“WHEN THE [DEMAND GREW] FOR CAR HAULING, IT WAS AWESOME THAT WE HAD AXON. IT WAS DEFINITELY A HUGE RETURN ON INVESTMENT WITHIN THE FIRST YEAR. AND WITHIN TWO YEARS OUR BUSINESS WENT CRAZY. IT WAS NICE TO BE READY TO GO.”
Car hauling is a trucking industry niche with unique requirements and challenges. Over 10 years ago, Western Trade Winds Ltd. of Lethbridge, AB, found a software partner they could rely on to run their business. We spoke with Peggy Glib to hear about their decade of experience with Axon Software.
We move vehicles and heavy agricultural equipment. We have been doing it for 21 years.
My husband J.D. and I are co-owners in the company. He has been trucking since he was 18. We got married and I started helping with the books.
We started using Axon in 2010 and it has been a great move.
I am Peggy Glib with Western Trade Winds Ltd. out of Lethbridge, Alberta.
It took a lot for me to go from QuickBooks to a new program. We were at a point in time where we were getting bigger and it was just me and my husband at the time. J.D. had dispatch software for car hauling and I used QuickBooks, so we had double entry. You had him putting stuff in and you had me putting it in. It needed to flow better with our new dispatchers and staff.
I researched three other software programs. I can’t remember what the other two were. I just remember it gave me a headache. I came away from looking at Axon and it just made sense. We transferred over to Axon, and it has been great. It puts us on the same page now.
My department is the books, the money, the numbers. J.D. is on the dispatching side and having the two sides working together is awesome. The numbers I see are the numbers he sees. It puts us all on the same page. It really does. It’s awesome.
The training went good. They gave me all those books and stuff to help with the training.
Axon had it ready for us for car hauling and that was fantastic with our VINs. They worked with us. I do remember that. They had to rework orders so it would work with our car hauling. Yeah, it was great.
This program is smooth enough that as we bring people in, when you’re training, it flows with the people and your trucks. It brings it into a modern age of the way work flows, the way money flows, and the way dispatch flows.
Primarily we have always run company trucks, but we do have some owner operators. I used to have to use a whole other program to keep track of all the stuff for owner operator statements. Now, with their expenses going in through Axon’s payables, the statements come out straightforward and simple. It saves me a ton of time too.
The drivers love that it is straightforward. Once again, I was able to work with Axon in making sure the statement showed all the information they really wanted to see. Between my payroll and my owner operators, they need information that’s different and I was able to work with them on the statements. Axon helped me set it up. When the owner operators see it, it’s straightforward. They see their numbers exactly.
The reports in Axon have lots of information, and I know there are a ton of reports I don’t use enough of.
I run the statements for our own company fleet once a month and our owner operator statements bi-monthly. There is nothing more specific I would need, and I’m sure if I did, they would be in there. The reporting is fantastic.
Yeah, using Axon has increased our fleet for sure and made it way smoother for the current employees. We haven’t increased employees in the office, but our workflow is smoother, easier, and less rushed. We can assign more things to each other.
We’ve increased to 32 trucks in the last year and we didn’t have to add staff. If we increased by another 20 trucks, ultimately, we’d stay where we are at. . . .You don’t need any extra staff members with Axon. Axon is like an employee.
Within the first couple of years, it totally returned. We bought Axon in one of the lower waves of transporting, so we were very hesitant. But they worked with us and, when the wave went again for car hauling, it was awesome that we had Axon. It was definitely a huge return on investment within the first year because I think within two years we went crazy. It was nice to be ready to go.
Yes, because we are able to track by VINs. Our customers can call in with a VIN. We can track by their customer name or we can track by their delivery point. They can even tell us which driver it is. It’s great. Our customers know who we are and we know who they are. They know our drivers. We can track where the loads are and track where they’ve been.
Even me, I’m upstairs and I usually take care of everything a week after we deliver the vehicle. If everybody downstairs is moving vehicles outside, I can go downstairs and know exactly where we are at that point if a customer calls in. The order report gives us all the information we need.
