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| Yet another AI-generated blog image |
The TYSR team are completing their remote Alpha Tracker training today with Kim, learning how to make the most of their new asbestos lab management system — from sample tracking and chain of custody, through to lab reporting, quality control and dashboards.
And of course, no Alpha Tracker training session would be complete without the traditional selfie — here’s Robin’s shot featuring Kim and the TYSR team joining via screenshare!
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| Robin sticking his (big) nose into Kim's training session |
TYSR Analysis Limited are part of the respected Asbestos Sampling group — known across the UK for helping businesses and property managers bring asbestos sampling and testing in-house.
Their laboratories provide fast, professional asbestos analysis and are focused on accuracy, compliance and turnaround speed — values that perfectly align with the way we designed Alpha Tracker for asbestos labs.
Through their online platform, they supply asbestos testing kits, laboratory services, and training courses, all aimed at improving safety and efficiency in asbestos management.
At Alpha Tracker, we’re proud to support many of the UK’s leading asbestos laboratories and environmental consultancies. Our software helps automate every stage of the process — from sample registration and tracking, to UKAS-compliant reporting and client communication.
Key benefits of Alpha Tracker for asbestos labs include:
Seamless sample tracking from field to lab
Full chain of custody for compliance and auditing
Integrated report templates and certificate generation
Custom dashboards for productivity and turnaround monitoring
Secure, cloud-based access from any location
You can find out more in these recent posts:
We’re really excited to see how TYSR Analysis Limited will use Alpha Tracker to streamline their asbestos testing workflows and strengthen their quality management.
Welcome aboard, TYSR — and thanks for joining the growing community of labs and consultancies who trust Alpha Tracker as their asbestos lab software of choice. We can’t wait to see what you achieve with it!
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| Make your accounts staff smile! Faster invoice generation in Alpha Tracker |
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| Congratulation Judy! |
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| Judy & Jaime |
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| Leanne |
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| I couldn't find a picture of Kim "in action", so this headshot will have to do! |
We're putting the finishing touches onto our new quotation "auto-chase" feature in Alpha Tracker. This will be a huge time-saver for sales teams wanting to follow up on open quotes without manually writing individual emails to each prospect.
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| Preview of our quotation auto-chase feature |
You filter the list of open quotes to select the ones you want to follow up. Once you have the list ready, you can select all or a selection and press the new "Chase" button. This will give you a customisable email template before you click to send. Each quotation will then be followed up with the emails copied into your Tracker Filer address.
Our beta-tester consultancies will be the first to see the feature and give us feedback. If you'd like a sneak preview, too, get in touch.
We use Alpha Tracker to run our own business. Does that seem odd, considering most Alpha Tracker users are asbestos consultancies or water hygiene specialists and we are a software business?
You might be wondering why a software company like ours uses Alpha Tracker, a tool typically designed for asbestos consultancies, water hygiene specialists, and environmental consultants. The answer is simple: we believe in practising what we preach. By using Alpha Tracker ourselves, we're constantly on the lookout for new features and performance improvements. If something in Alpha Tracker bothers us, it's likely to bother you too, and this motivates us to fix it quickly!
Whenever a client requests a new feature or asks us to modify their asbestos report templates, for instance, we log that task as a project in our own instance of Alpha Tracker. This method not only helps us track our work but also ensures that we experience the software just like our clients do.
We're excited to share that we've recently hit a significant milestone: the 10,000th project booked in Alpha Tracker! This achievement underscores our commitment to continuous improvement and our dedication to providing the best possible experience for our users.
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| We've recorded 10,000 jobs here at Start Software |
Keep the feedback coming and we'll keep improving Alpha Tracker! Get in touch here.
PS the 10,000th job was from our friends at Hampshire Country Council... a box of chocolates is on its way to them!
Another Alpha Tracker asbestos consultancy is live. This time it is Lancashire County Scientific Services!
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| Kim has spent the day training the asbestos surveyors and administrators |
Lancashire County Scientific Services will be using asbestos software Alpha Tracker to survey buildings across the county for asbestos, analysing samples and producing asbestos reports for their internal and external customers.
Using a variety of handheld devices, asbestos surveyors will be capturing site data, taking photos and updating plans electronically, and then sending this over mobile data or WiFi - all with one click! Once asbestos samples are analysed, reports will be produced automatically to match the current Lancashire County formats. All asbestos reports in Alpha Tracker are created from custom templates to ensure that the output is perfect.
