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A TOUCH OF MAGIC
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Robin Meczes takes a closer look at the entry-level fleet management system Tranman Series 3 and finds that it conjures up a great deal more than its price might suggest.
What do you get if you take a topclass fleet management system like Tranman Series 5 (reviewed in CM 13 November 2003), cut out the bits that won't appeal to the masses and then cut the price to match — all the while keeping the same basic ease of use and broad functionality that made the original so impressive'?The answer is Tranman Series 3 (13 for short): also known as RAC Software Solutions' entry-level fleet management package.
But to call it entry-level is actually a bit misleading because by and large it's every bit as impressive as its bigger brother. Like 15, T3 offers a broad spread of different modules designed to make managing your fleet of vehicles like a stroll in the park. Most, if not all of them, are exactly the same as those found in T5 in fact.
This is good news because the amount of information you can record about your fleet in T5. and thus in T3, is enormous. For drivers, the pre-set information fields include all the basic details (name, address, age, sex contact details, etc) as well as lots of other things like their licence details and even their training history, if you're inclined to input it all.
Vehicle records are even more exhaustive. Pre-set fields extend as far as drivelines trim, body type, tacho details, axle weights, purchase and finance details, and cumulative costs.
And if by some fluke there's something you want to record about your vehicles or drivers that hasn't already been set up,T3 lets you create additional user-defined fields. Want to make a note if drivers attend your Christmas party? (What do you mean, you don't hold Christmas parties?) Or of which vehicles have an onboard navigation system (what do you mean.`let them use the bloody map'?).With T3, you can— and it's easy, too. All you have to do is decide if you want a text box, a tick box or a numerical field; tell the system what title to put on it and hey presto. it's done.
Details of suppliers You can also keep details on all your suppliers. Records here extend only as far as basic contact information, the rates they tend to charge you and details any financial account you may have with them, but there is a small amount of space for general notes if you want to add a bit more.
Fleet management isn't just about recording lots of information, however; it's about using it intelligently. And here, too,T3 pulls a number of rabbits out of a number of hats.
The software's Action Dates utility is a good example. It allows you to enter all the key dates for vehicles and drivers, including services, vehicle and licence inspections, annual tests and tacho inspections, and then reminds you in advance of those dates at intervals you can determine. It can even be set up to check for important dates every time you start the software.
The Accidents utility is another useful module—it lets you record all the details of any incident, including weather and road conditions,police officers present, other parties' information, the state of your insurance claim and even any hire vehicles and charges associated with an accident.
Multiple electronic images can be easily appended to almost all the records. whether for vehicles, drivers, suppliers or accidents.
There's also a memo function which lets you create and keep notes and even send them to other networked users to prompt them to action.And for those of you managing pool vehicles, the Bookings module allows you to enter and track vehicle allocations on an hourly, daily,monthly or longer basis, ensuring you don't accidentally double-book.
The cost of running your fleet is easy to keep track of using the T3: the Costs module lets you record and categorise all the costs associated with a particular vehicle.This software can also import fuel data from some fuel management systems.
Easy to change settings
There's a useful little utility to help you back up and restore your records and you can also change a number of the system's standard settings.These include VAT rates, fuel prices, depreciation percentages and normal working times. You can edit the headings that appear above data entry fields if you want to, and even tweak which fields appear on some of the screens — so if you don't use some of them, you can dedutter.
Finally (phew!) there is the Reports module, which offers a number of standard pre-set reports— accident reports by driver, overdue vehicle services and Action Dates summaries, for example —and allows you to create user defined reports, either with T3's own Query Maker or using the third-party Crystal reports writer which is an optional extra.
Given all this, you're undoubtedly wondering what on earth they actually cut out of T5 to come up withT3. The answer is, not much.True,T5 does include quite a number of workshop and stores related management modules that aren't in T3, but as most operators don't run their own workshops this isn't likely lobe a huge problem for most. Other than this, the most noteworthy omission is the Customers module, Admittedly this is very useful, servings as the counterpoint to the suppliers database. But you could always keep some basic customer I ID details using the Suppliers module, particularly if • you developed some kind of code (a simple asterisk with the company name would do the trick) to differentiate between customers and suppliers.
All well and good. So what are our gripes? Well, there are two.First, the fact that the room for general notes in some of the modules, including drivers, vehicles and suppliers,is very limited. It's particularly short in the Suppliers module, where you'll be hard put to squeeze in more than one short sentence. In an ideal world these fields would he infinitely extendible. In the real world they should still be longer than they are.
Our second concern relates to the built-in report writer, Query Maker.As withT5 it's functional hut basic and doesn't really seem to fit in with the smooth and user-friendly style of the rest of the system. Given the availability of the additional, third-party Crystal report writer, it's almost as if Query Maker was only included to persuade you to upgrade. But, having said that, even using Query Maker we did manage to create a basic report. It wasn't intuitive, and it wasn't pretty but it was the report we'd asked for.
Enough of this hair-splitting.T3, it has to be said, is good. It's well priced. well-imple mented and well capable of running 90% of the fleets out there. If you're running your own workshop or you desperately need the Customers module, you'll want to look to TS. But if you're not,T3 is the obvious choice in more ways than one. While it may not be quite perfect,T3 is certainly among the best entrylevel systems we've seen.And there's only so much magic you can squeeze into one entrylevel fleet management system, after all.