Axon’s customer support is amazing. I love it. You call in and, if they are tied up or busy, they will call you back within the hour. If they have to research or find somebody who knows the answer, they will. They’ll call us right back. It’s amazing.
Within Axon, I know we get this nice little red reminder of things that are changing. It updates us on what they have improved or what they are adjusting. As customers, we may call in to ask for this or that, and they’ll look into it, and they take our suggestions. They obviously take our suggestions because things change.
We’re changing our satellite systems. They work with our satellite systems currently, but they also know they need to stay up-to-date with other satellite systems out there for our trucks. They’re willing to work on it and figure it out. The customer service is great.
We have had to hire, over the 10 years, probably three different ladies that we’ve had to retrain downstairs in the office and have them use Axon. Two of the three have not even been in car hauling, or trucking, or anything. They’ve been able to figure out Axon and definitely learned how to work with it. It’s very user-friendly. It doesn’t give me a headache. Everything is straightforward. It’s great.
I love using Axon, and I have actually had people request my opinion about Axon. I have two shirts that I wear around very proudly. I wear Axon gear. It’s like Nike gear. It’s great. I totally support it.
If anybody calls and asks me about Axon, I definitely recommend it. If you’re in the medical field, you are going to use their medical programs and software. We’re in trucking and for me Axon is #1.
HOW DO I CHANGE A CUSTOM FIELD?
Follow these steps if you want to make changes to a custom field (e.g. change the width of a Single or Multi Line Text field or add items to a List):
- Go to the screen which contains the custom field you want to change
- Right click on a List screen or choose on Form screens to access the Customize… pop-up window (available on most but not all screens)
- Choose the Customize Screen tab
- In the Custom Fields column, highlight the name of the field you want to change
- Choose the Field Properties button, and make the changes you require (e.g. change the text width or height)
- Text Width: The width of a single or multi-line text field will serve as the default column width on Reporter and on reports with custom columns
- Choose the OK button
Warning: You cannot usually change the Type of a custom field once it is created – you can only change its Field Properties. You can, however, switch the following:
- Text custom fields between single line and multi line
- Choose List custom fields to Text, from custom table
Hide
You can hide a custom field by highlighting it and deleting it from the Layouts section of the Customize… > Customize Screen pop-up window (the field will still appear as an option in certain lists, e.g. Reporter).
WHY IS MY BALANCE SHEET OUT OF BALANCE?
There are a number of reasons why your Balance Sheet may be out of balance. We suggest checking the following:
- Print a Trial Balance Report using the same As of date as the Balance Sheet and confirm that your debits and credits match.
- If your financial statement has been organized by Statement Group, check and make sure that all your GL accounts have a corresponding Statement Group (Financial > Chart of Accounts).
- Check to see if you have created any new Statement Groups (Financial > Statement Groups) that are not included in your Financial Statement Specifications as Statement Groups are often used to organize your financial statements.
Call Axon Support at 1-888-558-5050 for assistance if you are unable to resolve the problem.
6 BENEFITS OF USING PURCHASE ORDERS
Join Axon’s many long-term customers who have integrated the purchase orders application with Axon’s trucking and accounting software package. You’ll notice the benefits immediately.
- Axon’s purchase order application is completely integrated. Trucking items can be assigned immediately to a driver or a piece of equipment. Once the purchase order is linked to a payables invoice, employee expenses will appear on the driver settlement while equipment expenses will be added to the equipment statement. The system will update your inventory as soon as you record receipt of items on a purchase order.
- Purchase orders provide both you and your supplier with a record of what was ordered. You also have a record of when you placed the order and it can be compared with the invoice to make sure there is a match.
- Axon’s purchase order application does away with stray scraps of paper and bulky files. All the information is available in the system and you’ll have plenty of space to record additional comments. You can create a PDF of a purchase order or email it as an attachment.
- Tailor your purchase orders to your company’s particular needs by customizing the layout and creating custom fields.
- Track and record delivery of the items you ordered, even when they arrive separately and on different dates.
- A comprehensive set of report options helps you to track present and past purchases, your invoicing history, and pending payables.
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