Tendering for corporate charging cards: Requirements and evaluation matrix

When you invite bids for charging cards for your business, you first need a set of requirements that you can verify. What matters is whether your fleet can use the charging locations it needs, whether billing fits your needs and whether day-to-day operations are reliable. Comparing card prices and advertised network sizes is not enough. Ask every provider to address the same use cases, data requirements and pricing items. This gives procurement, fleet management and finance a selection they can jointly justify.

This guide describes a business request for proposals. It does not cover the specific procurement-law requirements that apply to public contracting authorities. The requirements below are points for your procurement team to check, not a promise that every provider meets them as standard.

Describe the scope from an operational perspective

Start with a brief volume overview. How many vehicles and drivers will be connected? Which countries and regions are regularly relevant? How many vehicles mainly charge at home, at your premises or on the road? State current demand and expected changes separately. A firm order for 25 vehicles is different from a non-binding prospect of another 100.

Add typical working days: field staff visiting different customers, fixed service territories or pool cars with short bookings. Use anonymised data wherever possible for the initial market enquiry. At this stage, a provider needs charging locations, time windows and volumes, not complete personal movement profiles.

Then define the boundaries of the contract. Does it cover public charging with charging cards, or also home charging billing and workplace infrastructure? Having a single contact does not automatically mean that all services are included in the card contract. Request separate service and pricing items for the areas you actually need.

Separate mandatory criteria from benefits you can score

A mandatory criterion determines whether an offer is usable at all. For example, a particular invoice recipient may be essential, while an extra chart in the portal would simply be more convenient. Too many mandatory criteria restrict the choice; too few push unresolved problems into later operations.

Write every mandatory requirement as a testable statement. “Good billing” is difficult to assess. “The provider supplies a transaction report that can be reconciled with the monthly invoice and contains our required cost centre reference” can be checked against a sample file. If a manual intermediate step is acceptable, describe it explicitly and calculate the work involved.

Ask for evidence rather than blanket answers

A simple yes in a questionnaire can mean different things: available as standard, at an extra charge, only through a partner or merely planned. Define response categories. Useful options are “included in the proposed scope”, “available as a paid option”, “manual process required” and “not available”. Future announcements belong in a separate column and should not earn points as though the services were already available.

For important criteria, request a piece of evidence: a file, a contract section, product documentation or a demonstration. The evidence must apply to the proposed tariff and intended configuration. A report from another product line is not enough if that product is not part of the offer.

Ask about app access, charging cards and tariff selection separately. For each component, request an explanation of the services included and the units to which any fees apply. This provides a clear basis for comparing the terms of each offer.

Define the evaluation matrix before comparing offers

Assess the mandatory criteria first. Only then compare suitable offers using weighted criteria. The following allocation is an illustrative example chosen for a mobile corporate fleet, not an industry standard:

For example, award zero to five points per criterion. Define what each score means beforehand: zero means insufficiently evidenced, three means fully met and five means a demonstrated additional benefit your business actually needs. Calculate the weighted score by dividing the points by five and multiplying by the weighting.

Do not let the same feature improve the result more than once. If good billing already reduces administration time in the cost calculation, the same time saving should not also count in full as a separate quality bonus. Assess traceability or error handling there instead.

Use a consistent price sheet

Give every provider the same pricing basket: number of users and cards, monthly kWh, charging locations and expected session-start and time-based fees. Fixed fees per business, driver, card or charge point must remain visible as separate units. Also ask for setup, replacement card, optional service and contract termination costs where applicable.

Use a base case and scenarios with lower and higher usage. This reveals offers that only look attractive with an optimistic vehicle count. Include the expiry dates of temporary discounts in the calculation. Have finance define the comparison basis for taxes and non-deductible costs before the amounts are combined.

For the later rollout, our existing charging card onboarding guide is useful. It starts once the procurement decision has been made: with access and the first correctly assigned charging session.

Clarify responsibilities before signing

Procurement is responsible for comparable offers and contractual questions, fleet management for operational suitability and finance for accounting processing. IT and data protection teams check the proposed access rights and data flows. Name one person in each area who can make a final assessment of open points. Otherwise, an attractive interface can quickly become a substitute for an unresolved overall decision.

Document limitations alongside the score. If a cost centre can only be changed through support, that may be acceptable when changes are infrequent. With frequent reorganisations, the same process may be a reason to reject the offer. Context determines the outcome; an abstract feature list is not enough.

Conclude the selection with a short decision paper covering suitable offers, total costs, evidenced strengths, remaining limitations and rollout prerequisites. A high score does not replace evidence that an operationally essential requirement has been met.

Prepare a concrete requirements discussion

StromNow Business combines a driver app, central charging billing and exportable invoices and cost reports. Use your own service specification to assess which scope fits your needs.

For a requirements discussion with StromNow, bring your vehicle and user counts, typical routes, an anonymised billing month and your mandatory criteria. This enables a concrete discussion of which requirements are covered, what setup is needed and what evidence you should see before deciding.