Voyager Card Program for Highway Contract Routes – Unidentified and Unrecovered Fuel Overpayments
October 30, 2013 (Report Number NO-MA-14-001)
As part of the Voyager Card Program, the U.S. Postal Service provides Highway Contract Route (HCR) suppliers with Voyager fleet transaction cards to purchase fuel for their vehicles. The Postal Service’s Supply Management, Fuel Management Category Management Center (CMC) group is required to reconcile Voyager card transactions to determine whether supplier purchases exceed the annual allotted fuel gallons. Accurate reconciliations are vital to the Postal Service so it can recover funds from suppliers that exceed their allotted fuel gallons.
The U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a management alert after its assessment of the operational effectiveness of the Voyager Card Program. The alert was issued due to the urgency and time sensitivity associated with recovering overpayments. The OIG estimates that the Postal Service did not properly identify and recover about $9.9 million in fuel overpayments to HCR suppliers for fuel year 2009-2010. Overpayments were not collected because the HCR Voyager Card Program reconciliation process was not reasonably conducted and documented. The OIG acknowledged that fuel price volatility is a factor in determining the reconciliation amount and that other variables, such as the appropriate application of pooling of fuel gallons for contractors, will also affect the amount.
Management stated its Fuel Management CMC will evaluate the 2009-2010 reconciliation and compare it against data from the Fuel Management System. It will identify and evaluate any anomalies and determine whether there are additional suppliers to whom collection efforts apply. The actual amount will likely differ from the amount identified in the alert when the Postal Service performs reconciliation using its established and documented reconciliation methodology.