Software Similar to Red River and FACTOR: The Seven Systems Operators Move To
Two names keep landing in the same search. Red River and FACTOR are both the whole back office for a company that buys fuel by the load and sells it on, both have been around longer than most of the people running them, and both are on a lot of shortlists this year for different reasons. I sell one of the systems below, FastDragon, so I have put ours last and told you what it does badly along with what it does well.
Why these two get searched together
An independent shops for back office software about twice in a working lifetime. When it comes time, the names that surface are the ones the neighbor down the road runs. Red River and FACTOR are two of those names, and the people searching for both are usually one of two operators.
The FACTOR operator is shopping because somebody else decided it was time. WR Hess sold FACTOR to PDI in 2018, along with DM2. PDI already had FireStream and Pinnacle FuelSmart from 2017. A Virginia marketer put a certified letter in front of me this month: twenty-five years on FACTOR, support ending September 2027, and a recommendation to move to PDI Enterprise. He is not a PDI Enterprise sized company. He runs three loads a day, six dealer sites across two states, two stores, a couple of car washes, and a packaged ice business. The letter had a date on it, so now he is shopping.
The Red River operator is shopping for a quieter reason. Red River Software of Post Falls, Idaho has been at this for over forty years and reports 1,200 customers. RRFuel is very good at what it was built around: route delivery, propane and heating fuel, degree days and K-factors, prepaid contracts, co-op back office, and a truck with a meter head on it. An operator whose business grew sideways into commissioned agents, company stores, and three sets of books starts looking for something shaped like the business he ended up with.
Different reasons, same shortlist at the end of it. Everything below comes off vendor pages read on September 11, 2026, dated trade press on the acquisitions, and twenty years of sitting in these offices while the month closed.
What the two are actually shaped for
Before you can find something similar, be honest about which half of these products you use. Both cover the same core: a bill of lading comes in, an invoice goes out, tax gets figured per gallon, the supplier gets settled with, and the books have to tie. They differ on the second half.
RRFuel names its wholesale features plainly on its own page: BOLs, AP, AR, state-specific fuel schedules tied to inventory, a DTN import that updates customer prices, a customer pricing algorithm, automated bills of lading and manifests, transport receipts, margin analysis, and EDI files for state fuel tax. Beside it sits the retail half: customer tanks, degree days, K-factors, prepaid heating contracts, delivery dispatch, volume pricing. The store side is separate products, CSMinder, Vanguard POS, Pioneer Card Processor and Pricebook.
FACTOR is a jobber accounting and fuel distribution system that a lot of southeastern marketers have run since the nineties. Its strength was always that one person could learn the whole thing and run the office out of it. Its weakness now is that its roadmap belongs to a company whose growth is in convenience retail enterprise software.
So the honest question is which half you spend your Tuesdays in. A marketer whose day is consumer route delivery wants a delivery-first system. A marketer whose day is rack-to-dealer wholesale with agent stations and a store wants a distribution-first system with the ledger underneath it. Those are two different shopping lists.
Four questions that narrow it to two vendors
Answer these before you take a single call. They cut a list of seven down to two most times.
- Do you deliver to consumers on a route? Heating oil, propane, keep-full accounts, tank monitors and degree days. Yes puts RRFuel and ADD Energy E3 at the top. See what is a keep-full program.
- Do you sell off the rack to dealers? Posted rack in, DTW or cost-plus out, split loads, freight and tax passed through. Yes puts COMPAS Commander, FastDragon, PDI and iRely in play. See rack pricing explained.
- Do you own or settle stores? Company stores, commissioned agents, dealer sites you supply and bill. Yes narrows it to the systems with a real store back office, which is Series2K, FastDragon, ADD, and PDI. See what is a commissioned agent.
- How many sets of books does your accountant keep? One company, or the operating company plus the real estate LLC plus the trucking entity. More than one puts multi-entity at the top of the demo list, and cuts the field hard. See multi-entity accounting for petroleum.
The Virginia marketer with the letter answered no, yes, yes, yes. That took him from seven vendors to two calls in an afternoon.
The seven, side by side
| System | Shaped for | What stands out |
|---|---|---|
| RR Fuel | Route delivery, propane and heating fuel, co-ops, wholesalers with retail | Degree days and K-factors, prepaid contracts, DTN price import, EDI tax files |
| PDI Enterprise Wholesale | Large multi-state marketers with accounting and IT staff | Where PDI moves FACTOR, DM2, FireStream and FuelSmart customers |
| ADD Energy E3 | Marketers running their own delivery fleet and mixed product lines | Raven driver handheld, books on Microsoft Dynamics |
| COMPAS Commander | Small and mid-size jobbers who want the accounting solid first | Tank-level inventory, excise tax reporting, owns Petro-Data since April 2026 |
| iRely Petroleum | Large distributors with fuel, lubricants, propane and stores in one company | Five rack feeds, multi-state e-filing, cloud hosted |
| Series2K | Store-heavy operators and jobbers who supply their own stores | Major POS brands, QuickBooks posting, subscription price |
| FastDragon | Small and mid-size jobbers, marketers and station owners with a mixed operation | Sold by the module, ledger by entity, live margin on allocation |
The closest match to Red River, by half
If you use the delivery half, ADD Energy E3 is the nearest peer. ADD Systems has been family owned in New Jersey since 1973 and serves propane, heating oil, wholesale petroleum and stores off one platform. The Raven handheld puts the delivery ticket in the driver's hand and posts it back. The thing to check is the financial layer: ADD runs the books through Microsoft Dynamics GP or Business Central, which is another licence and another conversation with your accountant. Cargas Energy is worth a call too if delivery is nearly the whole business.
