“Essential” includes a rich set of job management functions, having evolved to be far more advanced that the entry level product it was originally intended to be:

• Costing, estimating and quoting quickly and accurately
• Creating various types of jobs - quotes, estimates, time and materials (charge up)
• Creating recurring jobs and appointments, duplicate jobs and set up job templates
• Scheduling and dispatching jobs
• Assigning employees to a job
• Ordering
• Invoicing
• Entering timesheets
• Importing supplier price books and invoices
• Exporting customer and supplier invoices to a supported accounting package (requires an accounting connection licence)
• SmartTxt
• Flexible reporting including user definable formats

SmartTrade Ultimate has all the functionality of SmartTrade Essential, plus:

• Asset management
• SmartGate (allows your customers to log and view jobs over the internet)
• Project cost control
• Teletrac Navman (Australia and New Zealand)

While SmartTrade can operate standalone its full power is realised by connecting it to an accounting package. SmartTrade connects to the accounting packages listed below.

Customer invoices and supplier invoices are exported from SmartTrade to the accounting package using a simple wizard. If supplier invoices are electronically downloaded into SmartTrade, they can then be transferred to the accounting package, eliminating all manual data entry.

SmartTrade and the accounting package share customer and supplier records. These records can be imported from the accounting package when SmartTrade is set up.

Accounting packages that connect to SmartTrade

Enjoy the full functionality of SmartTrade in the field, allowing managers to run the business from the field on a laptop or tablet, or quote on site. SmartTrade is hosted (SmartHost) and the user needs a wireless internet connection.

SmartTrade Mobile allows businesses to mobilise field staff, increasing productivity, slashing paperwork and improving customer service.

SmartTrade Mobile was designed primarily for businesses that dispatch jobs from the office, with the employee doing the work and then returning the job to the office for invoicing. Features include timesheets, GPS tracking, SmartForms and reassigning jobs.Quotes can also be done on SmartTrade Mobile in the field and emailed to the customer, jobs and clients added in the field. We are presently developing invoicing on SmartTrade Mobile so invoices will be able to be emailed to the customer from the job.

SmartTrade Mobile works on smartphones and tablets, and exchanges data with the SmartTrade office database by “syncing” every 15 seconds. Changes made in the office will not appear on the mobile device until synchronisation occurs, and vice versa. The advantage of this approach is that SmartTrade Mobile can still be used if internet connectivity is lost, unlike some web applications.

For more information on the features of SmartTrade Mobile, see
Is SmartTrade right for your business?

Improve customer service and streamline the process of filling out and managing forms, test-sheets and checklists.

Data, including GIS locations and photos, can be entered in the field using SmartForms (a standard feature of SmartTrade Mobile), and then uploaded to Microsoft’s Azure cloud database.If the technician loses internet connectivity, for example while working in a basement, he/she can continue working off-line and then upload the data when re-connected

The completed forms are readily available via the internet. You can view them in SmartTrade Essential or Ultimate.

SmartTrade Ultimate allows your customer to, with your consent, view their form results via the SmartGate internet portal.

SmartForms are available either as standard forms from our library (at a one-off cost of $ 95 plus tax each), or can be customised to your needs (we will quote for this). Standard forms include:

• Certificates of compliance
• Timesheets
• Job Safety Assessments
• Occupational Health and Safety checklists

No more printing out test sheets and forms, copying and then posting forms to customers, filing paper copies in cabinets and storage boxes, or time-consuming hunts for old records!

SmartForms has improved customer service and cut costs at Argus Fire Protection:

“Using SmartForms to automate compliance testing has had a huge impact on our accuracy, productivity and customer response times ...now we are doing things electronically, our customers can get detailed, accurate and fast information while we are on site as opposed to waiting for it in the post ... SmartForms is a cost saving for Argus Fire and it is a cost saving for our clients.”

Bryce Donaldson, Northern Regional Manager

View the Argus case study on SmartForms

SmartTime is a low priced web application designed for field staff who fill out timesheets and may benefit from GPS tracking, but don’t need the more comprehensive job management functionality provided by SmartTrade Mobile.

SmartTime allows field staff to book time, either against assigned jobs or to non-chargeable activities, and when synced back the office the data is updated automatically in SmartTrade Essential and Ultimate, and time posted to the appropriate jobs. If the device is off-line, the data will be uploaded when it next re-connects to the internet.

