,602 | Diesel | 19.100 | 3.499 | 66.83 |
| 2026-09-11 | Van 7 | M. Ortiz | 21,355 | Unleaded | 13.050 | 3.489 | 45.53 |
| 2026-09-11 | Van 7 | M. Ortiz | 21,355 | Wash | 12.00 | ||
| 2026-09-16 | Truck 12 | A. Lee | 48,985 | Diesel | 18.250 | 3.429 | 62.58 |
Every fuel row passes the check: 18.400 times 3.459 is 63.6456, which rounds to 63.65, and so on down. The wash line has no gallons, so it is kept out of the fuel figures.
The totals table
| Vehicle | Fuel cost | Other cost | Gallons | Miles | Miles per gallon |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Truck 12 | 193.06 | 0.00 | 55.750 | 775 | 20.7 |
| Van 7 | 89.87 | 12.00 | 25.650 | 315 | 24.1 |
| Total | 282.93 | 12.00 | 81.400 |
Miles run from the first reading to the last for each vehicle. Miles per gallon divides those miles by the gallons bought after the first fill-up, because the first tank's fuel was burned before the period started. For Truck 12 that is 775 miles over 37.35 gallons. The two cost columns together, 294.93, should match the transaction total on the statement.
Reporting next to revenue
Fuel cost per vehicle is more useful beside what each vehicle earned. If your sales come from a system that exports PDF reports, a sales report PDF turned into Excel rows can sit in the same workbook, joined on route or vehicle.
Fuel card lines that distort miles per gallon
Some fuel card lines make miles per gallon look wrong even when every number on the statement is correct. Partial fills, fuel bought for another vehicle or a jerry can, a missed odometer entry, and two fill-ups on one day all throw the figure off. Flag them rather than deleting them, because the money was still spent.
The usual suspects
- Partial fills. A driver who tops up a quarter tank makes the next interval look thirsty. Over a full month this evens out, so compare months, not single fill-ups.
- Fuel for something else. A line for a generator, a mower or a can is fuel cost but not vehicle mileage. Give it a Product of Other fuel.
- Repeated odometer reading. Two lines with the same reading on the same day, as with the van above, are usually fuel plus a non-fuel item, not two fill-ups.
- Odometer left at zero or a default. Some pumps let drivers skip the prompt. Leave those miles blank instead of computing a negative interval.
Paying the fuel card bill
The statement total is paid from your bank account, by transfer or by check. If you pay by check, a check register PDF in Excel records that payment, and the amount should equal the statement total. FastBankConvert is built for bank and credit card statements, and it tells you before download when the balances do not add up. It is not built around fuel card layouts and is not open yet; the homepage shows a sample run on a bank statement.