If billing and costing is at the heart of any operation’s profit then the oil and fuel reseller, Brent Oil, has made the perfect choice. QBCon, a business solution provider, is one of the few companies able to design the custom billing and costing ERP that can accommodate Brent Oil’s unique trading environment.

Brent Oil buys petrol, diesel and oil from South Africa’s leading petroleum companies and then supplies these products to its customers at a rebated price. The trading environment is difficult as it is often not possible to match invoiced quantities to delivered quantities due to evaporation. 

The shortcomings in Brent Oil’s previous system caused cumbersome and costly administration problems. Client relations also became strained due to the impossibility of matching invoiced and delivered volumes. QBCon developed the custom Brent Oil system using standard billing and costing practices, “except that the order of operations was reversed”.  The system generates a purchase order number for each supplier when an order is placed. Opening balances per account are entered and altered by an authorised user. Once the delivery is made, the amount of fuel is measured and the invoice is created for the delivered volume.

For Gustav Piater, marketing director for QBCon, the system stands out as one of the more interesting challenges of his career: “It is not every day you have to work out who gets invoiced for the Angel’s share.  Where margins are as tough as in this industry, evaporation can mean the difference between profit and loss.  That makes payback for the client almost immediate.”.  Brent Watts from Brent Oil says that QBCon’s customised accounting software offers Brent Oil a competitive industry edge.  Since the inception of the QBCon solution, there had been a significant decrease in disputes.