SmartTime works on smart devices such as iPhones, iPads, and Android smartphones and tablets. If the smart devices are GPS capable (or connected to WiFi), SmartTime provides location and tracking features:

• Set the site location in SmartTrade Essential or Ultimate, allowing SmartTime to open it in Google Maps.
• View a map showing where each user is located, allowing an urgent job to allocated to the closest person.
• View the route taken by an employee on a specific day.
• Bar timesheet entries to a job if the employee is not within a specified distance of the job location.
• See where the employee was located when time was logged, which is useful if a customer disputes when an employee was on site.

SmartTrade can customise advanced reports to a user’s specific needs, enabling better decision making. Examples of advanced reports customised for users are:

• Employee and customer profitability
• Sources of customer leads
• Time-sheet analysis reports
• Exporting information to payroll
• Item usage

“It helps us immensely with meeting our service level targets... We use SmartTrade Advanced Reports to monitor how many jobs have been allocated to us by the client where external factors caused delays” - Darren Fryer, Managing Partner

SmartTrade’s database experts regularly export, manipulate and import data, saving users time and money. Examples are:

• When installing SmartTrade, extracting customer and supplier information from a spreadsheet or existing database, cleaning up the data, then importing it into SmartTrade’s SQL database
• Updating or re-formatting data using SQL queries and scripts
• One-off data extractions requested by users

A number of our customers prefer to have SmartTrade hosted online. The advantages of being hosted online are:

• Access SmartTrade from any computer with an internet connection;
• Let SmartTrade worry about your database and setup, this reduces or eliminates the need for third party IT support;
• SmartTrade manages your back-ups;
• We use third party hosting services in both Australia and New Zealand to ensure there is minimal latency;
• Hosting is quite affordable.

Online hosting requires that you have good internet speed, we will check the speed of your internet connection before we implement SmartHost.

SmartSafe is a cloud based solution that can back up your entire computer system, including SmartTrade data. Backing up on a secure external platform is important, because of the risks of a computer failure and the growing number of malicious attacks. While the risk may be small, the cost to the business can be large.

As an example, in 2013 a hacker locked a SmartTrade user’s computer with an unbreakable password, and then demanded US $ 5,000 for the password. We restored the system but couldn’t recover the data as it was backed up on the same computer.

SmartSafe provides a convenient and affordable solution:

• Scheduled back-ups, that automatically save new and changed files, and notify by email whether the backup was successful or not.
• Easy restoration of data using a wizard, with support available if needed.
• Secure data transmission and storage using a unique encryption key.
• Efficient data transmission and storage using data compression and intelligent bandwidth scheduling.
• The option of backing-up part of your data in the cloud and the rest in local storage.
• 10Gb of storage capacity will suffice for most SmartTrade users.

With SmartTxt you can:

• Text job information to staff, subcontractors or customer
• Have an employee or subcontractor update you on job progress
• Receive replies to a designated mobile number or email address
• Text non job related messages
• Prove that a message was sent and received using the text log

SmartTxt requires an account with a SMS provider.

Westwoods Electrical & Property Services Ltd has found SmartTxt to be a very valuable tool:

“We are a company of 30 staff, the majority being field technicians. Communication is a very important part in managing their time. All staff carry phones, we utilise SmartTrade's SmartTxt to manage them and their time sheets. We can check history to see to whom a job was sent to through to broadcasting all employees about a coming event such as a meeting or a Christmas party.”

Russell Smith, Service Manager

Training is important in order to realise the benefits of any job management system, particularly early on when there may be a few hiccups and frustrations - no software implementation is entirely painless!

Most training is done on-line and one-on-one, although we can quote for on-site training if you prefer.

For further information on the integration between SmartTrade Ultimate and Teletrac Navman, watch this video

and/or the User Guide.

 

If you have any specific questions, please contact Michelle Davis (+64 21 779677, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

If you stop using SmartTrade but need to access historical data from time to time and/or to retain data for mandatory periods, then you can subscribe for a view only licence. A view only licence also allows you to print records and to access completed SmartForms.

A view only licence is annual only and is payable in advance. To see the current prices for view only licences, click here.

If your SmartTrade is hosted, then it is necessary to transfer the application and database to a local computers or server. This takes between 1 and 1.5 hours, and is billed at our standard support rate for database services