We are located in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. We specialize mostly in RV transportation and we do general freight as well. I started using Axon in 2000, so 20 years now. It has been great. We’ve been through all the changes that Axon has done over the years. It’s always easy to learn the new steps and the new innovative things they put in to help make our lives easier. The ones we use are easy to learn. The ones we don’t use often, it’s just a phone call and we know it right away.

It has been excellent. I do a lot of the training here for new staff, and I do a lot of the financial reporting and budgeting. A lot of numbers, but it’s really simple. Axon has an excellent reporting program, which I especially like. It is excellent in that I can find any information from any aspect of our business, whether it’s trucking, accounting, operations, or safety. I can easily pull up any information I need, either from the reporting system itself or from the financial side where it offers different types of financial reporting. It allows me to budget. It allows me to see our margins, our revenues, truck margins and revenues, as well as anything else I could possibly want to know. When I’m creating the reports, if there is ever a question of how to get it, I just call Axon Support and they can usually help me out with a formula or something. Support is awesome. Best support.

They love it. They love to see the statements that Axon produces because they are very detailed. When I’m doing training or orientation, we go through what the statements will look like, and they’re always very happy – usually surprised at the level of detail that’s shown and how easy it’s going to be for their accountant or bookkeeper to do their taxes at the end of the year. When we start sending statements out to new drivers, there has never been a question of anything that’s on there. It’s so detailed as far as their mileage: their rate is shown per mile or a flat rate. The deductions are itemized, the fuel is itemized per purchase, and it’s also split up between US and Canadian, which is great. It always accounts for all the GST.

If I had to do it all manually, I can’t even say. It would be insane. If I ever had to do our accounting manually again, it would take way more staff, probably five times if I had to guess, because Axon is just extremely efficient. The direct deposit system is great. It’s easy to set up in our system and the drivers have their pay as soon as pay day comes around.

Axon allows our different departments to do their job better than they would be able to without it because Axon keeps up on all of the trucking requirements, from FMCSA to DOT. It allows operations to easily do their job, safety and administration to easily do their job. And it takes into account every part of the business instead of just one, like QuickBooks would. When I have new staff starting, or a new division, or somebody starting within a division, I can always set their permissions. I set them up as a user and easily set up the permissions that are listed per area. It’s easy to find a permission to allow or disallow access. It’s very simple to set up groups and assign groups to different people, giving them specific information.

Axon has developed a mobile application that we use. It allows us to do all of our dispatch and receive all of our paperwork online from the driver’s phone or tablet. What it’s done for us is allow us to have all of the delivery paperwork immediately once the load is delivered. In turn, we have our invoices out faster and our receivables come in quicker. With the application we are able to get the paperwork in, I would say on average, one to two weeks quicker, depending on the driver. The other thing that it has allowed us to do is bring in some consistency. Prior to the app, drivers were sending in paperwork in different ways. Some through a scanning program, some through email, fax, mail, and there was no consistency. Now it’s consistent, and it’s on time. We are also able to get attachments of photos. This allows us to have instant photos attached to the order if there was any damage found at pick-up. At the time of delivery, if there was no damage, pictures prove that as well. It’s helped us save a lot of money from claims. It’s done directly from the driver’s phone or tablet, and it’s almost immediately in our system for us to view.

The software is extremely user-friendly. I have recently trained a new staff member on it and she picked it up very quickly. She actually told me that it’s the best software she has ever used. It’s easy to use and does what she needs it to. We own more than one company and run an Axon program for each company individually, and it’s great because all of the reporting systems are the same. When we do inter-company transactions, it’s very easy to move from one to the other.

I remember doing IFTA manually before Axon, and it was a nightmare to figure out the miles and fuel purchases per jurisdiction, per truck. With the Axon program, you have a fully integrated IFTA system. It picks up the fuel purchases directly from the payables invoice because it’s integrated. It also allows us to easily input the mileage. It creates the IFTA program reports. It allows us to either do it on a fleet basis or an individual truck basis, which we find is very important I remember back to when we were doing it manually and we were using all the spreadsheets and Excel programs. It was a very in-depth process. Now, it’s so quick and easy. There’s nothing to it.

We currently run about 40 trucks. I could easily double our fleet with the same staffing. Without Axon I would have to double my staffing. That saves us $150,000 a year.