Life on the Road – Trucking News Blog

There must be, if not hundreds at least several different choices when it comes to dispatching software and there must be one or two that work well with a smaller office. Our small office is actually spread throughout the country. The office has been using the same software choice for many years. We have one dispatcher in the main office and two others in “remote” locations. Plus the accountant and accounts payable  person is offsite and everyone has access to the server in the main office thanks to the Internet.

We have a four seat license for the dispatching program. The owner has the dispatchers use Remote Desktop to log into the server instead of running the program locally on each workstation. This allows people to log in and work from home, dispatch from their truck or wherever. We have never had more than four people use this program, a couple or three dispatchers and the owner. After paying for an annual license for several years, the developers were told how we use the program. That’s not the way they want their program to be used. Now when our license comes up for renewal they have to go into our server and change the licensing. We give them access and they do whatever they need to do with us watching what they’re doing.

Now that this transportation software company thinks we’re crooks and we’re cheating them out of more money, when we’re the ones that told them about this method, they go in our server and look around where they don’t need to be. After we told them we didn’t want the upgraded program, they upgraded the program telling us after the fact and the reason was they had to upgrade to do the licensing. Now they have to remote in and install their program on four workstations. This was not what we wanted and we told them so, but they did what they wanted.

We thought we bought this program and could use it how we wanted, but apparently we only rent the program and can only use it the way they want us to us it. Completely unacceptable for a business that may not conform to the standard big office server and everyone sitting in cubicles in the same building.

Guess what? They’re not the only game in town. Besides paying an outrageous amount every year, they think we’re going to be treated like crap and enjoy it? Plans are in place to move to a new system. We’ll close out the year with this system, but come January 1st, we start using something else.  It’s not just the crappy customer service, we need to cut back. We were not only a trucking company, but also a brokerage and a warehouse. The brokerage and several agents are gone and the warehouse belongs to someone else now. The trucking company is left and like everyone else, we’re still hanging on.

The new system? Actually looks pretty cool. Completely web based so we can have as many people log in from anywhere in the country. We have two dispatchers that work elsewhere and this way we can have more, without paying extra for a program everyone has hated from the beginning. Since it’s connected to the internet load board we use the most, it’s completely integrated so a dispatcher can accept a load and all of the information goes into the accounting part without a lot of re-typing. Driver pay and everything else is handled like any other accounting program.

A good reason to use programs online is that upgrading to new version is completely transparent and the users never have to download and install anything. The old system shall remain nameless, but starts with a Broker and ends with a Plus. When we switch at the first of the year we will be going to the new system from Internet Truck Stop and is call ITS Dispatch. It looks good and if you already subscribe to the load board at Internet Truck Stop, there are discounts you can take advantage of. ITS Dispatch is completely scalable, which means it will work the same if you have one truck or a hundred and one trucks.

Sometimes, software programs need to be complicated to accomplish complicated tasks and making those tasks easy to do for the majority of people that are not computer experts or already experts in your program is probably tough to do, but making your program difficult to use and then treating customers like they were crooks and forcing your customers to work the way you want them to work and not allowing them to work the way they want to work isn’t right. As soon as a better solution comes along you’re going to be left standing in the dust wondering what happened.

No matter what dispatching software we use it all goes into QuickBooks for the accountant. There has got to be better solutions for smaller companies that are more user friendly so dispatchers can concentrate on dispatching instead of data entry and that is also affordable for a small company.

What software solutions do other small companies use? And does it integrate with the rest of the office well? The accounting part can be as complicated as it needs to be, but the day to day dispatching must be fast and easy to use. Did I mention affordable?