Another asbestos consultancy chooses Alpha Tracker - welcome LAANZ!

It's lovely to end the year with another Alpha Tracker asbestos software order.

This time it is Auckland (New Zealand) based asbestos consultancy LAANZ who has researched the market and has chosen to have Alpha Tracker as their asbestos management software.

LAANZ are WorkSafe New Zealand licensed asbestos assessors having proven their abilities with industry qualifications and many years of experience in the industry.  Specifically, LAANZ work in these areas of asbestos management:

• Issuing clearance certificates
• Management surveys
• Refurbishment surveys
• Demolition surveys
• Air monitoring
• Management plans
• Asbestos awareness courses
• Asbestos Removal Guidance

Improving the efficiency of surveying for asbestos is at the heart of Alpha Tracker:

1. Before the survey, you can log calls and other contacts, generate quotes and plan work
2. When the asbestos surveyor is on site, they will have access to the Tracker Mobile data collection app enabling data, plans and photos to be captured on smartphone and tablet
3. Back in the asbestos lab, the results are recorded and auto-entered into the survey report
4. The asbestos report is generated with one-click!  It is produced in your format, too, not ours
5. The report is then viewable and shareable via the built-in Alpha Tracker Client Portal
6. To wrap up the job, you can generate an invoice automatically and post to Sage, Xero or other accounts packages.

Welcome LAANZ to the Alpha Tracker asbestos software family!

February/March 2016 update to Alpha Tracker

We've updated our asbestos software Alpha Tracker again... and we can now talk to Xero!

The Feb/Mar Alpha Tracker update (known as SVN1900) for the leading software for asbestos consultancies is mainly a performance and bug-fix update but we've also managed to squeeze in more then 30 new features too.

This update has been thoroughly tested by our beta test user group.  It follows on from the January 2016 update released 6 weeks ago.

Some of the key new features to look out for:

• Xero integration so you can post Alpha Tracker invoices direct to Xero
• add write-up time to a surveyor's calendar with one-click
• view a new colour-coded Project Dashboard
• view data extracts more easily and download to Excel with one-click
• add QC points to the lab dashboard for better analyst point calculations.

As usual, we have a full set of release notes available to list all of the enhancements and changes. You can view them by clicking on the image below and scrolling towards the bottom of the page:

February/March 2016 Alpha Tracker update release notes

I have also produced a short YouTube video to run through the key changes (click to play):

You need the very latest version of the Alpha App Server on your system in order to deploy this update so please do contact us before installing so we can double-check that you are set-up and ready to take advantage of all of the new features.

Let us know what else you'd like to see in Alpha Tracker to ensure that it remains the best asbestos software system available for asbestos surveys and asbestos consultancies!

New TimeTracker mobile app for capturing project time in Alpha Tracker

Alpha Tracker - the web & cloud-based software for asbestos surveyors and asbestos consultancies - now has the facility to record staff time on site via the TimeTracker mobile app.

TimeTracker - the time tracking mobile app for Alpha Tracker

TimeTracker works on all Apple and Android smartphones and tablets (including iPhones, iPads, Samsung Galaxy phones and cameras) alongside Tracker Mobile, our handheld data capture system for asbestos surveyors.

The data captured can be viewed, edited and analysed within Alpha Tracker itself and used when preparing invoices to clients or assessing job profitability.

Please contact the office to discuss using TimeTracker within your organisation.

Another Tracker asbestos admin training session complete

I'm writing this on the train on the way back from one of my favourite cities, Glasgow. I have been up visiting an old client, a multi-national asbestos and environmental consultancy, to do some Tracker refresher training and system updates.

Preparing for the Tracker asbestos admin training

Glasgow always strikes me as a city which has everything (architecture, night-life, culture, river) but doesn't realise how good it is!

Our client's staff are always really friendly and it was a pleasure to run through the administration side of Tracker with them today.  The surveyors are busy using Tracker Mobile to capture the asbestos survey data on their iPad Mini tablets but with new admin staff in place they needed to run through the Tracker processes for checking and producing the asbestos reports.

In a couple of hours this morning we were able to cover the basics in Project Tracker and Tracker 264.

