Effortlessly Manage Towing Invoices for Technical Support

Towing invoices for Technical Support

hello this is annis from never stop tracking today i am going to be doing uh some invoices and uh i'll show you how i do them i use a trucking office tms management software and i like it it's a small software it's not that expensive it's very simple yet functional and for uh the size of my fleet that's just enough if you have a big fleet like maybe over 20 trucks maybe you know you you'll need something else but this is still usable for you and i did a review of this software a while ago and you can find it on my channel if if i don't forget i'll put it here up in description i'm not affiliated with them they're not paying me anything i'm just uh saying that because i've been using them for a while and then as you know i don't talk much about the things i'm gonna do i just do them but just want to mention this this is the third time i'm recording this video first time my microphone battery uh was low and the voice was bad the sound was bad and then the second time i forgot to hit the recording button on my obs studio and this time i made sure that everything is ready and now i'm getting a phone call so [Music] okay so i'm back let me try again what do we have here so i'm going to log into my invoices uh bill of lading gmail or whatever we should call it so i set up a separate email it's just a regular gmail forum a bill of ladings or bills of lading for my drivers to send me so whenever they're empty they would take a picture and then send me uh the load so for example this is our next um inverse we have to do and this is the pod this is the bill of the uh raiding uh that they did so uh this bill of lading uh is for a load that this driver did from lewis run pennsylvania here so when they send me a bill of lading it goes uh to this fold to this gmail address and this is the invoice the i'm sorry this is the bill of lading that the driver sent me he delivered a load from leuceron pennsylvania to livonia michigan and then what they do is they use an app a free app there are two that i use that we use genius scan and cam cam scan so they're both free and all they do is uh you take a picture uh the driver takes a picture and then uh it converts it to a pdf document uh it zooms in it focuses it crops and you can play with it you can adjust it but who know like if you have a nice phone like a decent smartphone and then you know how to take a picture then these pictures can be better than a picture that you would scan on on your scanner you know on the printer so what you do is like you have to let me find something here so the way the driver would send you the picture is like they would have a document uh laying flat on a flat surface and it has to be well lit uh like this uh and then if the driver is in the truck you know they could do it near a window uh maybe even go outside but if it's dark outside then uh the picture will not be okay it has to be really light uh so they would uh place the phone above above the document if you can see like this okay not not on an angle but it has to be about like like in the middle in the center go up um and then if uh like if you're too far out uh then that's bad if you're too close like you you just go out enough that it uh includes the whole uh paper the whole bill of lading in that picture uh just a little bit outside of it and then the program the app will uh notice where the borders are and then it will cut usually very good by itself cut out crop and then you focus the way you focus on most smartphones you tap like if you have a uh you turn on the camera and then you just like tap and it will focus and it will make it sharper and and it will um the exposure uh will uh be correct like it will change like that's like even on your uh cameras uh when you take pictures when you press the shutter button halfway down it focuses and it gives information uh to the camera to the chip about the exposure like the correct exposure uh you know f-stop and all that um but that doesn't matter for this uh so when they take a picture they send it to you so i have this dedicated gmail just for that so that way all my abilities they come here and then i know like if they're uh in gray here in gmail i know that i already opened them up and then that means that i already uh sent those invoices in if i have these brand new unopened emails here in white then i know that these invoices have to be uh done so they're waiting for me to finish them here so when i log into my gmail i know what i have to do which invoices i have to do but then this one was like that but since i clicked on it then it it became gray so if i accidentally click on it or if i wanted to see something uh you would just go here and then mark as unread and now next time i log in then i know that i have to do uh this invoice okay so this is my first invoice and uh i never delete my emails uh maybe like every two years or so i would delete my emails once my uh inbox is getting full to like eighty ninety percent then i go back and then uh delete emails from my class here or two years ago because i like to have them i like to be able to type in and then look up whatever i need unless it's like like these emails then i would just delete them whenever i have a chance but anyway so click on this and then i know this is a lowest run so i would just find that rate confirmation some people might save it just to have it i started doing that a long time ago when i started but it just took too much time this is much easier so gmail is really good at scanning uh the body of the message the title and even the document itself so it will scan most documents for text and then it will find it so here it is that's my uh bill of lading uh so i don't know if i ever worked with this broker um but uh we'll we'll we'll talk about that so uh i'm ready to do an invoice for this uh rate confirmation so in tracking office uh you have invoices load planner loads so if you go to load planner or loads uh they have an option here to add a planned load so these are all my loads that i've done before with all the information the brokers the rates and then these are my invoices that i've done before and then i can just whenever they pay i can enter a payment say like this is all and then i have unpaid here so these are unpaid see like i have three pages of unpaid invoices but then if i click on all includes the paid one so i have 33 