SmartTrade Blog

SmartTrade incorporates many time saving short-cuts, some of these are standard Microsoft short-cuts, others are SmartTrade short-cuts.

Below is a list of SmartTrade's short-cuts

SYSTEM-WIDE TIPS

SPECIFIC SCREEN TIPS

We have prepared a “tips” sheet to assist our customers successfully mobilising their business.

The “tips” sheet itemises a number of common sense strategy points, suggests possible responses to employee and employer soft issues and outlines possible device factors. It also includes a sample agreement for the use of both company owned and BYOD mobile devices.

Please click here to view the full document.

In recent times we have added the following features/functionalities to SmartTrade.

SmartTrade Mobile

SmartForms

Google Calendar integration

This feature enables SmartTrade users to dispatch appointments from the SmartTrade schedule to the Google Calendar schedule on smart devices, great for sending appointments to your staff on their smart phones. It is not yet possible to sync appointments from the smart device’s Google Calendar back to the SmartTrade schedule.

Read more about the Google Calendar integration

SMS Messaging – available with SmartTrade Essential and Ultimate

• Sub Jobs. Now you have the ability to create sub-jobs . They are a complete stand-alone job, but can share the same job number plus a unique identifier for each sub-job. To create a sub-job, edit the job and click Other action => Create sub-job

• Ability to unaccept a quote. This will allow you to change the quote before accepting it again, or accept a different quote. 

• Job Pictures. Photo capture for Jobs.

• Ability to Create new Quote jobs on your device, or dispatch existing Quote jobs to your device that either have or don’t have an accepted quote. The Add Job page on mobile asks if you want to add a Quote job or a Charge-up job.

• Ability to Add/ Edit / Delete Costing line items for a Quote job.

• Ability to Create a new Quote on mobile.

• Ability to Find Clients that are not currently on your mobile device and download them to your device. This would then allow you to add a new job for the client and/or view all details for the client including notes and customisable fields.  If a client is downloaded to your mobile device, ALL the sites for the client will be downloaded. Each client has an action to allow you to no longer keep the client on your mobile device, e.g. if you only downloaded it temporarily to view some details for it.

• Form is mandatory

• Form will pop-up when the job is opened on the mobile device

• Form is not applicable for this job.

I spoke to you in regards to feedback for integrating Smart trade mobile into our plumbing business.

Well we are now 4 weeks along from our original trial and have all of our plumber’s using the system.

We have found implementing the mobile version to our office has created time across our entire staff’s workload, especially the administration side.

Our invoicing process is savings us at least 3-4 hour’s every week as all of our job sheets are pre-entered onsite, which makes Invoicing a breeze rather than a mammoth task each week.

The best part is our Plumbers are happy with the system and are no longer having to complete entries twice on their timesheets and manually on their job sheets, bonus!

All round implementing from the administration side to the outside staff has taken us a little over 2 weeks and we are experiencing our first week paperless.

I would like to say thanks to Smart trade for helping us through this stage as we have had a lot of phone call’s to the support team ironing out all of the little things we are not sure about.

Considering we were so nervous about shifting so many staff from a paper system we feel that overall it has worked out really well and would happily recommend Smart trade!

Kind Regards

Kylie
Coral Coast Plumbing

Some excellent feedback there from Kylie, if your business is interested in SmartTrade Mobile please give us a call on the number above or send us an email at [email protected] and we can discuss a solution to propel your business.

SmartTrade has implemented the Ezidedit direct debit payment system for customers making monthly payments. Ezidebit offers a secure and simple direct debit payment method for payments by deduction from bank accounts or credit cards.

If you wish to take advantage of the EziDebit system, please contact Sheree on: [email protected].

Smart devices revolutionise the SME field service business model

By Matthew McGann,

Sales manager, software house SmartTrade Ltd

May 2014

Matthew McGann from SmartTrade talks about the impact affordable consumer grade smart devices and improved mobile internet connectivity are having on the world of SME field service providers. The field service sector includes a host of business types offering installation and/or maintenance services. Statistics in the table below illustrate the growth in the smart device market.

There would be few if any business models with more to gain from the smart device phenomenon than the SME field service providers. Until relatively recently sophisticated field service mobility solutions were largely the preserve of the larger corporations who could afford expensive IT solutions. Mobile phones didn’t have sufficient smarts to allow the smaller players to effectively manage their workflow from the field. As a result they were pretty much limited to using the voice and text functionalities on their mobile phones to communicate with their customers and suppliers. The emergence of affordable consumer grade smart devices with reasonable processor capacity and vastly improved internet connectivity is revolutionising the way SME field service providers manage their businesses. It helps if the smart devices come with a ruggedized case!

Job management solutions hosted on smart devices expand the growth opportunities for the SME field service providers by enabling them to compete more effectively in the marketplace. This in turn is an enabler for progressive SMEs navigating the chasm of death from being small to big businesses.

There are a number of simple job management apps appearing in the market. An effective job management solution needs to be feature rich plus have excellent help desk support, the field service providers are using it every working day all day! Simple apps lacking a help desk don’t cut the ice!

A contributing factor is societal change. The first of the Gen Y’ers , the generation brought up with computers, are now in their early 30’s. They will increasingly make their presence felt in terms business ownership and management, plus in the field service game the techs tend to be young, mobile and computer savvy. A state-of-the-art smart device will often be an important part of the Gen Y’er’s persona! They will often happily employ their personal smart devices at work (the BYOD factor).