If you use the wholesale half, COMPAS Commander and FastDragon are the peers at the same size of company. AIMS has fifty-plus years in financial software and bought Petro-Data on April 1, 2026, which brought the Complete Jobber customers under the same roof. FastDragon is ours and is sold by the module. Both will run a split load and a state return on your own data in a demo. Ask for exactly that.
If stores are most of your business, Series2K is the one to look at. I worked there for over a decade and still send people that way when the fuel is a sideline to the stores. It runs from one station to more than a thousand, talks to Verifone, NCR, Gilbarco and Wayne, and posts to QuickBooks.
The closest match to FACTOR
PDI's own answer is PDI Enterprise Wholesale, and for a large multi-state marketer with an accounting department and IT staff, that is a real answer. More than 250 petroleum marketers run it. The pieces are all there: order processing, fuel accounting, warehouse inventory, cardlock, equipment, a customer portal, and motor fuel tax through an Avalara partnership.
For a FACTOR customer who is one owner, one bookkeeper and a dispatcher, Enterprise is a bigger system than the business needs and is priced and implemented that way. The peers at FACTOR's own size are COMPAS Commander, ADD Energy E3, iRely at the larger end, and FastDragon. Whichever three you shortlist, the nine questions to put to each are in leaving FACTOR, DM2, FireStream or FuelSmart, and the full list of what PDI has bought since 2016 is in alternatives to PDI.
Where FastDragon fits, and where it does not
FastDragon is built for the small and mid-size jobber, marketer and station owner whose business grew sideways. Wholesale, commissioned-agent stations, company stores, compliance records, real estate, fleet and the general ledger are each a switch, and the bill covers the switches that are on. The supplier's NAXML file lands as lines with the taxes carried through as written, and a supplier total that disagrees with its own lines gets flagged before anyone pays it. Allocation matches each purchase to the dealer who took it, by grade, and puts the margin on the screen while you are still looking at the load. Every settlement, dealer invoice and supplier payment posts as a balanced journal entry, so the month closes out of one set of numbers and the accountant works in one system.
Where it does not fit: consumer route delivery. We do not do degree days, K-factors, prepaid heating contracts or propane tank rental. If half your gallons go down a residential route, Red River and ADD cover ground we do not, and I will tell you so on the first call rather than the fourth. See the screens on the Fuel Jobber page.
What to do with your shortlist
Pull one real day out of your current system. One transport load, split across three customers, with freight and two states of tax on it. Pull the supplier invoice that went with it and the month-end journal it landed in. Take that same paperwork to every vendor and make each one run it in front of you, on their screen, while you watch. Count the entries. Ask what happens on the morning the rack feed is late.
Then get the first-year number in writing: subscription or licence, conversion, training days, support, per-site and per-user fees, any price feed the vendor resells, the contract term, and what it costs to leave. Bands and real figures are in how much fuel software costs, and the order of operations for the move itself is in switching fuel software.
Questions people ask
What software is most similar to Red River Software?
For the route delivery and propane side of Red River, ADD Energy E3 is the closest match, with Cargas Energy close behind on the delivery piece alone. For the wholesale rack-to-dealer side, COMPAS Commander from AIMS and FastDragon cover the same ground at the same size of business. For an operator who also runs stores, Series2K and FastDragon both put the store back office under the same login as the fuel.
What replaces FACTOR now that PDI owns it?
PDI acquired FACTOR with the WR Hess purchase in 2018 and points those customers at PDI Enterprise. Operators who want to stay at their own size instead look at COMPAS Commander, ADD Energy E3, RR Fuel, iRely, or FastDragon. Ask each one to show your own split load, your own state return, and your own month-end close before you pick.
Why do people search for Red River and FACTOR together?
Both names sit in the same conversation an independent has once every fifteen or twenty years. FACTOR customers are shopping because PDI has a plan for their product. Red River customers are shopping because the system leans toward co-ops and route delivery, and a rack-to-dealer wholesaler with agents and stores has grown past that shape. Different reasons, same short list at the end of it.
Is there a like-for-like replacement, or does the office have to change how it works?
Expect the screens to change and the work to stay recognizable. A bill of lading is still a bill of lading and a state return is still due on the twentieth. What usually changes for the better is how many places a number gets typed. Ask each vendor to run your own paperwork in their demo and count the keystrokes yourself.
How long does the move take?
Six weeks is normal for a small or mid-size operator on a modern platform, and a couple of months when there are several entities, a lot of history, or store data coming across. Enterprise suites commonly run several months to a year. Most of the time goes to data: customers and price formulas, supply contracts, tax setup per state, open receivables. Get the live date in writing and ask whose staff does the data work.
Bring your load and your letter. We will run both live →
Sources
Read September 11, 2026, on each company's own site: Red River RRFuel, PDI Petroleum Wholesale, ADD Systems, AIMS COMPAS Commander, iRely Petroleum, Series2K, Cargas Energy. FACTOR and DM2 joined PDI with the WR Hess acquisition in 2018; Pinnacle FuelSmart and FireStream in 2017, per PDI press releases. AIMS announced the Petro-Data purchase on April 1, 2026. Red River's customer count and years in business from its own materials.