• maintaining the client database
• booking in new projects and asbestos surveys
• checking asbestos records sent in by surveyors
• reviewing photos taken of asbestos locations
• entering the asbestos lab results, and
• automatically producing the asbestos reports.

We also covered invoicing from Tracker using Invoice Tracker and created a brand new link to the Microsoft Navision invoicing system.

Open letter to all Tracker customers - Tracker 10 years on

The New Year is always a good time to reflect & plan and this year is especially important for us because it is the 10th anniversary of bringing Tracker to the market.

We’ve been at the top of the asbestos consultancy industry for a decade now and we intend to continue for another 10 years more (at least!).

2012 saw some huge changes to Tracker including:

- massive improvements to Tracker Mobile including mix-and-match support for iPhones, iPads, Android tablets & smartphones

- new features in Tracker Dashboard giving you the information you need to run your business delivered direct to your Inbox

- a brand new module – Tracker Filer – acting as an extra pair of hands, filing emails and attachments in your Tracker system

- new options and facilities within Tracker Web Server connecting you to your customers better than ever before

- the option to record lab data directly on iPads within Lab Tracker

- another new module – Resource Tracker Sync – to give you the option of synchronising your Resource Tracker diary to Google or Exchange calendars.

You can read all about the Tracker modules here http://start-software.com/tracker/modules/.

Our next plans include a fully “cloud” based version of Tracker (called “Alpha Tracker”) which we’ve been working on for 9 months now and launching this product into a number of foreign markets, starting with Australia.  There is some early information here: http://start-software.com/tracker/modules/alpha-tracker/.

We know we’re not perfect but we continue year on year to improve our service to you and we continue to improve our helpdesk (see http://start-software.com/support/performance-charts/).  At our last ISO9001 inspection we passed with flying colours again which was a testament to my team’s continued hard work.  We’ve also launched a brand new portal for you, our customers, which enables you to have direct access to the information about projects and problems we are working on for you.

For our business to continue to grow we need to keep our existing customer base and build upon it with new companies coming on line with Tracker.  This year has seen a number of new Tracker users including some of the industry’s biggest consultancies as well as some of the smallest too.  What is really satisfying is that surveyors leaving existing Tracker businesses and starting their own businesses often ask us for our Tracker Lo-Start system – Tracker genuinely is popular with directors, management and surveyors alike.

We are now working to complete Alpha Tracker whilst starting a new project in conjunction with the University of Wolverhampton to bring “smart tag” RFID technology to the asbestos consultancy market.  If you are interested in being the first consultancy to use this exciting new technology, get in touch and I can explain what it could mean to your business.

Thanks for reading.  Don’t forget to check our website regularly at www.start-software.com or – better still – follow the blog at http://blog.start-software.com so that you will see the weekly announcements about new Tracker developments.

Here’s to another 10 years.

Cheers,

VAT rounding queries with Sage/QuickBooks

Invoice Tracker is able to push invoices across to Sage (most version) and QuickBooks (ditto).

When calculating VAT you may find that Tracker, Sage & QuickBooks may occasionally differ by 1p.

This is not a bug in any of the systems, but a well-known computer system problem called "rounding errors".

If you are concerned, we can adjust the Tracker calculation process to exactly match your particular version Sage and/or QuickBooks.  Please contact the office if you would like to discuss this.

Automatic invoicing posting to QuickBooks

We've just implemented a very cool feature in a customer management and order processing system we built last year for a growing sportswear supplier - Sportsjam.

They use QuickBooks as their accounts package and have been creating invoices by hand once orders are fulfilled... but the system we wrote for them has all of the information it needs to post the invoice. So could we do that automatically to save some admin time?

 Absolutely!

Using a QuickBooks add-in called QODBC we changed our Alpha Five written system to automatically create an invoice in QuickBooks on the press of a button.

Genius!

Can we do the same for you?

Do you use QuickBooks as your accounts package and have a system written in Alpha Five or Microsoft Access that you'd like to link to QuickBooks in this way?  Perhaps automatically post invoices or other data?  Perhaps read information from QuickBooks (eg customer balances) and display them in your Alpha Five or Microsoft Access system?

Contact us for advice and to discuss your requirements.