It doesn’t take an Einstein to work out that if your employees are linked at the hip with a productivity tool one would be foolish not to catch the wave!

In response job management software developers such as SmartTrade are increasingly tailoring our software products to work on smart devices. SmartTrade has superseded our earlier PDA based mobile products with solutions specifically designed for the Android and iOS platforms.

We have also developed Smeedi®, a document exchange platform, offering increased office productivity by automating the exchange of invoices between supplier and customer.

Smart device statistics

For the statistically inclined the following data demonstrates why smart devices are becoming truly ubiquitous.

• 2013 was the first year smartphone sales exceeded 50% of all mobile phones sold!
• 2013 was the first year the number of internet connection instances from smart devices exceeded those from desktop PCs!
• More than 1.5 billion smart devices were shipped in 2013, dominated by 1 billion smartphones!

The trends are clear to see:

➤ Consumers are moving to smart devices at the expense of desktop PCs (and fixed landlines).
➤ Consumers are increasingly using their smart devices to surf the net.

This is far from a first world phenomenon. Some indicative estimates:

• The International Telecommunications Union (May 2014) estimates there are nearly 7 billion mobile phone subscriptions worldwide.
• Ericsson (February 2014) estimates 6.7 billion subscriptions worldwide with 4.5 billion unique mobile phone users once customers with more than one subscription and inactive accounts are factored out.
• Ericsson estimates there will be 5.6 billion smartphone subscriptions by 2019 with most of the market growth coming from the developing nations.

By all measures the worldwide uptake of smart devices is extraordinary!

About SmartTrade

SmartTrade is an Auckland based software house, we began developing job management software for SMEs in 1999, starting with back office solutions designed primarily for tradees.

While SmartTrade’s office solution is now used by a wide range of SME’s the most common user is a field service business with two or three administrative staff receiving and scheduling jobs on our office solution. They then dispatch the jobs to a team of technicians in the field via our mobile solutions for smart devices, the techs return the job to the office once completed.

Our largest New Zealand customer has more than 150 staff using SmartTrade in the office and the field to manage their workflows.

http://mobithinking.com/mobile-marketing-tools/latest-mobile-stats/a

Cyber Attack Alert

Summary

Many of our customers around the world and the critical systems they depend on have been victims of malicious “WannaCrypt” software. We are using the MSRC blog - Customer Guidance for WannaCrypt attacks to post information and resources in one place, to help customers respond to this latest threat.

The first and most important piece of guidance is to immediately deploy the security update associated with Microsoft Security Bulletin MS17-010, if you have not done so already. Customers that have automatic updates enabled or have deployed this update are already protected from the vulnerability these attacks are trying to exploit.

Malware Detection

Windows Defender, System Center Endpoint Protection, and Forefront Endpoint Protection detect this threat family as Ransom:Win32/WannaCrypt.

In addition, the free Microsoft Safety Scanner http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/ is designed to detect this threat as well as many others.

Recommendations

Review the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) blog at Customer Guidance for WannaCrypt Attacks for an overview of the issue, details of the malware, suggested actions, and links to additional resources.

Keep systems up-to-date. Specifically, for this issue, ensure Microsoft Security Bulletin MS17-010 Security Update for Microsoft Windows SMB Server is installed.

Customers who believe they are affected can contact Customer Service and Support by using any method found at this location: https://support.microsoft.com/gp/contactus81?Audience=Commercial.

Microsoft Malware Detection and Removal Tools

Use the following free Microsoft tools to detect and remove this threat:

• Windows Defender: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-defender
• Microsoft Safety Scanner: http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/

Additional Resources

• Microsoft Security Response Center Blog: http://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/msrc
• Microsoft Malware Protection Center Blog: http://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/mmpc
• Microsoft Safety and Security Center webpage: http://www.microsoft.com/security/default.aspx

Regarding Information Consistency

We strive to provide you with accurate information in static (this mail) and dynamic (web-based) content. Microsoft’s security content posted to the web is occasionally updated to reflect late-breaking information. If this results in an inconsistency between the information here and the information in Microsoft’s web-based security content, the information in Microsoft’s web-based security content is authoritative.

Support - it's super critical for any job management solution!

Never underestimate the importance of software support, it’s super critical!

When our customers encounter a problem it usually happens on the job so they don’t want to look up a manual, or log an email or online help ticket and then wait for a response! Many of our competitors think they can employ email or online ticketing systems to minimise their support overhead, this simply doesn’t work for field service providers!

When you call our support team on our toll-free phone numbers you get to talk to one of our support staff, if we can’t solve the problem immediately we will strive to get back to you as soon as possible.

We believe support is a SmartTrade No 1 point of difference, we value our reputation for support excellence, we always try to go the extra yard!

While we can’t claim our support is perfect, the large number of compliments and very few complaints we receive points to a high level of customer satisfaction.

We recently received the following email from Wendy Davids at Pearmans Electrical Services in Perth.

Subject: Thank you!

Importance: High

I would love the opportunity to say what a wonderful team you have there.

They are patient, understanding and very helpful. When my call is first answered I get a fabulous person on the other end sounding bright and happy to be taking my call. They are ever so helpful and when they are unable to be of an assistance, they do their best to get me to the right person as quickly as possible. I can be a bit demanding when I want things done and they proceed with such grace.

They have been wonderful beyond all measures going back years. When I first started here and tried to get my head around SmartTrade they were very helpful , they taught me to get so more out of SmartTrade by giving me new pointers. All this with patience.

