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About Start Software

Start Software is an award-winning developer and leading publisher of asbestos software, systems for the legal services industry and more.

Want to know more about asbestos software Alpha Tracker? Alpha Tracker is the most used asbestos software in the UK, Australia & New Zealand with more than 60m items of asbestos data stored.

Our legal services software Alpha Legal helps will writers, accountants, solicitors, IFAs and estate agents to communicate securely with clients. Read about developments here on the blog.

Or need help with Alpha Anywhere or Alpha Transform projects or software development? You'll find useful info here.

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,




We're testing Microsoft Office 2013

Office 2013 is soon to be released to the public and our Microsoft Partner status has given us early access so that we can check that Tracker and our other products are going to be compatible.



The staff here at Start Software have given it a luke-warm reception so far but there are some nice features in it for sure.

Also - it looks like Microsoft might be developing something for iOS (iPhones and iPads) as well as Android phones and tablets to allow Office docs to be viewed or edited... that might be interesting?  I don't expect to see that being launched until Spring 2013 at the earliest.  See http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/281676/scitech/technology/ms-office-for-ios-android-due-march-2013 for more info.

Visit to "NTAILS" project looking for RFID/QR code/barcode opportunities

One of the benefits of having an office on Wolverhampton University's Telford Campus is that we have access to their research projects and some exciting new technology.

One of the projects running at the moment is an EU-funded "NTAILS" project which is aimed at introducing all sorts of "sensor" technologies into Midlands businesses, including:


  • Radio Frequency Identification  (RFID)
  • Automatic Identification and Data Capture (AIDC)
  • Barcodes and Quick Response Code (QR) Codes
  • Sensors
  • Global Positioning System (GPS)

Lots of our systems can benefit from this technology - our asbestos consultancy clients running Tracker, for example, have opportunities to use QR codes and RFID tags when labelling asbestos.  Another one of our clients, SMC, runs a warehouse control system which we created for them some time ago and they see immediate uses for the technology.

I was able to visit the NTAILS demonstration suite with some of my clients to see the technology in action - here are some of the photos:



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