Having replaced manual planning processes with Podfather, the McCaskie team has been able to eradicate paper tickets from its operation for good and overhaul the way in which jobs are managed and logged. Historically invoice runs happened once every month but with Podfather’s real-time proof of delivery reporting functionality the McCaskie accounts team can now issue invoices as soon as a service visit has been completed, slashing time to invoice and improving cash flow.
McCaskie is a family-run business offering a complete range of products and services to farming and rural communities. Operating out of four sites across Scotland McCaskie’s prides itself on offering expert advice to farmers and a first-class machinery maintenance service for its dairy farming customers. Having historically relied on paper, and the weekly return of piles of paper tickets, to manage its engineer operation, the McCaskie team knew that there had to be a better way to manage its service management business.
“Podfather gives us the tools we need to manage and monitor our service engineer operation which comprises a mix of regular maintenance appointments, ad hoc repairs and emergency call-outs,” comments Neil Rettie, Director at McCaskie Ltd. “We can see exactly what service visits have been carried out by which engineer and the real-time element of the system means we get instant notification when a job has been completed which has transformed our invoicing process.”
Prior to Podfather each service, the engineer kept track of all work using paper tickets. Tickets were completed by hand and collected during the working week. Engineers would return to the main depot weekly, and deliver the completed paper tickets which would then have to be processed by the accounts team. Customer invoices were only issued once each month, irrespective of when the visit, call out or repair was completed.
“With Podfather we can process customer invoices as soon as a job has been completed which has improved cashflow across the business,” adds Rettie. “It also makes our engineers’ lives much easier as they no longer have to complete and return paper tickets for each job and the fact that we have full visibility of what each engineer has been doing makes it much easier and quicker to answer any customer questions or deal with any discrepancies.”
“The team at McCaskie has been using the Podfather service engineer solution for over six years,” comments Colin McCreadie, Managing Director at Podfather. “Paper tickets used to be the bane of so many of our customers’ lives, irrespective of whether they are operating in the logistics, construction, healthcare or service management sectors and it’s great to see how far McCaskie has come in eradicating paper from their operation”.
