Melanie J. McFarland Absolutely agree. Empower the field worker to focus on their core responsibilities AND support the streamlining of back-end operations toward analysi
Jonathan Frei I like how straight forward the process is.
TROY Sounds like a good idea but how is that better than just getting a pda solution for guys?
Bert Hermanus Great article. There's a lot of good information here, though I did want to let you know something - I am running Redhat with the circulating beta of
Sandy Naidu Looks good - the digital notes can also be transferred straight on the computer, right ?
Brad Hi JDW - yes it would be a great tool for any kind of business that needs to invoice from the road. If any of your clients are contractors or service
Spencer Is this real? I need that for my new plumbing company for the lads. But we will use sage for this is there a sage pen?
JDW Interesting - as an accountant I think that would be a great tool to use for busineses of any size that I deal with.
Any ideas on when it might be
They have also made a nice little video, I must admit that the Xero team are excellent at make very succinct videos that give enough info to whet your interest without going too deep into details, something we need to learn from.
If you want more detail on the Xero online accounting and simPRO online estimating, job management and invoicing solutions, please see below:
If you are looking for an estimation or project management package that gives you flexibility and delivers real productivity benefits then you can’t afford to miss the pairing of simPRO Enterprise and Xero – web based solutions at their best.
As you would know, we offer PDA’s, Digital Pens, Tablet, Laptop, Netbook and any other data capture & input devices available.
But when it comes to field service engineers or mobile engineers – the Anoto based Digital Pen beats the PDA hands down – here is why:
Field engineers are more expensive than office staffwhen you include pay rates, vehicles, fuel, mobile phones, tools etc.
Based on that simple statement above we can quickly deduce where the cost savings can be made in work processes – get the engineer to spend less time on paperwork and more time delivering billable hours.
The use of PDA’s actually builds in time delays for the field staff due to the nature of it’s use (menu driven, slower to input and navigate). Use of the digital pen is intuitive and fast and therefore alleviates the time burden of paperwork on the (expensive) field engineers and places that back with (lower cost) back office staff. As it is delivered electronically, there are still huge savings in time for the back office staff as well.
Therefore the digital pen is the best tool to use to speed up the work the engineers do in the field and to distribute that information back to the office already to integrate to the back end system.
Each system has it’s own pros & cons of course – but for the majority of field service and service management organisations – the digital pen is the hands down winner for electronic field based data collection.
We are very pleased today to say that the full Xero Accounting link is live and running in simPRO Enterprise bringing all the simPRO family into line.
You can now run simPRO Enterprise, simPRO Lite and simPRO Mobile with direct links into Xero to create and update invoices.
simPRO Lite & simPRO Enterprise
With both Lite & Enterprise you can now easily create your invoices, receipt invoice payments, create credits, add new clients, suppliers and contractors all directly to Xero from your simPRO system.
As both simPRO & Xero are web based applications, all the grunt work happens in the `cloud’ and you get real time feedback on each transaction for success or failure to post with explanations on why a failure may have occurred so you can rectify the error before it is part of the accounts system.
With simPRO’s powerful operational system, even functions that Xero cannot perform on it’s own like CIS and stock control, can all be managed making the combination of simPRO & Xero the ultimate solution for contractors and service companies.
simPRO Mobile
simPRO Mobile is our powerful Anoto based digital pen solution for service companies and contractors. We have made simPRO Mobile even more powerful now with a direct integration from paper invoices to your Xero accounting package.
Learn more about the simPRO Mobile Digital Pen to Xero integration on the Xero Blog.
We are very excited today to announce the release of our full integration of the simPRO Mobile Digital Pen with the online leader in accounting systems, Xero.
Put simply this new integration from the simPRO Mobile Digital Pen (that we internally nicknamed the Xero Pen) allows field based staff to complete an invoice sheet using a pen and paper and to have that instantly and electronically able to be updated into Xero.
Imagine the small trade service business completing their invoices at the clients site and having that invoice instantly available for a book keeper to update in Xero. Imagine a catering business delivering to their client and getting a signature on the invoice sheet before it is electronically sent and updated into Xero.
Delays in invoicing, late nights catching up on paper work and double entry of forms is now a thing of the past! Anyone in the business can now complete an invoice and have that available instantly for Xero.
The simPRO Mobile > Xero Digital Pen system works by utilising the Anoto based digital pen & paper technology to create invoice pages (either loose single sheets or duplicate sheets in pads) that are filled in using a digital pen. Once an invoice sheet is completed it is sent via Bluetooth to the users mobile phone and routed through the internet to the web based simPRO Mobile form portal.
In the form portal, the original invoice form is displayed in a PDF format showing all original handwriting and signatures and is also converted into a data file using powerful handwriting recognition software. The form is checked for accuracy and any errors can be fixed and additional items can be added if required. The form is then submitted which archives a copy in the simPRO Mobile form portal and then sends the data file to Xero where it is added in as a draft invoice.
We currently have a generic invoice form available in $, £ and € that is freely available to anyone (although it is designed to fit a service company). We plan to add other generic forms to the system over time.
Of course we can design, build and integrate any customised forms for any type of business. Forms are not just limited to invoices though, they can also be expense claims, asset registering or for any other function within Xero. And because the simPRO Mobile Digital Pen system can also send photos attached to the forms, you might be able to send copies of receipts, suppliers invoices, images of the assets being recorded etc into the simPRO form portal to accompany the forms for faster processing.
