We are pleased to tell you that we have made some changes that may make YOUR job easier.
For example, the new version of Truck & Driver has fields for VIN, Credit Card or Membership numbers and Authorization numbers, a 10-15 time(in custody and leaving the 97 scene), the state of the vehicle, the odo reading of the vehicle (some clubs want this to confirm that the veh is still under warranty), cross street info, tolls (big back east) and something we have resisted for a long time because it is such a bear---Taxes! Taxes are by Income Code, so you can accomidate different taxes if you, for example, store in more than 1 county. All these changes will make the interface to, eg CrossCountry, easier for the user. Much more complicated setup, but easy day-to-day, which has always been our philosophy. Setup is like a birthpain, it only happens once and then it is over with.
We have also managed to work into the system a way for it to automatically handle towing (hookup) charges, including minimum rates and variable increments. In other words, the system will calculate the correct charge no matter if the tow takes 14 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours and 10 minutes, whatever!
Also, we have put in controls for states that suffer under a split storage rate, where a certain rate is charged for the first so many days, and then another rate is charged. Do you hear this Connecticut and Texas?! You are states where this applies.
As a part of the split storage rates, we also incorporated a way to handle short term storage, where a certain rate applies for the first so many hours, then another rate until the calendar day calculations take over. Unless, of course, each vehicle has it's own 24 hour clock running. We handle that too!
This is especially helpful in, for example, California, where only one day's storage may be charged until 24 hours have passed, ignoring midnight, and then calendar days after that.
Do you operate more than one towing company? We can now handle multiple companies for lien sale forms and for release invoices. Each type of tow can have a unique invoice type, too.
We have also created the underlying structure for a true multi-company system, with controls to allow one dispatch system to post to multiple company Storage databases and multiple company A/R systems. The really tough part about this, believe it or not, is how to expand the number of trucks and drivers allowed past the current limit of 99. But we are working on it and we think we can come up with an elegant approach to this problem.
One problem we have had over the years is the order in which you move around our screens. As these programs grew over the past nearly 20 years (!), we would add new fields and those fields were added to the end of the list of fields that were already in the screen. This is why the cursor jumps around so much. Well, we have come up with not only a way to control the sequence, but we have made it user defined. So, if for example, you want the cursor to go to the plate, then the VIN, then the State, you could change it yourself or you can tell us what you want and we can do it for you. It is difficult to explain this any better than this, but if you have any questions about this, just give us a call or send us an email.
Did we mention that we now have a way to create custom release invoices? Well, we can! Just tell us how you want the invoice to look and we can do it for you in just a few hours. If you are using a laser printer for your releases, we can even put graphics or watermarks on your custom invoice. Give us a call to get details about this exciting new feature.
And we did all of this without losing any fields that we currently have.
THE ABOVE DESCRIBED CHANGES ARE NOW FULLY OPERATIONAL IN OUR VERSION 4.51! SO WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?
We want your input. Please fax any ideas you have to make our programs even better than they are. What is the one thing that bothers you the most? How would you like to see it changed? Please put your ideas in writing and fax or mail it to us.