Gasboy Integration with MPAC Software

Client: University with over 300 vehicles

Project

A Southern California university needed an efficient means of charging fuel back to the each department on campus. Accurate expense tracking had become critical due to an economic downturn. The university purchased a fuel pump that was used to fuel over 300 university vehicles and equipment. They needed to integrate their gas pump with their billing system. At the time, the facilities department was burdened with all of the gasoline costs. The university needed to disperse the cost so that each department was responsible for paying for their own fuel.

Solution

A Gasboy automated gas pump was installed on campus in order to easily bill each department for gasoline usage. Gasboy pumps use plastic keys with a chip that is encoded with a unique number. Each key is associated with a vehicle belonging to a specific department; this allows employees to pump gas for their university vehicle without the assistance of an attendant. The Gasboy pump records the key’s number and amount of fuel dispensed, and maintains the information until the monthly billing is run.  At the end of each month, all of the transactions for each vehicle are billed to the proper department. We wrote the interface program between the university’s Ventyx’s MPAC software and the Gasboy pump. The program can run one of two ways – an operator can run it on demand (manually), or the program can run automatically every 30 minutes. The program polls the gas pump for its transactions and stores the data until it is time to bill the appropriate department.

Results

The facilities department was relieved from paying the entire fuel costs since the costs were charged to the appropriate departments. By installing a Gasboy pump, the facilities department was able to sell gasoline to other departments without having a full time person man the gas pump.