Then we have Kevin putting up with all my demands for new forms and how I want to do certain things. He keeps coming back telling me it can be done, easy as that. There were times I did get “no it can't be done”, but we overcame those hiccups and went about it a different way. And I would like to finish with some little facts:

• Phar Lap may have been born in New Zealand but he had to come to Australia to be great. Like so many others, that there are too many to mention them all.
• The Pavlova is Australian, but I'll let you have it as your own as long as you acknowledge that we make it better.

I look forward to continuing our wonderful relationship.

Kind Regards

Wendy Davids

Pearmans Electrical Services, Perth WA

Many thanks to Wendy for the glowing complement, also for giving us permission to publish it in this newsletter and on our website.

We’re always striving to improve our support service so if you have some thoughts about it, good or bad, we’d love to hear from you.

Tips for successfully mobilising your business

Tips for successfully mobilising your business

Example of mobile device agreement (obtain advice from your lawyer)

1. We may:

1. For reasonable business purposes monitor email, messaging systems and data on Devices.
2. GPS track Devices during work hours.
http://www.smartsoftwareltd.com/administrator/index.php?option=com_easyblog&view=blog&blogid=50#wf-editor-preview

2. You consent to us monitoring email, messaging systems and data on Devices.

3. You must in respect of each Device, depending on whether or not we own it:

4. This document forms part of your employment agreement with us

_______________________________             _______________________________

Signed by or on behalf of UsSigned by You

Date: __________________________Date: __________________________

How to streamline your payroll operation using SmartTrade Mobile’s timesheet feature together with SmartTrade Essential or Ultimate’s payroll export feature!

Many SmartTrade users already use SmartTrade’s payroll export feature to export their employee timesheet data directly to their payroll package.

Employees using SmartTrade Mobile can enter timesheets easily on their mobile device using SmartTrade Mobile, or the simpler SmartTime timesheet app, and return the timesheet data to SmartTrade in the office.

It’s then a simple step to export the timesheet data from SmartTrade into your payroll package making it a seamless operation! Even if you manually enter your timesheet data into SmartTrade there are significant benefits in exporting the data to your payroll system.

SmartTrade currently supports the following payroll packages:

• IMS Payroll
• iPayroll
• MYOB 
• Ace Payroll

If you have another payroll system provided it allows data to be imported then it’s very likely we can design an Advanced Report to enable timesheet information captured in SmartTrade to be exported to your payroll package

Just imagine the time and double data entry saved by having your field staff enter their own timesheets and then being able to export the data from SmartTrade into your payroll package!

Lee Sarson of Rhino Fire & Security Ltd summed up the benefits:

❌ “We used to get technicians into the office on Wednesday morning to hand-in hand written jobs sheets
           and timesheets!”

❌ “We used to have 30-45 minutes down time per tech each Wednesday filling out bits of paper and trying
           to find the ones they lost!”

❌ “We then manually transferred the hours to large project job sheets and tried to decipher the technicians’
           hand writing!”

❌ “The process took admin staff the entire day!”

✓ “We now have the job done by 9.30am!"

✓ “Time sheets are filled out by techs as they go from job to job, no more problems with techs trying to
           recall what they did a few days ago becausethey lost some paper work!”

✓ "Job information is loaded into the system as soon as a job is completed, allowing the invoice to be
          generated and sent same day, this improves cash flow!"

✓ "Now time spent returning job information is billed to clients!"

✓ "Filing in the office has dropped 95%!"

✓ "I can’t believe we used to work with such outdated systems, the change was dramatic and instant!"

Please don’t hesitate to call our support team to discuss what’s possible in terms of streamlining your timesheet and payroll workflow activity!

Return to home page

Asset Management – working with SmartTrade Mobile and SmartForms to manage assets in the field

Asset Management is a SmartTrade Ultimate feature, using it with SmartTrade Mobile and SmartForms makes managing assets in the field a lot easier. 

You need to have at least one SmartTrade Ultimate licence to be able to be able to utilise the Asset Management functionality

Here's your chance to find out how Asset Management and SmartForms work together!

If you would like to evaluate how Asset Management works with SmartForms on SmartTrade Mobile give our support team a call!

Here’s how they will set you up to evaluate Asset Management and SmartForms:

✔ If you don’t have a SmartTrade Ultimate licence and/or aren’t using SmartTrade Mobile we will set you up with trial licences.

✔ We’ve also prepared a short user guide explaining how Asset Management and SmartForms work together.

✔ You can then experiment with a demonstration SmartForm, we’ve chosen the A6 Boilers demo SmartForm because it shows a number of the available SmartForms features. There’s also a short user guide to help you navigate your way through the demo SmartForm.

✔ And as always don’t hesitate to call our support team if you need some help!

✔ If after evaluating Asset Management working with SmartForms you think it might help your business you only have to call our sales team to get set up. We’ll then schedule some online training to make sure you are up to speed with Assets and SmartForms.

Working in the office with SmartTrade Ultimate
✔ Enter Asset details ✔ Attach applicable SmartForms ✔ Create Job + Asset + SmartForms ✔ Dispatch Job + Asset + SmartForms to SmartTrade Mobile
✔ Clients can be given permission to see SmartForm results in the SmartGate portal
Working in the field with SmartTrade Mobile + Asset + SmartForms
✔ Open Job -> Asset -> SmartForms ✔ Complete SmartForms ✔ Sign-off SmartForms ✔ Return Job + Asset + SmartForms to Office

SmartTrade Ultimate + Assets + SmartForms, a great way to manage assets in the field!

