“A Very, Very Easy Software System to Learn”
 TBC
Trucking Corp., of Pen Argyl PA, is a subsidiary of Techo-Bloc,
North America's premier manufacturer of landscape and masonry paving
stones. In this interview, Techo-Bloc’s Alison Lohman speaks out
about their Axon® experience.
Tell us about Techo-Bloc and TBC Trucking.
“We manufacture concrete blocks for paving stones and retaining
walls. Until recently, we had been paying other trucking companies
to haul our product to our dealers. In 2005, we bought trucks that
worked under Techo-Bloc hauling our product, and the owner of the
company decided that he wanted to find more trucks and it was
decided to make it a separate company. Our only customer isn't Techo-Bloc,
but we pretty much only haul landscape products.”
Tell us about your experience with Axon®.
“It's very easy. If you're familiar with Windows-based programs to
start with, it's very easy to get around the system. It's very easy
to get from one screen to another. We have other accounting software
that we use for the Techo-Bloc side. Using it, if you want to get
into the general ledger or the business plans, you have to exit, go
into another screen, and it's just a lot of back and forth, where
with Axon®, there’s so many different ways that you can access
whatever it is you're looking for from where you are. It's very
easy. They took us through the training, but what really helped us,
I think, was entering [our actual data], because you actually got to
see what the software did and what it produced. When I started
entering some of our previous data, I thought, ‘Wow, this is pretty
easy!’ It was great.”
What are some of the problems that you were
encountering prior to working with Axon®?
“Fuel tax was an issue because we were just doing it on an Excel
spreadsheet, and there was no way to really double-check it. Now we
enter the mileage right from the logs, and we put the fuel receipts
right in. I can double check to make sure everything’s entered
correctly so there are checks and balances where before it just
wasn't as easy.
Being able to run reports as far as how many
miles we’ve run in which states is easy now. Everything was manual
before; I would have had to go back and add everything up. Now, a
couple of keystrokes, and it is done. So that is great.
In the past, our IFTA report was all a part of a
database program that was set up in Access, and every time the
report printed it was different, and I didn't have any way of double
checking anything. We had to say, 'Okay, hopefully it's right.' But
now I have some checks and balances and at the end of every month,
when we get our fuel bill, I can double check the invoices with
what's in the system.”
Since spinning off the trucking company, has
the workload increased significantly?
“When we were doing everything manually, yes, it was a pain. But now
with the software, I do the billing daily so you know it probably
takes me 30-40 minutes, from start to finish, and that’s not bad.
It’s beautiful! And now we're confident that the billing is done
accurately.
It's extremely timesaving. We had been doing the
mileage and the fuel manually before on a spreadsheet, and it was
time consuming because we had no way of double checking anything –
there were no checks and balances. It was just a matter of entering
it and hoping that it was correct. But this way, now, it gives us
more information and we do have some checks and balances in place.
We just had our first audit. They said everything
was wonderful because they asked for some specific information, and
I was able to print reports for all the information they were
looking for with the dates they needed. They were able to gather
pretty much all of their information from the reports they
requested, so it made it very easy.”
Has Axon® helped your customer relations with
TBC and with your dealers?
“Oh my gosh, yes. In fact, I had a customer yesterday who we email
invoices to, and something happened with their email and they hadn't
received a couple of invoices so they called me. It was very easy
for me; I just went in and printed a customer statement and went
through it with them. A five-minute conversation and we were all on
the same page. To be able to pull up a customer's history in maybe
three keystrokes is very nice.
I know when I call one of our suppliers and I
need to know something and they put me on hold forever, it makes it
more frustrating because you’re trying to deal with an issue or you
have somebody standing over your shoulder wanting to know this
information. So to be able to get that information to the customer
quickly is great.”
Tell us about the support you receive from
Axon®.
“Very good. I call with a question, and if they're not sure, they'll
usually be back to you within a half an hour. I've never waited
longer than that for an answer and a solution.
Axon® does
backups of our system at night and if something posts wrong or
something looks funny at the end of the day when they do their
checks, it pops up an error message and somebody calls you because
they don't want your accounting or your files to be a mess. I think
that’s kind of cool that when something was wrong, somebody called
me the next day and said ‘I'm going to help you fix this.’”
Axon® software is fully integrated, in
Real-Time, which means that when you enter information, it instantly
updates all of the areas it affects. Has that been beneficial to
you?
“Yes, and our comptroller absolutely loves it, because with our
software for Techo-Bloc he actually has to go in and post everything
and if I have to fix something I have to call him and let him know
because he's got to do whatever he needs to do first before I can
change it at my end because he has already posted it. Whereas with
Axon®, any adjustments are automatically posted to where they have
to go. And if you void it, you don’t have to go back in to five
different screens and spend an hour to fix the adjustment; it just
does it.”
How did you find the training?
“Very helpful. What helped me the most was actually going in after
a day or two of training to put in some of our real information
to see what happens. After actually going in and putting in some
orders and invoicing them, I thought, “Oh my god, where have you
been?”
How do you handle the dispatching in your
office?
“When Techo-Bloc receives an order, they'll get the bill of lading
together and call us. Rick in our office will check the schedule
through the dispatching screen to find out who is already full for
the day, who is free or who is hopefully coming back in a certain
amount of time. He enters all the orders and he’s found it very
easy. At any minute he can go in and pull up the dispatching screen
and see where people are and estimate what time they should be back.
Or we might get an order but they don’t want it until the next
Monday, so he can go in and schedule it. Then, as he gets more
orders he can see who's scheduled for Monday, even though today's
only Thursday.”
If one of your peers in the industry were to
ask you about Axon®, how would you describe your experience?
“I’d say it was great! To sum it all up, it just makes it so easy.
It's just a very, very easy software system to learn. Once everybody
in our office was a little bit familiar with it, and they were
actually putting live stuff in there and using it on a daily basis,
they said, ‘Oh, my god, this is easy!’ It's working for me; I don't
have any issues. I've never had any problems and, when I do call
Axon® with a question, if it's not answered right away, they usually
back call within the half hour.”
When did you first begin using Axon® software?
“We actually started last July, after we got through the training
and set-up, but the trucking company started April 24 of last year.
So we went back and put everything in, since it was only a couple of
months and right at the beginning it wasn't a whole lot of checks
being written or a whole lot of invoicing. We backdated everything
and got everything in the software, you know on the accounting side,
from April. So that way you know, from Day One, everything’s in
there, the financials are totally correct, that kind of thing.”
How many bills would you create in the course
of a day, typically?
“About12 invoices, but they're all multiple-order invoices. I mean
we probably do like for ten trucks; each truck does about three
loads a day, so there's probably about you know 30, let's just say
30 orders a day and if all ten customers that we bill are being
billed in that day, the most I would have would be about 30
invoices.”
Has the software improved your Accounts
Receivable picture?
“Oh, my gosh, yes, because, like I said, in an instant I could print
a statement, I could make a phone call to a customer, saying you
have something out here that's 30 days and it could be as easy as
you know, mail gets lost - we hate to admit it, but it does. Like I
said, yesterday I was emailing their invoices to them, putting it in
PDF format and emailing it to them, and they were having problems
with their email. So they hadn't been getting their invoices. It was
very easy for me. I just went back in, printed all their invoices
for the month of April, sent them to them and it was that quick.
It's just not time consuming at all.”
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