Tiered Rental Set it and Forget it!

Our ongoing Feature Spotlight series highlights one important tool in the TrackAbout toolbox to help you operate more efficiently and maximize the utilization of your assets.

Tiered Rental - Set it, and Forget it

One smart way companies can increase rental revenue and incentivize customers is by applying rental rates based on customer’s use of products and services.  Rental best practices recommend you would charge customers a lower rate when they’re renting greater quantities of assets from you and increase the rate as their usage decreases.

TrackAbout’s Tiered Rental module allows you to do just that; charge different rates for the same product depending on quantity with rental tracking and invoicing software.

The Inside Track: TrackAbout Support Team Shares Favorite Features

Alex Neubert, the newest member of the TrackAbout Support and Implementation Team, polls her co-workers about their favorite TrackAbout feature they think our customers will love.

Feature Spotlight - Maintenance Action Schedules

Our ongoing Feature Spotlight series highlights one important tool in the TrackAbout toolbox to help you operate more efficiently and maximize the utilization of your assets in any asset management programs.

Action Schedules: Stay Ahead of Asset Maintenance

If you invest in portable physical assets, you already know having an effective asset maintenance or management program helps ensure your assets are available when your customers need them and that they are in safe working condition.

But what tools do you have in place to ensure you are handling maintenance proactively rather than reactively?  TrackAbout’s Action Schedules feature allows you to stay ahead of asset maintenance.  Know what’s coming due and address maintenance issues ahead of time to keep your inventory in service and ready for use.

Feature Spotlight - Consumables and Hard Goods

Our ongoing Feature Spotlight series highlights one important tool in the TrackAbout toolbox to help you operate more efficiently and maximize the utilization of your assets.

Consumables and Hard Goods Delivery and Billing

What are Consumables and Hard Goods?  As opposed to Rental goods, which are rented out to customers and then returned to you, Consumables and Hard Goods are items provided to your customers that you don’t expect to have returned.  These could be items such as medical tubing, welding wire, gloves, goggles, etc.  You may not need to track each of these items individually, but you need to know how many and of what type made it to the customer.  You can deliver these, and bill them, right out of TrackAbout.

Feature Spotlight - Capture GPS Coordinates

Each Feature Spotlight highlights one important tool in the TrackAbout toolbox that helps you operate more efficiently and maximize the utilization of your assets.

About GPS Capture (Smartphone Only)

TrackAbout is excited to announce the following enhancements to our iOS and Android apps.

• Being able to capture GPS coordinates during mobile transactions, and
• The display of maps on the web site that show asset and transaction locations in mobile geotagging.

Get better information about your inventory.  Know where your assets are when you need them.

These features are available to TrackAbout's iOS/Android subscribers and must be enabled by our Support team. Contact support@trackabout.com for assistance.

Feature Spotlight - Truck Manifests

Our ongoing Feature Spotlight series highlights one important tool in the TrackAbout arsenal to help you operate more efficiently and maximize the utilization of your assets.

Truck Manifests

TrackAbout helps with government compliance by generating truck manifests for assets loaded on your trucks.  Prevent errors due to manual entry while getting your drivers out the door faster.

Government agencies such as the Department of Transportation (DOT) in the US require trucks to maintain accurate manifests of their cargo.

This feature is available to TrackAbout Core Tracking clients who subscribe to our Truck Load and Manifest module.

The History (and Future) of Cylinder Tracking

I was very honored to be asked to write an article on the history of gas cylinder tracking systems for the 25th Anniversary Issue of CryoGas International Magazine. I'm proud that TrackAbout has been a leader in developing asset tracking technology for the industrial gas industry for the past 15 years. That experience has given me a chance to watch this technology grow from its infancy.

I am especially excited that TrackAbout, together with our affiliate company Lockhouse, is helping to build the future industrial supply chain. So the article is also about the future of cylinder tracking, and how technology in use now both creates and solves the increasing demands for better information in real time, all along the supply chain.

This article originally appeared in the September 2015 issue of gasworld. It is reprinted with permission.

Achieving Regulatory Compliance with Asset Tracking Software

Regulatory compliance is not an easy challenge. No matter the industry or the scale or complexity of business operations, companies throughout the world have to manage an ever increasing number of laws and rulings. This is especially true in the United States where an average of 2,500 to 4,500 new rules are passed each year.  Some receiving the most attention lately include the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), the Pesticide Container and Containment rule and the Unique Device Identification rule.

While complying with regulatory requirements is a necessity, it is also burdensome and costly.  In fact, a National Association of Manufacturers report estimates that federal regulations cost an average of $10,000 per employee per year in 2012. Eighty-eight percent of those surveyed say that federal regulations are a top challenge for their firm.

Raising Accountability for Oilfield Equipment with Asset Tracking Software

According to the Association of Energy Service Companies (AESC), oilfield thefts amount to an estimated $1 billion USD annually. Stolen equipment ranges in value from $100 to $10,000 USD or more per item and includes laptops with proprietary information, control panels, pipes, valves, heavy equipment and anything else that isn’t bolted down, as well as some things that are.

Clearly, there’s a problem. What’s interesting is that many of the well service companies we’ve contacted deny ever having anything go missing, whether stolen or unknowingly misplaced. I suppose it’s not surprising really. We’ve seen this scenario before.

7 Questions to Ask Before Buying Asset Tracking Software

You’ve decided it’s time to invest in an asset tracking software solution to help manage your portable assets. Whether your company is smaller and seeking to replace a manual, paper-based asset tracking system, or is larger and is finding that your existing software no longer supports your business, you have similar concerns in selecting your new solution.

Making the right choice doesn’t have to be hard. The questions below will help you identify and evaluate the critical features that will provide the best return on investment now and in the future.