We’ve recently released a software upgrade – here’s the new stuff in SmartTrade!

SmartTrade Mobile - in the Field

Ordering on SmartTrade Mobile is now available!

Mobile users will now be able to:

✔ Generate orders, previously you have been able to create an order number on SmartTrade Mobile to give to you supplier. NOW you can add MyData line items from the job sheet to an order and email it straight to your supplier, the order details are returned to the office with the job.

✔ New security privileges for SmartTrade Mobile to:

• see or not to see the Client pop-up notes;
• choose what job card fields are mandatory or not (Job Category; Accounting Group, Job List 1, Job List 2).

The feature additions allow you to undertake a comprehensive job workflow on SmartTrade Mobile:

✔ Create a new customer and site;

✔ Create a new job;

✔ Create a quote and email it to the customer;

✔ Accept a quote;

✔ Add materials, including MyData kitsets;

✔ Create an order and email it to your supplier – NEW!

✔ Download a SmartForm, complete the form, email a PDF copy to the customer;

✔ Attach photos to the job or SmartForm;

✔ Update assets (Assets is a SmartTrade Ultimate feature);

✔ Raise order numbers;

✔ Complete and return timesheets; and

✔ Create an invoice, preview it, get the customer’s signature and email the invoice to the customer.

There's also a number of minor upgrades and bug fixes for SmartTrade v6.

These are covered off in the Release Notes.

It’s footy season again across Oz and NZ so here’s some jokes about the 3 major oval ball codes!

First a Rugby Union joke!

Two elderly Kiwis, Leo and Frank, had been best friends all of their lives. When it was clear that Leo was dying, Frank visited him every day.

One day Frank said, “Leo, we both loved Rugby all our lives, we played together all through school and for the local rugby club afterwards and after we retired we still attended every Rugby game we could and we followed the All Blacks all around the world. Please do me one favour when you get to Heaven. Somehow you must let me know if it’s true Rugby’s the game they play in Heaven.”

Leo looked up at Frank from his deathbed and said, “Frank, you've been my best friend for many years. If it's at all possible, I'll do this favour for you.”

Shortly after that, Leo passed on.

A few nights later, Frank was awakened from a sound sleep by a blinding flash of white light and a voice calling out to him, “Frank! Frank!”

“Who is it?” asked Frank sitting up suddenly. “Who is it?”

“Frank, it's me, Leo.”

“You're not Leo! Leo just died.”

“I'm telling you, it's me, Leo”, insisted the voice.

“Leo! Where are you?” said Frank.

“In Heaven”, replied Leo, “I have some really good news and some not so good news.”

“Tell me the good news first”, said Frank.

“The good news”, Leo said, “it’s true Rugby’s the game they play in in Heaven!

“Better yet, all of our old buddies who died before us are here, and we all play Rugby!!”

“Better than even that, it's always warm and it never rains or snows, the grounds are always in perfect condition!!!”

“Even better still, we're all young again and we never get tired or injured!!!!”

“And best of all the after-match beers are free!!!!!”

“That's fantastic,” said Frank. “It's beyond my wildest dreams! So what's the bad news Leo?”

“You're listed in the run-on side next Saturday!”

Next an Australian Rules joke which epitomises the fact AFL supporters are more passionate than we Kiwis are about Rugby!

A family of dyed in the wool Hawthorn supporters head out shopping one Saturday before Christmas. They are in a Rebel Sports shop, the young son picks up a Collingwood guernsey and says to his older sister, “I've decided I'm going to be a Collingwood supporter, I'd like this Collingwood guernsey for Christmas” (for non-Australians “guernsey” is their name for a footy jersey).

The sister is outraged at this, whacks him round the head and says, “Go talk to your mother.” Off goes the little lad, with the Collingwood guernsey in hand and finds his mother. “Mum?”

“Yes son?”

“I've decided I'm going to be a Collingwood supporter and I'd like this Collingwood guernsey for Christmas.”

The mother is outraged at this, whacks him round the head and says, “Go talk to your father.” Off he goes with the Collingwood guernsey in hand and finds his father, “Dad?”

“Yes son?”

“I've decided I'm going to be a Collingwood supporter and I would like this Collingwood guernsey for Christmas.”

The father is outraged at this, whacks his son round the head and says, “No son of mine is ever going to be seen in THAT!”

Half an hour later, they are all back in the car heading home. The father turns to the son and says, “Son, I hope you've learned an important lesson today?”

The son turns to his father and says, “Yes, Dad, I have!”

Father says, “Good son, and what is it?”

The son replies, “I've only been a Collingwood supporter for half an hour and already I hate you Hawthorn b*****ds!!!!”

Then a Rugby League joke!

What does the Kiwi rugby league team do when they’re playing the Kangaroos and their captain tells them to assume their normal positions?

Line up behind the goalposts to wait for the conversion, of course!

Finally, another Rugby Union joke to celebrate the forthcoming British & Irish Lions tour of New Zealand!

The Archbishop of Cantebury is a fanatical Rugby Union supporter so comes to New Zealand to watch the British & Irish Lions rugby team playing the All Blacks.

Between matches the Archbishop goes to the beach. Shortly after arriving at the beach he spots a commotion just off-shore. A helpless man, wearing an English rugby supporter’s jersey, is struggling frantically to free himself from the jaws of a 20 foot White Pointer.

