The best petroleum wholesale software carries one transport load from the rack to the dealer invoices, the supplier settlement, the tax return, and the ledger with the gallons typed once. This guide follows one load through the numbers, gives you eight checks to grade every demo, and names the vendors worth a call in 2026. We build one of these systems, FastDragon, so we say that up front and keep the guide fair.
What one load asks of the software
Petroleum wholesale software, also sold as wholesale fuel software or fuel wholesaler software, runs the business between the terminal and the pump. You lift at the rack on contract and spot, haul it or hire the haul, and sell to dealers, commercial accounts, resellers, and your own sites. The easiest way to judge a system is to follow one load through it, so take a plain one.
An 8,500-gallon transport of regular gasoline lifts in Texas. The rack posts at $2.10. Freight is 3.5 cents a gallon. Federal excise is 18.4 cents and the Texas rate is 20 cents. The load splits three ways, and each dealer is on a different contract markup.
| Drop | Gallons | Markup | Price per gallon | Invoice | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dealer A | 4,000 | 4.0¢ | $2.559 | $10,236.00 | $160.00 |
| Dealer B | 3,000 | 5.0¢ | $2.569 | $7,707.00 | $150.00 |
| Dealer C | 1,500 | 6.0¢ | $2.579 | $3,868.50 | $90.00 |
| Load | 8,500 | $21,811.50 | $400.00 |
Behind that table the software has to do eight things the same morning. Post the rack and recompute every dealer price from it. Split one bill of lading into three invoices at three prices. Carry 38.4 cents of tax per gallon through to the state and federal returns. Book $297.50 of freight to the carrier and spread it across the three drops. Match the supplier's invoice, which should read $21,114.00 for the product and tax, against what was lifted. Post the receivables to three dealer accounts with three sets of terms. Draw down the contract volume at that terminal. And post $400.00 of margin to the ledger.
One cent missed anywhere on that load is $85. A wholesaler moving twenty loads a day is exposed to $1,700 a day on a single cent. Each check below is built to catch that cent. If the channel is new to you, start with the side of fuel marketing the public never sees and how to read a fuel invoice.
Eight checks to grade every demo
Bring the same eight to every vendor and score each one pass or fail on your own data. A vendor who can only show slides for one of them gets a fail on that line.
- Post a rack change and watch the dealer prices move. Enter a 3-cent rack move. Every dealer price should recalculate before anyone touches a dealer record, by zone where you price by zone, with freight and tax still right. See rack pricing explained and zone pricing.
- Turn a split load into three invoices in one entry. Hand them a real BOL split three ways. Three dealer invoices should come out with the gallons typed once and the compartments, drops, and prices right. See BOL to invoice.
- Settle with the supplier line by line. Load the supplier's invoice for that BOL. The system should compare gallons, price, tax, and fees to what was lifted and flag the gap, even a rounding gap.
- Build a filing-ready return for your states from those loads. Name your states. Ask to see the return, with gross and net gallons handled the way each state wants. See motor fuel excise tax explained and gross vs net gallons.
- Show contract volume by supplier and terminal. What you have lifted against each contract, what is left, and what happens the morning a terminal puts you on allocation. See fuel supply contracts and what is fuel allocation.
- Price branded and unbranded gallons for the same dealer. Brand reporting and dealer tank wagon pricing on the branded side, spot and contract buys on the other, invoiced from one account. See branded vs unbranded fuel.
- Run the receivable aging and draft a dealer. Terms, credit limits, EFT drafts, and the aging by dealer. Wholesale is a credit business. See credit and collections.
- Close the month and read the profit and loss. A general ledger with period locking, a monthly statement the owner reads, and separate books for each company you run. Or, if the books stay in QuickBooks, a clean posting into it. See multi-entity accounting.
Two more questions have no screen to show: the all-in first-year cost, in writing, and who moves the data and answers the phone at month-end. Write both answers on the scorecard next to the eight.
The vendors worth a call in 2026
Eight systems do this job for US wholesalers. The table is drawn from each vendor's own pages, read September 9, 2026, and from what we hear from operators who run them. The full profile of each one, with what to check before you sign, is in best fuel wholesale software: eight systems and who each is built for.
