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.
In the last few articles we have been looking at the various options to mobilise your field force. There are strengths for each of the options and it is important to consider what will work best for your staff within their roles.
Today we are going to bring it all together in a general overview with an emphasis on the final output.
Please refer to our earlier articles for a detailed article on each of the above options but we will have a look at the areas that really are best suited in the business.
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.
Coming hot off the heels of the Apple iPad, we now have another serious contender in portable computing in the form of Google giving us their take on the tablet computer.
Using a sleek, ultra thin touch screen and running on the light weight Chrome OS, this device should really be a great thin client/web based computer.
Although there are no real specs about it yet, you will have to assume that they will go down the opposite path of Apple, meaning that it will be an open platform, will have the ability to multi task, will probably even have a USB port! Hopefully it will ship with 3G from day one.
Some of the specs that have been leaked recently say that it:
will sport a 10.1-inch TFT HD-ready multi-touch display, and would come with 64GB SSD, 2GB RAM and other bells and whistles such as WiFi, 3G, Bluetooth, Ethernet port, USB ports, webcam, 3.5mm audio jack, multi-card reader, etc.
This would be a better device than the iPad for those of us in simPRO as our whole business is web based and for e-mail, calendar, documents & chat we use Google Apps Premier – so I would make the bold assumption that they will be perfectly integrated as part of the entire system, bringing the hardware and software together in a perfect little Google ecosystem. Plus the benefit of an Ethernet port means that you patch into a network when Wifi & 3G are not available. If they add in an HDMI port as well, then it will be a ripper as it could be used for presentations etc.
We look forward to finding out more about the spec, pricing & shipping times and will keep you updated as we know more. But being a web based system, it is pretty safe to say that it would support all the simPRO systems – even the signature capture is quite likely as Google (unlike Apple) still support Flash.
See more about the Google Tablet and pictures here.
With all the excitement over the past week about the launch of the Apple iPad we have been getting people asking us – “does simPRO work on the iPad?”
First of all, if you have been asleep for the past week, the iPad is the new tablet computer release from Apple. It has sparked a lot of renewed interest in the tablet computer that has been available in various guises for many many years.
The tablet never really took off except for a few specialised industrial uses (simPRO has been available on most of the devices often called Ultra Mobile PCs for a few years).
The iPad has sparked this renewed interest in this computer format for a number of reason:
1) It is Apple and they put their brand reputation into it and let the Apple FanBoys whip up uber excitement across the web.
2) Since it is Apple you are pretty sure that it will look good and it will work.
3) It is actually a fraction of the cost of standard Windows based UMPCs & tablets.
4) Netbooks have been around for awhile and people are open to the smaller form factor that is mostly designed to be a web browsing (thin client) style product, not an all singing all dancing power computer.
5) As it is built on the iPhone OS, it will be supporting all the existing (squillions) of apps for the iPhone.
So – where does it fit in with simPRO systems. It fits in very well actually. Considering that it is effectively a stylish touch screen portable web browser, the iPad is a perfect fit for the simPRO user.
One of the biggest challenges in business is gaining accurate information from field staff. The nature of their work means that there is a delay between when they gather information and when it is returned to the office for processing.
Let me give you some examples…
You have engineers working on job sites. They perform minor works and record their time and materials on job cards or time sheets that you don’t see until the end of the day or even the end of the week. The result is that materials ordering and invoicing is delayed until the information is recorded back in the office.
If you have a number of field staff who return their job sheets at the end of the week, it takes days before that data is processed. So if a job is completed on Monday, it may be the following Monday before the client invoice is raised and posted.
Let’s say you have ten field staff, each doing 20 jobs worth £100 each per week, you aren’t billing their collective £20,000 until the following week. If those accounts are each paid in 14 days, your cash flow is three weeks in arrears of the job. If you are ordering replacement stock from the job sheets, your stock levels are in effect double what they could be as you’re keeping two weeks additional stock as a buffer.
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 new Motorola MC9500-K is one of the most rugged and powerful mobile devices for the field service management industry yet.
It is a striking looking unit that is packed with features that ensures it will be a perfect tool for field service companies everywhere with ergonomically designed ruggerdised casing, multiple communications standards (GSM, HSDPA, CDMA, Wi-fi) and a bar code reader.
In terms of a fit for simPRO integration, it is a perfect unit. Running on Windows Mobile 6.1, the large 3.7″ screen, full QWERTY keyboard and blazing fast 3.5G connection means that it is fully supportive of the simPRO Mobile PDA/Smartphone application.
The combination of the PDA application & the Digital Pen solution creates the ultimate in field service systems delivering real time data to the PDA with stock control, job dispatch, purchase orders etc and combining that with reporting, client signature capture, incident reports and site diaries driven from the pen and paper. Utilising these tools together brings the field worker and the office together like never before.
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