As the Archbishop watches in horror, a boat with three men wearing Welsh, Irish and Scottish rugby supporter’s jerseys races from the shore. The Irishman quickly fires a harpoon into the shark's side while the Scotsman and Welshman reach out and pull the hapless Englishman from the water. Then, using long clubs, the three men beat the shark to death and haul it into the boat.

Immediately the Archbishop shouts to summon all three men to come and see him, “I give you my divine blessing for your brave actions” says the Archbishop.

“I always thought there was bitter hatred between the English and Celtic rugby fans, but now I have seen with my own eyes the proof that you can bond in the spirit of true brotherly love to support the British Lions.”

As the Archbishop drives off, the catholic Irishman asks his mates, “Who was that?”

“It was the Archbishop of Canterbury, he’s the head of the Anglican Church”, replies the protestant Scotsman. “He is in direct contact with God and has access to all of God's wisdom.”

”Well”, the Irishman says, “he may have access to God and his wisdom, but he doesn't know anything about shark fishing! Is the bait holding up OK? Or do we need to go get another Englishman?”

In previous newsletters we warned SmartTrade’s customers about ransomware hackers who infect the computer’s operating system with malware that locks the owner out from their files. The hackers then demand a hefty payment to unlock the system, often in bitcoins that are virtually impossible to trace.

Ransomware is constantly evolving making it increasingly difficult to protect against, some 2900 new ransomware modifications were reported between January and March of this year. Recently seen ransomware such as Petya not only lock down the files but also completely remove access to the hard drives and operating systems, basically imposing full system encryption. The ransomware may sit inactive for weeks before activating, that way it also infects all the backup copies.

Unfortunately, several more of our customers have been infected.

Currently the two most prevalent ransomware malware are CBT-Locker and Teslacrypt. The CBT-Locker screen message looks like this.

What can you do to minimise the risk of being infected by ransomware?

The obvious front-line protection strategy is up-to-date anti-virus protection. Because malware is built to circumvent anti-virus protection you also need an effective backup solution. It’s also very important to train your staff not to open email attachments unless they are totally confident about the source!

One of the mistakes some small business owners make is to do their backups to a different drive on their computer system, this gives you absolutely zero protection if ransomware locks you out of your system! It’s also of zero use if your computer is stolen or a fire or other catastrophe totally destroys the computer and/or hard drives. To be absolutely safe you need to store your backups on a completely different system in a different place, in the old day’s regular backups (retentions) were copied to disks or tapes and removed offsite.

These days if you don’t want the hassle of having to do backups yourself there’s plenty of “cloud” backup services available, a quick internet search will throw up a bunch of them.

SmartTrade offers our SmartSafe backup service, the entry level service costing $ 10 plus GST per month will meet the needs of most SmartTrade users. We’ve just negotiated a deal with the 3rd party hosting service which means the following enhancements to the SmartSafe service:

• We’ve doubled the data cap at each price point. The new SmartSafe options are:

• Retentions increase from 7 days to 30 days.

Major changes to New Zealand’s Health and Safety laws took effect on 4 April 2016!

• worker participation - Health and Safety Representatives (HSRs) and Health and Safety Committee (HSCs); and
• the need to notify WorkSafe NZ prior to the commencement of particular hazardous works.

• Introducing a new legal concept of a Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking (PCBU). A PCBU will usually be a business entity, such as a company, rather than an individual;
• Imposing a new due diligence obligation on officers. Officers are directors and other people who make governance decisions that significantly affect a business;
• Imposing a new duty to take “reasonably practicable steps”;
• Including a new object of securing workers’ health and safety;
• Promoting continual improvement and good practice, benchmarked on internationalstandards;
• Implementing a presumption in favour of the highest level of protecting workers from harm;
• Increasing the penalties for noncompliance.

• Identifying health and safety hazards and risks, and taking steps to prevent these from happening;
• Making sure health and safety in your business is led from the top, has involved and is understood by your staff, and is reviewed regularly;
• Holding regular training on health and safety matters;
• Engaging workers in health and safety matters that affect them;
• Supporting all officers to get up to date with health and safety issues and key risk factors;
• Reporting and monitoring health and safety goals;
• Regularly reviewing any incidents;
• Carrying out frequent health and safety audits.

SmartForms, an excellent tool for managing workplace safety compliance in the field! The ever increasing complexity of workplace safety and compliance requirements means more and more forms are needed to be completed and managed. SmartTrade Mobile’s SmartForms feature enables businesses to complete workplace safety checklists on Android or IOS smart devices and store the resulting SmartForms in the cloud. SmartForms can be emailed to your client, your clients can be setup to view their SmartForm results in the SmartGate online portal. SmartGate is a SmartTrade Ultimate feature, you need to have at least one SmartGate Ultimate licence to be able to use this feature. For more information about SmartForms please contact our sales team. Au 1800 350 495, NZ 0800 327 943 or email us at [email protected]

• arrange the election of HSRs if requested by a worker, and
• consider whether existing worker participation practices are sufficiently effective and whether to set up an HSC if one is requested by an HSR or five or more workers.
  Schedule 2 of the Act lists high-risk sectors or industries as:
• Aquaculture
• Forestry and logging
• Fishing, hunting, and trapping
• Coal mining
• Food product manufacturing
• Water supply, sewerage, and drainage services
• Waste collection, treatment, and disposal services
• Building construction
• Heavy and civil engineering construction
• Construction services

Particular Hazardous Work Notification SmartForm available! SmartTrade Mobile users wishing to complete Particular Hazardous Work notifications electronically and email these to WorkSafe NZ can purchase the applicable SmartForm for $ 95 plus GST. The price includes our customising the SmartForm with your company logo plus any minor modifications you want made, provided the modifications are advised to us within a month of us emailing you the SmartForm. For more information about SmartForms please contact our sales team. Au 1800 350 495, NZ 0800 327 943 or email us at [email protected]

Voice Recognition Dictation into SmartTrade Mobile 
Dictate text into SmartTrade Mobile using the voice recognition feature on your smart device!

