Coast survey finds construction companies have significant gaps in their field expense management practices

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Apr 24, 2024, 07:03 ET

The modern digital fleet fuel card expense management platform conducted a survey of construction company owners and financial leaders to gauge their confidence in managing spend in the field

NEW YORK, April 24, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- A new survey of construction industry employees conducted by Coast, a modern digital fleet fuel and gas card expense management platform that helps companies govern their fuel and fleet spending, has found that nearly 60% of respondents were aware of wasteful spending and fleet card abuse in the last year, and the results indicate that there are significant gaps in efficiently managing and controlling spend in the field.

"What this survey shows us is that construction companies believe they are wasting a significant amount of time and money with field expense management processes that aren't helping them control their spend," said Coast CEO and founder Daniel Simon.

More than 200 construction industry business owners and financial leaders responded to the survey, which set out to gauge the respondents' awareness of and concerns over their industry's field expense management practices.

In addition to their concerns about wasteful spending and abuse, the survey found that:

61% of respondents are using manual processes to review spending in real time
48% feel they're spending too much time on reconciliation
31% estimated a savings of between 10% and 20% with better compliance with policies
5% reported a loss of more than $5,000 quarterly due to wasteful spending

"While there were some fascinating findings about how construction companies manage their current field spend, the survey also showed that their financial teams are having to spend too much time manually reviewing what their field personnel spend in real time," Simon said. "We can see that companies spend a great deal of time conducting reviews of transactions to ensure compliance and collecting physical receipts to verify spend."

Simon said that allowing employees to make work-related purchases in the field is essential to efficient operations, and this is especially true in industries like construction. He said the survey has provided Coast with some insight into the problems that the construction industry faces when trying to control and manage spending.

"It's our goal to help construction companies simplify employee expense management, and we want to ensure that our all-in-one fleet card solutions help give construction finance leaders unparalleled visibility into expenses," he said. "We want to find ways to help construction companies keep costs down and maintain their profits."

Coast provides a robust digital platform that is coupled with Visa payment technology and merchant acceptance. Coast regularly conducts research into a variety of industries so it can continuously work to address the challenges industries face when managing field expenses. Coast offers a fuel card with best-in-class security and spend controls, software with real-time transaction data and reporting, and integrations with fleet management and telematics software.

About Coast
Coast is re-imagining the trillion-dollar US B2B card payments infrastructure, with a focus on the country's 500,000 commercial fleets, 40 million commercial vehicles, and several million commercial drivers. Drivers, fleets, and the merchants that serve them all increasingly demand modern digital payments experiences and affordable and transparent financial services products. Coast's mission is to deliver them at a transformational scale and to improve working lives in one of the country's biggest industry sectors. Coast is founded and led by Daniel Simon, who previously co-founded digital payments platform Bread (breadpayments.com), which was acquired by Alliance Data Systems for more than $500 million in 2020. For more information, visit https://coastpay.com/.

Media Contact:
Heather Ripley
Ripley PR
865-977-1973
[email protected]

SOURCE Coast