Fleet · Reports & controls · 11 min read

Record expenses and leases, and read costs and TCO

Enter other vehicle costs, manage lease contracts, and read cost allocation, total cost of ownership and replacement planning.

Before you begin

• Every costed record writes one line to the fleet cost ledger: fuel fills, work orders, tyres, insurance premiums, registration fees, fines, expenses and lease charges. The pages below read that ledger.
• Costs carry the vehicle's branch, cost centre, department and project unless you override them.
• Leases depend on the Leases feature switch.

Record a fleet expense

Use an expense for money spent on a vehicle that is not a fuel fill, a work order or a fine, such as cleaning, parking or accessories.

1. Open Fleet > Costs > Fleet Expenses and click New expense.
2. Choose the Vehicle and Category.
3. Enter the Date (blank is today), Amount, VAT (for reference only), and who was Paid to.
4. Choose Paid by: Cash, Company card, Vendor bill or Paid by employee.
5. Optionally add a driver, customer, trip, project, cost centre, description and receipt.
6. Save.

Expenses below the approval limit (default AED 2,000) are Approved at once and written to the ledger. At or above the limit the expense is Waiting approval and nothing is booked yet. A different person with the approver permission clicks Approve or Reject. The creator is refused: "Somebody other than the person who asked has to approve it." Someone without the permission sees "You cannot approve this."

The amount booked does not include the VAT you enter. An approved expense is locked: "An approved expense cannot be changed." A rejected one may be edited and saved again.

If the company posts fleet costs to Accounting, a cash expense debits the cost account and credits cash; a company-card expense credits the card account. A vendor bill is never posted from Fleet because Purchase carries it.

Read the cost ledgers

Fleet > Costs > Fuel Costs and Maintenance Costs are read-only lists of ledger lines. Click a line to open the vehicle. Maintenance Costs includes tyres, and insurance recoveries appear as minus lines.

Manage a lease or rental

1. Open Fleet > Costs > Lease Costs and click New lease or rental.
2. Choose the Vehicle and Lessor, and the Type: Lease, Rental or Finance.
3. Enter the contract number, Start, End (after the start) and Monthly rate.
4. Optionally enter the Mileage allowance, Allowance per (Whole contract, Year or Month), Excess per km and Odometer at start.
5. Save.

An Owned vehicle changes to Leased, Rented or Financed. The status is worked out from today: Ended, Expiring (60 days or fewer) or Active. The system adds one charge to the ledger for every calendar month the contract has run, never twice. Rental charges go to the Rental category and others to Lease. To finish early click End and confirm "End this contract today?".

Example: a lease starting 2026-01-01 with 30,000 km per year, excess AED 0.50 per km, started at 50,000 km and now at 74,000 km on 2 October. Allowed so far is 274 / 30.4 = 9.01 months x 2,500 = 22,533 km. Used is 24,000 km (106.5%). The excess charge is 1,467 x 0.50 = AED 733.50.

Total cost of ownership

Open Fleet > Costs > TCO. Choose From and To, or tick Whole life of each vehicle. Each row shows purchase, fuel, maintenance and tyres, insurance, registration/toll/parking, lease or rental, fines, depreciation, other, running cost, distance, cost per km and cost per month. You can sort and Export to CSV.

Worked example

A vehicle bought for AED 120,000 with a residual value of AED 30,000 and a 60-month life depreciates (120,000 - 30,000) / 60 = AED 1,500 a month. For 1 Jan to 30 Sep 2026 that is 9 months, AED 13,500. Ledger costs are fuel 3,000, maintenance and tyres 2,000, insurance 2,400, registration, toll and parking 570, fines 200 and other 80. Running cost is AED 21,750. With 7,500 km driven, cost per km is 2.90 and cost per month is 21,750 / 9 = 2,416.67.

Depreciation is for this report only and is not posted. It applies to Owned and Financed vehicles with a purchase date and price, and stops at the sale date. Cost per km shows a dash when no distance was driven.

The Reports > Cost / KM report uses ledger costs only, without depreciation, so its figure is lower. Both are correct for their definitions.

Cost allocation and replacement planning

• Fleet > Costs > Cost Allocation groups the ledger by vehicle, branch, cost centre, department, project, driver, customer or cost category for a period.
• Fleet > Costs > Replacement Planning gives a rule-based suggestion per vehicle: Keep, Review, Replace soon or Replace. It scores age, kilometres, maintenance cost above 30% of book value, three or more breakdowns and 240 or more downtime hours. The fleet manager decides and sets the status on the vehicle.

Good to know

• A period cannot run more than ten years: "Choose a period of at most ten years."
• Sold vehicles are excluded from replacement planning.