Most modern smart devices enable the user to dictate text using voice recognition.

Voice recognition dictation works with SmartTrade Mobile so give it a try, a little practice and you will be a wiz!

SmartTrade users will be amazed how much time can be saved dictating notes rather than having to type them in, it even autocorrects possible spelling mistakes! Voice recognition can even be used for entering numbers which is particularly useful when entering data into SmartForms.

Important!

1. Not all smart devices are the same so you will need to check out your device’s capabilities!
2. Using the smart device’s native voice recognition service will consume data if your device is connected through the cellular network! For more information about how this works see below.

Voice Recognition – how to use it

	On Android Devices(shown on a Samsung   Galaxy  S5)   Using the native functionality: Tap in the field you want to insert text into [1] Tap on the microphone icon [2] Start dictating. Tap on the microphone icon to stop the dictation [2] Edit the message if needed.  To download an offline app: Go to “Language and Input” in the Settings. Tap on "Download offline speech recognition" under the "Voice Search". Choose the language pack you want your Android device to recognize. Download the pack and start using the offline voice recognition functionality.
	On Apple Devices - shown on an iPhone 5s   Using the native functionality: Make sure Siri is enabled - Settings > General > Siri Tap in the field you want to insert text into to open the keyboard [1] Tap on the microphone icon [2] Start dictating, the text won’t appear yet Tap on Done, both work, to stop the dictation [3] The text will appear in the text field [4] Edit the message using the keyboard if need be.    To download the offline app –    available on iPhone 6 and later devices! Go to Settings > General > Keyboard Scroll down to Dictation. If you own a supported device that is set to the right language, you should be able to download the offline dictation files from here. This will take a couple of minutes and take up some space on your device, which is why they recommend enabling it only if needed, and the available device storage space allows for it!

	Voice Recognition - data use 1. Using the device’s native voice recognition will use data if your device is connected through the cellular network, the data is sent to the cloud to be processed and returned to the device. You will need 3G connectivity or higher. 2. Wi-Fi usually gives you better results and means data isn’t being consumed on your phone account, data on your internet account is still being used. 3. You can download voice recognition apps so the voice to text processing is done offline thereby avoiding using online data. Instructions on how to do this are shown below. The app will take up space on your smart device and may affect performance.
	Voice Recognition – tips (from the Apple website) Talk into the microphone: You don’t need to speak very loudly; but you should keep your smart device close to your mouth, especially if you’re outdoors. On an iPhone are two microphones at the bottom, but only a single microphone on iPads, located at the top of the device. It’s not easy to speak directly into the iPad mic while looking at the screen. Speak into the tiny hole at the top of your tablet. You’ll find dictation in noisy environments works much better with an iPhone, because it’s easier to speak close to the microphone. The iPhone also has a noise-cancelling mic, which filters out background noises. You might find that the Apple earbuds that come with an iPhone—which have an inline mic—offer better speech recognition, as do third-party headphones with mics, as long as you hold them fairly close to your mouth. The problem is Apple didn’t give the iPhone 7 an air phone jack. Dictate when connected to Wi-Fi: Dictation to an iOS device requires that your voice be sent to a server, where it is recognized and transcribed, and then sent back to your iOS device. For this reason, dictating to an iOS device works best when you’re using Wi-Fi; it also works well with a 3G connection; but anything slower is hit or miss, in my experience. Speak clearly: You don’t need to speak especially slowly, but speaking too quickly will lead to errors. The general idea is to talk like a newscaster: Enunciate, but don’t exaggerate. Don’t say too much: Your voice has to be sent to a remote server, so keep your dictation segments under 30 seconds. (Longer than that might be too much for a 3G connection.) Speak punctuation and symbols: To include punctuation in your dictation, you need to say “comma,” “period,” “hyphen,” and so on. Watch out for language differences. For instance, if you’re using British English, you need to say “full stop” instead of “period.” You can say “new line” to dictate a return character, and “new paragraph” to add two returns. You say “apostrophe” for a possessive noun, such as “Jerry Garcia apostrophe S guitar,” for Jerry Garcia’s guitar. You’ll also say things like “dollar sign,” “euro sign,” and “pound sterling sign” to get type the corresponding symbols. When you want to capitalize a word, say “cap.” If you’re sending a message to someone about a movie preference, for example, you might say “I’d like to watch cap lord of the cap rings.” Take advantage of autocorrect: While you can’t correct mistakes in iOS dictation by voice, you will occasionally see words that iOS thinks might be incorrect. They appear with dotted blue lines underneath them. Tap an underlined word or phrase, and you’ll see one or more options you can choose from. Add emoticons: Do you want to type smileys? It’s easier to dictate them than to switch to the number keyboard. Just say “smiley,” “winky,” or “frowny,” for :-) , ;-) , or :-( . Proof read what you dictate: While some errors will be obvious, and other misinterpretations may have blue dotted lines highlighting them, there will be typos—or, more correctly, speech-o’s. As you get used to dictating into your iPhone or iPad, you’ll figure out the right cadence and volume to get the most precise recognition. If you need to type a lot on an iOS device, try using dictation. Whether you use it for text messages or emails, it may save you a lot of time.

