DTN, a leading business information services company focused on agricultural, energy and weather business markets, announced last week the release of the industry’s only centralized rack and contract price management tool. DTN Fuel Buyer^™ helps marketers manage thousands of intra-day fuel prices through one convenient, configurable application. With price exports as an add-on feature to DTN Fuel Buyer, marketers have a single tool to effectively manage prices throughout their organization.

In the past, compromises had to be made between accounting and fuel buying teams. Accounting departments require centralized control for accurate billing and reconciliation of special deals and contract pricing. Fuel buyers need access to every scenario of real-time rack and contract prices with discounts in order to make the most profitable fuel buying decisions. Using DTN Fuel Buyer, multiple groups within an organization can work effectively from a single, convenient source of pricing data.

“DTN offers the industry’s only one-stop source to effectively manage rack and contract pricing,” said Robert Gordon, chief executive officer, DTN. “DTN Fuel Buyer is a scalable, affordable solution to help address market turmoil and accommodate the diverse needs of a marketer organization.”

Integrating prices into back-office systems reduces errors and costly credit and/or re-bills to customers. DTN Fuel Buyer streamlines price capture to improve billing and reconciliation processes within a centralized dashboard. Price administrators can configure price downloads exactly how they need them; choosing which products, discounts and deals to export. Manually-entered prices become automated, and with centrally managed contracts and discounts, more deals are properly captured before an invoice arrives. This includes automatically-generated contract prices based on industry indexes, such as NYMEX, Platts and Argus. When prices are accurate, other automated processes such as supplier invoice reconciliation continue running smoothly.

Fuel buyers can access prices through a comprehensive dashboard presentation along with intra-day price alerts; real-time spot markets; as well as price and market intelligence. Powerful price analysis tools help buyers quickly evaluate every option including blending and quantity-based best rack for destinations with freight and surcharges. All the information is available in one convenient location to respond faster to markets, lower the cost of fuel and resell smarter to customers.

DTN, a private company based in Omaha, Neb., delivers business critical information to more than 700,000 subscribers across its vertical markets.