App rebuild keeps Fiveash moving

Fiveash Contracting is a well-established Canterbury trucking firm, specialising in aggregate, soil and shingle delivery with a large fleet of vehicles. The rebuild of InTransvoice, a bespoke job management application, is saving Fiveash Contracting's management team a day of work each week, freeing up time to tender for more work and continue growing the business.

The cost of neglecting maintenance
In 2017 Fiveash Contracting worked with a developer to build InTransvoice. Following changes in the supplier’s organisation, they were no longer able to support the ongoing maintenance of the application, which resulted in a significant deterioration in performance. The loading time posed such a challenge that the operations team would have the app open on two devices simultaneously and would leave the workstation to perform other tasks while waiting for it to load.

Fiveash Contracting originally engaged Calo to develop the Truck Load App, and based on the successful outcomes of that project asked for a recommendation on updating InTransvoice.

Upon review, Calo recommended a total rebuild.

Update vs Rebuild

The framework InTransvoice was originally built on was fit for purpose at the time and with ongoing development and a maintenance plan it could have been built on. The lack of maintenance combined with further developments in the frameworks available, meaning it may not be supported in the near future, contributed to the recommendation to rebuild.

Updating and repairing the existing app would improve the performance significantly, but would require as much work and would cost more than building a new application with improved functionality and better futureproofing. Based on this recommendation from Calo, Fiveash Contracting moved forward with the rebuild.

An efficient job management and invoicing tool

Fiveash Contracting use InTransvoice to create jobs, including the time, to and from location, the load content and any notes, and assign them to drivers. Drivers access the app from tablets in the vehicle and can record the weight of the load and mark it as complete, while adding any other important information in the notes field.

InTransvoice aggregates each driver’s daily job sheet and once a job is marked as complete, operations confirm the weights are correct, push the job into the accounting system and quickly and easily generate an invoice with accurate information.

The app is easy to use for drivers, but still effectively collects all the information the operations team needs. It removes duplication and automates previous manual tasks.

New & improved

The rebuild allowed the development of improved functionality in the InTransvoice application which has made it an effective, easy-to-use scheduling and business improvement tool.

The original InTransvoice app saw drivers logging into a mobile app and managers logging into an admin portal, with the mobile app sideloading contributing to the slow load time. The new InTransvoice is one, web-based app that both drivers and admin users log into, then have access to different views.

The web-based app gives InTransvoice near-instant loading. Web apps are generally cheaper to build and maintain than mobile apps, and combining the functions into one app simplifies processes.

While significant improvements were made to functionality, such as the addition of Google Maps, the new app was designed to have the same interface as the old app, to ease the changeover for users with minimal upskilling required.

The rebuild of InTransvoice has given Fiveash Contracting a tool that improves business operations, frees up resources and helps them maintain their strong industry reputation as reliable and innovative specialists.