Can we help your asbestos consultancy to improve efficiency and the service you provide to your clients? Get in touch! We have demo slots available in May, and software trials are also available. If you are switching from competitor systems, we can also offer healthy discounts during 2024.
Our December 2023 update to Alpha Tracker and its companion app, Alpha Tracker Mobile, is now available.
Key updates include:
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| Release 40 of Alpha Tracker |
Watch a short video introducing the update and read and/or download the release notes, here: https://alpha-tracker.co.uk/latest-release.
Please contact our Business Manager to arrange your Release 40 update.
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| We're growing again! |
Welcome to this monster update of asbestos software Alpha Tracker - Release 38! It's the biggest update we've ever produced, with more than 600 new features, performance updates and bug fixes.
Here's a 10-minute video to run through the most important changes - it's worth a watch:
(you can also watch the video here: https://youtu.be/0zK20TzZ9-A)
The six highlights are:
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| The new highlights document - a one-pager that's worth reading |
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| Click the "stars" on your favourite items to build your own menu bar |
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| Our new Map Scheduling screen will even produce an optimised driving route for your surveyors! |
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| Some of the new and improved features in Alpha Tracker Release 38 |
Adam has just completed a brand new feature that is available to all Alpha Tracker asbestos consultancy users.
When your report is generated, we can now automatically create internal hyperlinks to allow report readers to jump between an item shown on a sample page, and the same item shown in the asbestos register - and vice-versa!
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| See our new report hyperlinks in action |
This will be really useful for clients reading long asbestos reports, in particular. Navigation between sections in the report will be so much easier and quicker.
In these screenshots you can see the hyperlinks in a little more detail:
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| Here's an asbestos register with the items shown as hyperlinks... |
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| ...and here is the sample page. Jump back and forth with one click! |
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| Alpha Draw "template" option is coming next |
We've had notification from two more asbestos consultancies in New Zealand that they would like to switch to asbestos software Alpha Tracker.
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| Alpha Tracker support for New Zealand customers is provided by our Adelaide (SA) office |
We'll be posting more updates as we prepare the asbestos report templates and train their professional asbestos field staff & administrators. Watch this space!
Project milestones are an easy way to track the jobs in your business. If you set them up properly in Alpha Tracker, you won't need any additional spreadsheets to track jobs as they progress because Alpha Tracker will do it all for you.
"Milestones" are key events in the life of a project. You don't want too many, but just enough to enable you to track the most important stages in a project. We suggest that 10 on a job might be too many - aim for a handful, at most.
Step 1 is to set up the milestone template for each type of work you do. Do this in the menu option Setup|General|Project Types. Click the "+" button to show the milestone template:
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| First, set the milestone template |
Step 2 is to update the milestones as you complete them. Open the project, click the "Milestones" button and simply update who did what and when. Double-clicking is a quick way to set "today" and "me" as the date/time completed and the person who completed the milestone:
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| Update the milestones as the job progresses |
OR - here's a great tip - use the "+" button on Project List to get to the same milestone screen:
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| Timesaver - use the "+" button to show the project milestones |
Step 3 - ditch the spreadsheets! Alpha Tracker has many screens which show you the milestones and how you are doing on each job. You can even configure Tracker Dashboard to automatically send you daily, weekly or monthly emails with summaries of your company's KPI performance.
We also have a new "Project Pipeline" screen coming in the next Alpha Tracker release. Here's a sneak preview...
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| Look out for the new Project Pipeline screen, coming soon |
UKAS is rebranding, see https://www.ukas.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Branding-Toolkit-January-2021-external.pdf
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| UKAS are rebranding - new logos needed on asbestos reports! |
Almost all of our asbestos consultancy Alpha Tracker software users are UKAS-accredited, so will need templates updating to incorporate the new UKAS logo. We do this at no charge, naturally, so do get in touch if you would like us to handle this for you!
Asbestos consultancy ASI Environmental has just gone live with the air monitoring module within asbestos software Alpha Tracker.
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| Some of the asbestos professionals at ASI |
Kim completed their (socially-distanced) training last week and, bar a final few template tweaks, ASI are now ready to go!
Welcome on board, ASI, and so pleased you joined the Alpha Tracker family.
A very warm welcome to MDK Analytical asbestos consultancy to the Alpha Tracker family!
Based in Carrigtwohill, County Cork, MDK is the latest Irish asbestos consultancy to choose Alpha Tracker to be their asbestos software system.
We'll be working on the asbestos report templates for MDK very soon (Alpha Tracker produces asbestos reports in your format, not ours) and then they will be ready for the training and go-live. We love meeting new asbestos consultancy clients!