FAQ's

Q:  I have 20 trucks, and I'm dispatching in Excel and billing in QuickBooks. Why do I need TMS software?

A:  The short answer is this: if you're using Excel and QuickBooks, you're double-paying your office staff. This is a hidden cost that many P&D companies don't look at.

If we asked you whether you would send a 2-man crew on every route, you'd probably answer "No!" Then why double-pay your office staff to enter every order twice -- once in Excel for dispatch and again in QuickBooks for billing? Any scenario like that is very likely wasting precious payroll dollars.

Q:  It sounds like billing through your system might be faster and easier than doing it in QuickBooks. Why?

A: Most P&D companies that we know can't afford any wasted time or money. Imagine a scenario where your office staff enter order details only once. They'll enter the basics of an order as soon as you know about it. Then they'll add more details as you learn more. After that comes scanning in documents as you get them, and then billing with a few clicks--without ever having to re-enter all those order details. None of this is redundant -- it's just getting everything right the first time and saving hundreds of hours every month in the process. If you're doing hundreds of orders a week, your savings in time adds up quickly.

Q: But do you force me to stop using QuickBooks altogether if I install JSY?

A:  It's all about saving you time. Our customers find that looking up order details and resolving billing queries goes much more quickly with JSY than in accounting software. We encourage you to continue using your existing accounting system for payables and using OneTerminal TMS for billing, A/R, and collections. Think of JSY as your revenue generator and QuickBooks as your payables center.

Q:  I already have GPS. Does your system work with GPS?

A: Yes.There are many ways to integrate JSY's system with your existing technology investments. JSY offers a variety of ways that you can sync your drivers' arrival and departure times with our software, at which point it can be available immediately for your dispatchers, customer-service people, and customers (through our secure web portal).

Q: Why does your software separate the pickup from the delivery for each order?
A:  Without a line haul in P&D, there are only two components to every order: a pickup and a delivery. We designed our software to capture this process perfectly.

Q: Why does separating the pickup from the delivery in your software matter so much?

Our customers found that the pickup half often had very different service requirements from the delivery. One driver might do the pickup on one day, and another driver on another route might deliver it on another day. Also, the pickup might need a liftgate and a 30-minute call-ahead, while the delivery night need an appointment, a 15-minute call-ahead, and an alert to the driver to pick up a COD. The better your tools are to manage all these details, the better you can serve your customers and justify your rates.

Q: Okay, this sounds good, but how does your system help my bottom line?

Mistakes are expensive. Dry runs are expensive. Drivers sitting at a dock that's closed for lunch is expensive. Having to answer the same question five times is expensive. Avoid these as much as possible, and you save time in the office. Save on payroll, and your expenses go down, improving your bottom line.

Also, we don't have to remind you that office payroll is a relentless, ongoing expense. Our software gives office staff the flexibility they need to handle all your customers' service details (such as in the situation described above). This means that trucking companies using JSY are able to handle large amounts of business with only a skeleton staff in the office. Reducing payroll expense in this way greatly benefits the bottom line.

Q: Why do you specialize in single-terminal trucking companies?
A: We saw an unmet need in the trucking community. While a number of excellent software packages already support regional and national trucking, JSY hadn't seen any that did what we felt was needed for local trucking. We saw a need for a TMS that would provide customized and flexible rating, flexible routing, and more—all integrated with A/R, GPS, EDI, and so on. Our seven years of proven success tell us that we hit the mark.

Q: What does OneTerminal TMS cost?
A: OneTerminal TMS is available in both in-house installations (on your in-house network) and hosted installations (where the database lives on our state-of-the-art remote data center). The cost depends on the number of users you have in your trucking company and on the options that you choose to best suit your needs. Contact your JSY account manager for more information.

Q:  When I want to know who my good and bad drivers are, I usually ask my dispatcher. Anything wrong with that?

It depends on what you're trying to meausre. Let's say you want to evaluate your drivers in terms of revenue per hour (which we believe is the best KPI for local trucking). If you ask your dispatcher which driver is doing the "best" work, the reply is likely to be highly subjective, with all respect to dispatchers. A stronger measure is to have a tool that allows you to truly assess, week to week, the exact revenue that each driver brings in, divided by the hours worked. 

The truly exciting news is that you can measure this with OneTerminal TMS. Our software allows you to credit drivers with revenue generated on pickups as well as deliveries. This goes a bit against conventional wisdom, but it works. The power you have with this information is unparalleled. Because no other TMS gives you this ability to split the P/U from the DEL and assign revenue to each, JSY gives you unique tools to measure your drivers' productivity.

Once you have this hard evidence, you can watch trends over time and see what patterns emerge. Without such detail, you are always guessing, and your conclusions will be based on incomplete evidence.