Fuel pricing and invoicing, each customer's formula applied and checked before the invoice goes out.

Each delivery gets priced by the contract behind it: which benchmark, at which rack or market, on which day and at what hour, plus or minus the agreed margin, with freight added as its own line or built into the price, then the federal, state and local taxes and fees that apply to that product and that buyer. Your billing clerk pulls the gallons from the ticket, finds the benchmark, builds the invoice and looks it over before it goes.

In the test, AI works from copies of the same paper and drafts each invoice: the benchmark it read and its date, the margin, the freight, every tax or fee line, and the gallons billed and on which basis, with each step shown. Nothing is sent, posted or priced live, and your reviewer sets each draft beside the invoice your office sent.

The day, the hour and the truck are all in the contract. Garrett County, Maryland, built its fuel contract on the low price at one named rack at 10 a.m. on the day the order is delivered, with one markup for tank wagon deliveries by small truck and another for transport loads by tractor trailer. Butts County, Georgia, in a June 2026 addendum to its fuel bid, set a 10 a.m. contract average for Atlanta on the day of delivery or loading, held each bidder's differential fixed through the term and any renewals, and billed on net gallons delivered while showing gross and net on the invoice. So a draft has to know which day counts, whose number, what hour, what delivery size sets the margin, and which gallons get multiplied.

Not every buyer can see the benchmark. A bidder on the Butts County contract said copyright kept vendors from printing the benchmark line on an invoice, and the county agreed to invoices without it, as long as the vendor keeps the documentation behind each one and hands it over on request. Garrett County went the other way and made rack price documentation part of every invoice. The draft keeps the benchmark figure and its source in a working column for your reviewer, and puts it on the invoice only when that customer's terms call for it.

Taxes and fees stack by product and by buyer. Garrett County's price schedule asked bidders to price dye for off-road diesel and dyed kerosene if the rack price didn't include it, two separate fuel additives, a federal oil spill fee and the federal LUST tax, the state motor fuel tax, a state oil transfer fee and one more industry fee. IRS Publication 510 keeps the LUST tax on dyed diesel unless it is exported, and in one state, Utah, dyed diesel still owes sales tax unless the buyer gives an exemption certificate on form TC-721. Government sales add another layer: a registered ultimate vendor claiming the federal tax on undyed diesel sold to a state or local government must have sold at a tax-excluded price, repaid the tax or have the buyer's written consent, the fuel can't have been bought with a credit card, and the vendor keeps the unit's name and taxpayer number, the gallons, and an unexpired certificate that lapses a year after its date or when a new one arrives. The draft follows your tax table and flags any tax-excluded line with no current certificate behind it.

Gallons and grade have to be stated correctly. NIST Handbook 44 says an invoice built on a temperature-compensating meter's reading must show the volume was adjusted to 60°F, and that fuel sold on that basis stays on it for at least 12 consecutive months unless buyer and seller agree otherwise in writing. The FTC's fuel rating rule has a distributor certify the octane on each transfer to anyone other than a consumer, on an invoice, bill of lading or delivery ticket showing both names, the date and the rating, or by a letter good until a lower-rated fuel is delivered. A distributor that blends gasolines certifies the volume-weighted average or the lowest rating, and may round only down to a whole or half number.

What your reviewer will check. Usually the billing manager or whoever owns pricing, your reviewer will go over the benchmark with its date and hour, the margin for that delivery size, the freight, every tax and fee line and whether it was figured on gross or net, and the fuel rating line, along with any invoice the draft held because a formula, a benchmark or a certificate was missing. Nothing on this page is tax or legal advice; the rules are named so your reviewer can check them against your own.

If your reviewer approves against the success criteria, invoices for the next month or so of deliveries get the same drafting.

Your billing clerk checks every invoice before it goes, and customers receive them the way they do now.

The side-by-side comparison carries on through the month. A second job after that needs its own go-ahead and its own price.