If you want a more comprehensive beginners guide to voice recognition dictation have a look at this article.

https://zapier.com/blog/best-text-dictation-software/

Spell Checking on SmartTrade Essential and Ultimate

tinySpell - a free spell checker that works with SmartTrade Essential and Ultimate We sometimes get asked why SmartTrade Essential and Ultimate, our office based software solutions, don’t incorporate a spell checker. The reason is there are a many free online spell checkers that do a better job than we could do with our own spell checker. Our favourite free online spell checker is tinySpell, you can get it at http://tinyspell.com/. It’s easy to install and use so if you need a spell checker give it a try. If you want more information on tinySpell, an online search will throw up plenty of reviews.

SmartTrade recommends Habitat for Humanity as a charity worth supporting.

SmartTrade supports Habitat for Humanity, we also recommend Habitat for Humanity to SmartTrade users as being a very worthy charity they might also consider supporting.

Habitat for Humanity is an international charity that builds simple decent and affordable housing for the poor. Homes are built using voluntary labour, in partnership with the family that will one day own the home. The family that will own and occupy the home contributes 500 hours of “sweat equity” into building the house.

Habitat for Humanity with its house building focus is an excellent choice of charity to support for SmartTrade and the many trade related businesses who use our software.

Some ways your business can support Habitat for Humanity

• Volunteer for one of their local builds
• Donate materials and goods
• Volunteer to build abroad
• Support visiting overseas teams
• Sponsor a home build

For more information about how you might engage with Habitat for Humanity please visit one of their websites:

http://www.habitat.org/au

http://www.habitat.org/nz

SmartForms are becoming increasingly popular!

SmartTrade users are increasingly seeing the benefit from moving from paper to electronic SmartForms. To date we have developed more than 400 individual forms for our more than 1,000 SmartTrade Mobile users, plus we are increasingly being asked to build complex SmartForms, some over 10 x A4 page equivalent length. Some of the factors driving this are:

SmartForms are much more efficient than paper forms, they offer "smarts" that aren't possible with paper forms.

❌Field service businesses often ended up with a cupboard full of multiple copy paper form books, every
      time the form is changed another batch of form books is printed, they pile up;

❌Then there’s the ubiquitous form book in the corner of the plant room and the need to find somewhere
      to store the completed paper forms offsite;

❌There’s no checks to make sure the form is fully complete each and every time, hand writing can be
      hard to decipher;

❌If a copy of a paper form results needs to be sent to the customer, or compliance work has to be
      certified, this has to be done manually;

❌Attaching photos to paper form results is a manual process;

✓SmartForms do away with the need for printed form books, storing the results in the cloud means
     there’s no paper to be filed away;

✓SmartForms can be made mandatory at several levels, the job can’t be started and/or finished unless
     the form is completed;

✓SmartForms can have calculations built in, enter the data and the result is automatically generated;

✓If an asset fails an inspection a work order (SmartTrade Ultimate feature) note can be raised from
     the SmartForm and sent back to the office;

✓Voice recognition technology available on modern smart devices means notes can be added with
     a minimum of typing, everything is legible and it can even spell check;

✓SmartForm results can be emailed to the customer as a PDF, the customer can also be setup to see
     and download the form results from the cloud. If a compliance certificate needs to be sent to the
     customer the SmartForms results PDF can be customised to include the certification;

✓When filling out a SmartForm photos can be taken using the smart device camera and stored in the
     “Pictures” tab, when the PDF form result is printed out the photos (including captions) relating to the
      particular SmartForm occurrence are automatically displayed at the bottom.

SmartForms are a great way to manage the increasingly prescriptive health and safety rules businesses are having to deal with. For example:

✓A health & safety form can be made mandatory so the job can’t be started on SmartTrade Mobile
     until the form is completed and signed off;

✓Site risks can be photographed and attached to the job so there’s a record of the risk, the form and
     photo can also be emailed to the client for their information;

✓If an action is needed to eliminate the risk a work order (SmartTrade Ultimate feature) can be generated
     from the form, including description and photographs.

SmartForms open up many other possibilities. For example our Customer Satisfaction Survey form enables your field staff to survey your customers on the quality of your service, on the job when the jobs been done!

✓If it’s a great result you know you have a happy customer who’s likely to give you referrals;

✓If it’s not such a great result you can take immediate action to mitigate any negative outcomes ~
     it’s the unhappy customers you don’t know about who will cause your business reputation the most
     grief!

We’ve added the Customer Satisfaction Survey form to the free SmartForms on Mobile. If you want to use this form please get back to us and we will add your company logo to it, again at no cost. If you have any suggestions as to how the form could be improved don’t hesitate to tell us!

Selecting the right Smart Device for SmartForms

SmartTrade users considering going down the SmartForms path need to consider the smart devices they equip their field staff with:

✓As a general rule simple forms can be managed on smart phones;

✓Businesses planning to use complex forms should seriously consider giving their field techs tablets to
     ensure they have sufficient screen real estate to adequately display the form;

✓The tablet should preferably be phone capable to avoid the need to hotspot it with a smartphone in
      locations where WiFi isn’t available to the user.