Below is a quick video showing the “Xero Pen” in action.
When using Anoto based digital pen & paper systems, one of the greatest benefits is the ability to output data from the handwritten form into a back-end system (ERP, patient records database, accounting package or just about any form of database).
Quite often even before I have done a demo to a potential client, the question comes up – “How do we make sure that the data going from the technician in the field into my XYZ software is going to be correct?”
That is a very good and very valid question. An electrician filling in a form at a clients site might easily write in the wrong job number, wrong client, date, billable time or materials. If that were to push straight to the accounting system for example, you would have all sorts of problems to contend with. Conversely, there might simply be an incorrectly interpreted word or number sequence from the handwriting recognition.
Photo courtesy of Anoto
Everyone is familiar with the concept of GIGO – Garbage in Garbage out, so we need to make sure that there is an opportunity to correct the forms before it gets sent to the final destination. That is why we have the Form Editor.
The form editor is our web based viewer and form correcting portal that displays the form with all the hand writing of the person who completes it. It also displays the data being pulled off from the hand writing recognition (HWR). (more…)
We have been recommending in recent weeks to new clients that when implementing their digital pen & paper solution that they should keep an extra pen charger in the office.
This will allow your mobile staff who use the pens the ability to do a short top up charge when they are in the office if required.
Most clients give the charger to the mobile staff to use at home, so this can be a back up in the case of emergency charging needs.
I recently read an article on the Intuit Labs Website (Intuit make QuickBooks, one of the world’s leading accounting packages for small & medium businesses) about a new Digital Pen system they are working on to integrate into their QuickBase database systems.
The video in the file shows a Dr. Gang Wang showing how a form can be digitally converted and then printed from the QuickBase Digital Pen system to work with an Anoto based digital pen. The resulting form can be completed with the digital pen then viewed back inside the QuickBase database as an image (with original handwriting) and the text then converted and merged into the correct database fields. It appears to just work with docking cradle, not via Bluetooth & mobile phone.
Dr. Wang is currently looking for companies to do some testing with them in integrating into QuickBase – once that is mastered, how long until we start to see a QuickPen with an integration option to QuickBooks?
I think that this is a great development and shows that with seriously large businesses such as Intuit starting to dabble in the digital pen business, then digital pens have really started to reach the mainstream business mind.
The digital pen & paper technology is still pretty new and still has a long way to go in terms of market penetration, that’s why I always love doing a demo to someone who has not see the pens before usually rattle off a few ideas of how the digital pen could be used to benefit different people and industries.
So for those of you out there who would like to see a few ideas on how the digital pen can be implemented to help your business or profession, have a look at this list:
Driving home yesterday in crawling traffic I saw something that really caught my attention when I looked across to the median strip area. Laying on the edge of the lane on the other side of the median strip was a book with torn pages fluttering in the wind and a familiar hard blue cover – it was a service report book, complete with tyre marks on its cover.
What was contained in that service report book I don’t know. It may have been a new book with no entries, or it may have been a book belonging to a tech who had been out all week and had done £50,000 worth of work who was heading back to the office to deliver his jobs from the week to the boss.
In my experience and that of many people I talk with, this is not an entirely uncommon event. Leaving the book on the roof of the car before driving off, stolen vehicles & stolen tool kits holding service books, books left on site or even just the occasional page that has torn loose and disappeared – all these are incidences that do occur and do cost your service business money.
That risk of lost forms is just one strong reason to use digital pen & paper solutions. Completing your service forms on paper but also sending them electronically at the time of completion means that you have a complete back up of every form that is completed in your business – you never have to lose a form again. That’s peace of mind for you as the business owner/manager.
One of the many useful forms in the simPRO Mobile platform is the e-mail/scratch pad.
This form was designed as a tool for users to record additional notes from a job, document diagrams (floor layout, wiring diagrams from site etc) and record notes and sketches from meetings
Many simPRO Digital Pen users have also told us they use it a lot for quoting as it gives them a chance to record notes & sketches on site and have that delivered instantly back to the office either for an estimator to immediately begin to quote or simply so they don’t lose the notes that they used to write on a scrap of paper (and often lost).
Regardless of the way that you use the e-mail/scratch pad in your business, we have just made a major change to make it even more useful. Now when you send an e-mail from your Digital Pen and choose a recipient from the pre-configured numbered boxes, the handwritten information is converted via the handwriting recognition engine and included in the body of the e-mail. That text can then be copied & pasted into any other documents that you wish, such as into:
The simPRO to Xero and simPRO Digital Pen to Xero integrations have now officially been released!
Absolutely agree. Empower the field worker to focus on their core responsibilities AND support the streamlining of back-end operations toward analysi
I like how straight forward the process is.
Sounds like a good idea but how is that better than just getting a pda solution for guys?
Great article. There's a lot of good information here, though I did want to let you know something - I am running Redhat with the circulating beta of
Looks good - the digital notes can also be transferred straight on the computer, right ?
Hi JDW - yes it would be a great tool for any kind of business that needs to invoice from the road. If any of your clients are contractors or service
Is this real? I need that for my new plumbing company for the lads. But we will use sage for this is there a sage pen?
Interesting - as an accountant I think that would be a great tool to use for busineses of any size that I deal with. Any ideas on when it might be