“For the Office Manager Who Does It All”
Jessica Selchert is the
office manager for Dakota Valley Trucking of Millbank, South Dakota.
She is responsible for all their bookkeeping and internal accounting
requirements. In this interview, Jessica speaks out about their
experience with Axon.
What
are your responsibilities, Jessica?
“I do all the billing, accounts receivable, receipts, driver
payroll, owner operator settlements, insurance, fuel taxes,
licensing, invoicing. I do everything except the dispatching and
loading trucks.”
What does Dakota Valley haul and where do you
haul it?
“For the most part we haul rotary blower fans that are made here
in South Dakota, and we haul them all over. The majority of them go
to California, Illinois, Minnesota, but we go everywhere. We have
flatbeds, stepdecks; we have a couple reefers, and a van.”
Tell us about your experience in dealing with
Axon.
“Uh, confusion at first (laughs). I guess from what I was used
to, it was a lot more complex. Now that I've used it, of course,
it's much simpler than what I had been using.
I don't have to enter it once here and enter it
somewhere else there, and then pray that it'll go to the next spot
on its own, which was what we experienced with our previous software
packages.”
Has Axon changed the way you do fuel tax?
“Now I don't have to enter many fuel invoices because we have
the integration with our fuel supplier. Unless they pay cash for it,
I don't have to enter their fuel daily, which is a lifesaver. I'd
say the Axon fuel software has saved me a half hour a day, with 10
company trucks and about six owner operators.”
Has Axon changed the way you do invoicing?
“Oh, definitely. When I get the paperwork, I double check to
make sure everything is correct. And then I just mark the box ready
to invoice, select the proof-of-delivery day to generate an invoice,
and it's done. Whereas before, I would have to completely type out
an invoice at the time of receiving the paperwork and then manually
send it to another software program to invoice it out.
It was too complicated; a lot of stuff got
forgotten. You know, detention times or wrong rates. If the rate has
changed, we now have the capability of just going into the system.
The dispatchers can go into the system and change the rate to the
new rate and, by the time I get the paperwork and I'm ready to
invoice it out, all the rates and your detention time, lumper fees,
etc. are in there. I don't have to worry about it not being there.”
Has that saved you any money?
“Oh, I'm sure it has. But I couldn't put a figure on it because
with our old software I wasn't able to tell what we lost, what was
forgotten. By the time we realized that it had been forgotten, it
was too late. But Axon has definitely improved our ability to
invoice correctly.”
Has Axon helped you in your ability to deal
with your customers?
“I guess one thing that I have seen is that when somebody calls
for a credit reference, I can give them up-to-date information,
whereas before I hadn't a clue how many days it took for a customer
to pay. I could tell them what the last invoice was and how much we
billed them at if they had five minutes to sit on the phone while I
pulled it all up, to go through my three different programs to get
it. Now everything's right there in their file.”
Which three programs were you using before?
“I had Prophesy, and that was divided into two parts, and then
from Prophesy it would have to go into Quick Books because Quick
Books did the accounting portion of it. Some of the information was
in one part of Prophesy; some of it was in the second, some in Quick
Books.”
Has the integration of Axon software, where
everything that’s entered automatically updates your entire system
instantly, helped you?
“Oh, yes. Once you type it in, it goes to where it needs to go
without me dragging it along to its correct spot.”
Tell us about the training you've received
from Axon.
“The training went very well. I seemed to understand it
immediately; I knew what our trainer was talking about, and she was
very helpful and understanding, and it went very well. I didn't feel
like I was drowning anyway.”
Tell us about the support that you've received
since you went live.
“It's working very well. I call on a regular basis (laughs). You
know, I know what I should be doing, but I'm kind of unsure about
it, so I will call and just double check, and they're always so nice
and helpful. And there has been a time when they were unsure, and
they came right out and told me, ‘Hey, I don’t know. Let me look
this over, and I'll figure it out, and I will call you back,’ and
it's always been within the day that they call me back and have an
answer for me.”
How does that compare with your experience
with the other software packages that you were using?
“Oh, there wasn't any support there. There was none, so it's a
complete difference. One hundred per cent better.”
Let's talk for a minute about the ease of use
of the Axon software.
“Oh, it's very easy. I mean with all the tabs and the
information underneath the tabs, it's pretty self-explanatory.”
How has working with Axon software affected
your business?
“It's running much more smoothly. If the owner, the boss, asks
for reports to know where we stand, I can just pull it up. There is
no question of where I should go to get it at all. And since I can
pull everything up so easily - the information is right here - I can
give him the information that he needs easily.
Our biggest problems are fuel costs and keeping
track of just where our money is going – costs in general. And Axon
has helped us with that. I can pull up reports to show where all the
money's going—if it's going to fuel or repairs, or if there’s some
equipment that's not moving or costing more to run. I can tell with
this software.”
If one of your peers in the industry were to
ask you about Axon, how would you describe your experience?
“I would have to say it's been very good. I feel that it's very
simple software to use.”
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