Most modern smart devices will work well, you don’t necessarily need to buy the most expensive device on the market.

tip1 You can download SmartForms from the cloud to SmartTrade Mobile while on the job. BUT – to do this you need to have internet connectivity! If you are going to be working somewhere there isn’t internet connectivity you need to make sure you download the SmartForms to your device beforehand! Just like using jobs on SmartTrade Mobile offline! tip2 Make sure your field techs aren’t overloading their smart devices with non-work apps! We sometimes get beaten up because SmartForms results (and jobs) aren’t getting uploaded or returned quickly enough, or on occasions not at all. Our techs often find the smart device is overloaded with other apps, we have seen as many as fifteen non-work apps open on a single device including multiple games and video streaming. There’s a limit to the available processing power and storage on any smart device, once we clear the apps the problem usually magically disappears!

For more information about SmartForms please contact us.

NZ: 0800 327 943

AUS: 1800 350 495

Email: [email protected]

We’ve just released a software upgrade – here’s the new stuff in SmartTrade!

SmartTrade Mobile - in the Field

Invoicing on SmartTrade Mobile is now available!

Mobile users will now be able to:

✓Create an invoice on the job from the Job Sheet tab;

✓Confirm invoices;

✓Preview the invoice;

✓Get a signature on the invoice (optional); and

✓Email the invoice to the customer.

In the last release we added:

✓Quoting on the job; and

✓Downloading a SmartForm from the cloud to SmartTrade Mobile.

The feature additions allow you to undertake a comprehensive job workflow on SmartTrade Mobile:

✓Create a new customer and site;

✓Create a new job;

✓Create a quote and email it to the customer;

✓Accept a quote;

✓Complete the job including:

✓Add materials, including MyData kitsets;

✓Download a SmartForm, complete the form, email a PDF copy to the customer;

✓Attach photos to the job or SmartForm;

✓Update assets (Assets is a SmartTrade Ultimate feature);

✓Raise order numbers;

✓Complete and return timesheets; and

✓Create an invoice, preview it, get the customer’s signature and email the invoice to the customer.

Free “customer satisfaction survey” SmartForm!

✓Customer Satisfaction Survey form – this SmartForm is available at no cost, you can find more
           information in the article about SmartForms. If you want to use this form please get back to
           us and we will add your company logo to it, again at no cost. If you have any suggestions how
           the form could be improved don’t hesitate to tell us!

Click here to open the latest version of the "Guide to working with SmartTrade Mobile"

SmartTrade Essential & Ultimate - in the Office

SmartTrade Discovery

✓You can now self-audit which SmartTrade features and functionalities you are using to make sure you
          aren’t missing out on stuff your business could benefit from.

IT’S SIMPLE – NO REASON NOT TO DO IT! THIS MAY BE ONE OF THE MOST PRODUCTIVE THINGS YOU DO THIS YEAR!

Find out more about SmartTrade Discovery.

Customisable fields

✓New field type "URL".

Timesheets

✓Edit an approved timesheet and automatically set to unapproved.

Jobs

✓Allow adding and editing of dispatched initial Job notes.

Sub-Jobs

✓New "Search for... Sub-jobs" option available while editing jobs;

✓Create sub-job - four new tick box options:

Click here to open the "A short guide to Sub-Jobs"

To finish on a bit of humour

David Cameron, Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin all die and go to Hell. As they arrive at the gates of Hell they spy a golden phone and ask the Devil what the phone is for. The Devil tells them it is for calling back to Earth.

Obama asks to call the US and talks for an hour. When he is finished the Devil informs him that the standard Hell to Earth call charge is 1 million US dollars per hour, so Obama writes a cheque for 1 million USD.

Putin calls Russia and talks for two hours. When he is finished the Devil informs him that the standard call charge for two hours is 2 million US dollars, which converts to 100 million rubles, so Putin writes a cheque for 100 million rubles.

Finally, David Cameron gets his turn and talks to the UK for 4 hours. When he is finished the Devil informs him that the standard call charge is 12p.

Obama and Putin go ballistic and demand to know the why Cameron got to call the UK virtually free when it cost them 1 million US dollars an hour?

The Devil smiles and replies:

"After BREXIT the UK went to hell, it's now a local call to the UK!"

THE WILL

Doug Smith is on his deathbed and knows the end is near.

His nurse, his wife, his daughter and two sons are with him.

So, he says to them:

"Bernie, I want you to take the Mayfair houses."

"Sybil, you take the apartments over in the east end."

"Jamie, I want you to take the offices over in the City Centre."

"Sarah, my dear wife, please take all the residential buildings on the banks of the river."

The nurse is just blown away by all this and, as Doug slips away she says, "Mrs Smith, your husband must have been such a hard-working man to have accumulated all this property."

Sarah replies, "Property? .... The asshole had a paper run."

• The audit is broken up into 6 separate forms, the longest should take about five minutes to complete.
• You can complete the audit forms at your leisure and in any order, once you complete a form simply hit the submit button at the end of the form to return it to us.
• When we give you your next customer care call (generally every 6 months) we will discuss your audit with you.
• To help you achieve greater productivity from SmartTrade we may propose an action plan based on the audit results. This action plan will typically include additional training, remember we offer SmartTrade customers 2 hours of FREE online training a year!

Here’s how to find the self-audit forms from the SmartBiz tab. If you have any trouble getting into SmartBiz please give us a call and our techs will sort it out for you.