| System | Built for | What stands out | Pricing |
|---|---|---|---|
| PDI Enterprise Wholesale | Large multi-terminal, multi-state marketers with a full accounting and IT staff | 250+ marketers on it; motor fuel tax through an Avalara partnership; owns FireStream, DM2, FACTOR, and FuelSmart | Enterprise, quote, multi-year |
| BookWorks (Key Information Technologies) | Mid-size jobbers who want tax and BOL automation built in | Motor fuel tax for 32+ states in the product; DTN feed; reads supplier BOLs and invoices automatically; ATG links | Quote |
| ADD Energy E3 (ADD Systems) | Marketers with a delivery fleet and mixed lines: propane, heating oil, wholesale, stores | Since 1973, family owned; Raven handheld for drivers; financials on Microsoft Dynamics | Quote |
| COMPAS Commander (AIMS) | Small and mid-size jobbers who want accounting first | 50+ years in financial software; tank-level inventory; bought Petro-Data in April 2026 | Quote |
| RR Fuel (Red River Software) | Co-ops, propane and heating fuel dealers, wholesalers with retail | 40+ years; 1,200 customers in 35 states and Canada; DTN price import; EDI tax filing | Quote |
| iRely Petroleum | Large multi-line distributors: fuel plus lubes, propane, stores, ag | Rack imports from Axxis, DTN, Chevron, BP, and Marathon; multi-state electronic tax filing; cloud hosted | Enterprise, quote |
| Series2K | C-store operators first, and jobbers who supply their own stores | Cloud SaaS for 20+ years; one station to 1,000+; QuickBooks and the major POS brands | Monthly subscription |
| FastDragon | Small and mid-size wholesalers, jobbers, marketers, and station owners | Modular; NAXML supplier import that proves the supplier total; split allocation with live margin; full ledger by entity | Quote, band told up front |
Where you fit follows your terminals, your dealer count, and your staff. A wholesaler lifting at two terminals for thirty dealers and one lifting at twenty terminals for four hundred should be calling different rows of that table. If your current system was bought by PDI, read alternatives to PDI first. If it was Petro-Data, read what the AIMS purchase means.
What it costs
Seven of the eight price by quote, because cost follows terminals, dealers, states, entities, and modules, and Series2K sells a monthly subscription. Modern platforms land in the low to mid five figures a year for a small or mid-size wholesaler. Enterprise suites run six figures plus implementation, on multi-year terms. Conversion is a year-one line of its own and commonly runs from a few thousand dollars to well past ten thousand. The bands, with sources, are in how much does fuel software cost.
Where FastDragon fits
FastDragon is built for the small and mid-size wholesaler, jobber, petroleum marketer, and station owner. On the load above it reads the supplier's NAXML file or CSV straight in, checks the supplier's total against the line math, and flags a rounding gap on the spot. It allocates the load across the three dealers, single or split by grade, and shows the margin the moment the purchase meets the sale, with the freight matrix applied. Dealer prices move with the rack. Motor fuel tax is figured per gallon and filing-ready by state. Commissioned-agent stations settle daily, and every settlement and invoice posts a balanced entry to a full general ledger with period locking, or to the QuickBooks you already run.
It is modular, so you switch on the pieces you run and pay for those. Packages run from a single site to a multi-state, multi-entity operation, and we tell you the band you land in before you spend an hour on a call. Our team does the conversion and you keep running the old system until the cutover. The details are on the Fuel Jobber page.
Questions people ask
Is petroleum wholesale software different from fuel jobber software?
Same product, two labels. A fuel jobber is a wholesaler, and the vendors on this page use both names. The wholesale label usually means a bigger book: supply contracts at several terminals, a few hundred dealers, and more than one filing state. Shop by what you run, and treat the label on the vendor page as a search term.
Do I need dispatch software as well?
Only when the truck count makes the whiteboard a problem. The systems above run the business the trucks feed: pricing, invoices, tax, settlement, and the books. Dispatch tools such as FleetPanda and BizSpeed plan the loads and drivers, and several of the back offices above pass tickets to and from them. A wholesaler with three transports can run for years on the back office alone.
Can one system also run my commissioned-agent stations and company stores?
Some can. Ask to see a daily agent settlement post to the ledger, and a company store close land in the same books as the wholesale gallons. Series2K and FastDragon are built with the store side in; PDI and iRely carry it as part of a larger suite. Ask the accounting-first systems which product covers the store and whether it posts to the same ledger.
Do I still need DTN or OPIS?
Usually yes, for the price feed. Most systems import the posted rack from DTN or Axxis, and that subscription is billed separately by the feed company. Ask which feeds a vendor imports, whether the import runs itself each morning, and what happens to dealer prices when the feed is late.
What should be in the first-year quote?
License or subscription, data conversion, training, support, per-site or per-user fees, the price feed if the vendor resells it, and the contract term. Ask for one total for year one and one for year two in writing. Two vendors quoting the same monthly can be thousands apart once conversion and the term are in.
How long does the switch take?
A typical small or mid-size wholesaler moves in about six weeks, and a complex one with several entities and states takes a couple of months. Most of the time goes to data: dealers and their price formulas, supply contracts, tax setups by state, open receivables, and history. Ask who does that work, their staff or your office, and get the live date in writing.
See package sizes and get your number
Sources
Vendor facts from each company's own pages, read September 9, 2026: PDI Enterprise Wholesale, BookWorks, ADD Systems, AIMS, Red River Software, iRely, Series2K. Federal excise rates from the IRS (18.4 cents gasoline, 24.4 cents diesel, each including the 0.1 cent LUST fee). Texas motor fuel rate from the Texas Comptroller (20 cents). Rack, freight, and markups in the worked example are round illustrative figures.