pages here so uh load planner or loads and then add a planned load so you have to add a plan load first before you do an invoice so um this is a the way i do it so custom load number i don't do anything here this is optional so customer customer in this case is for me is a broker because i i charge brokers directly so if i have a customer from before recorded and i just stopped typing first few letters like ch robinson see like comes up and that customer is there okay but then uh see this is a gt so i'm not sure if i have them in my system so i would start typing g t and then this is uh gt worldwide so they are not here okay now i have to create a customer okay so i will just get that information from the uh information from the rate confirmation gt world wide and then usually i do this on two two screens uh it's much easier but uh this video i'm recording on one screen so i'm just going to switch back and forth between tabs okay so this is their address 100 commas drive usually you can just copy the text it's much easier and just uh paste it here you don't even need the address here see like sometimes it doesn't want to paste so 100 commerce drive and see like this gt i i suppose they're same company as rnr and paradigm okay so that that's all the same i don't know why they do that but uh they have three companies here as far as i know so i'm just gonna let me see first where do you want me to send a bill of the invoice to which uh address and then we'll do that yeah they have a different billing address okay um 100 uh commerce drive pittsburgh pa and zip code is one five two seven five pittsburgh pa and then here i would just choose broker for that and now we're looking for uh usually on the rate confirmations they have uh instructions where to send the invoice sometimes it's by mail uh usually it's not by mail but sometimes they have that you know they want the originals but usually it's in email like 90 of the brokers they they accept uh emails some big brokers you have to go to their website c.h robinson tql coyote and then some brokers will do transfer only like landstar but this here uh we we find out here on this raid confirmation that we need uh to email them to billing ship gt.com and what i would do here is first i would click on it and then here it opens um an email this is where i'm going to be sending them that invoice so it's ready for me here it just stays here so here you can copy this email and then just paste it over there but here's a little trick you can just drag this to a different tab you just click on it and hold you hold it you see like you can carry it around and then i just go to that tab and then just drop it here in the email and then i would delete this part and so this broker is ready okay so now this broker is in my system and then the shipper was a lewis run uh so i start typing louis and then the shipper i just use uh the city names for the invoice okay so i use city name you don't need the actual shipper so here when they say shipper i just put in a city name lois iran pennsylvania and then the system has all these cities in in their database and if if you misspell it then it will not accept it okay so you have to make sure it's correctly spelled and then it went to [Music] this load went to livonia michigan and i think i already have livonia in my system here and then the dates were uh 8th and 8th and the money was 1750. eight eight seventy fifty and then one more thing here usually i also do that um if i have the broker in the system uh so these uh uh rate confirmations always have an order number uh a load number um something something in that order load id that identifies this load in their system in the broker system so they can easily look it up and then you look for that it's usually some place on top and then it says here like reference load number but sometimes it will be here you just have to look for it so this is the one i copied and then here i paste it in a customer required info field it says here included on the invoice okay so this part is included in the inverse in trucking office this part is not bill of lading weight quantity and all that this is included so i put it in this field so basically this is your invoice now and this is the um information that it needs okay this is the most crucial information you can add more things to it but for me uh it's just a waste of time i don't really i mean none of these like i've been sending these invoices for like seven eight years and they never came back asking for more information on the invoice more than this so what you have is the the broker's name uh where it picked up where it delivered dates and i had the customer required information their load number and then the rate you can add here if there was a lumper no detention you can separate it and then it will total it if there's an invoice it will deduct it uh if there's an invoice advance that you had an advance then you put it here it will deduct it from this amount but then it will total all these fees and that's it the since uh when you set up trucking office you give them the your name of the company and the name of the address of your company and then it will automatically be placed on the invoice okay so this is it okay so after all this uh is in um you hit save and then you have all this basic information about the loan now this is a load okay so if you go to loads we have all the loads that we've done before but then here you can go to planned loads and then you can do a lot of these loads and then make an invoice for each one of them but i usually do it right away uh in one run so we would go here to view that's that same page we were on before and then we have all that information now we have to add a trip to this load we have to assign a driver and a truck to this trip so i will find the driver and then it will automatically add his truck and trailer you know first time you do it then it will um so the uh driver information with the truck number and three will be automatically put in here the first time you do it the system will uh record it and remember it and then once you choose a driver it will just add the truck so that's the trip and it shows this truck's last location uh and then uh once we assign this strip to the driver or the truck then you know we can track the mileage for reports like ifta or irp reports when we do a payroll for the driver uh we can assign this load to the driver and pay the driver for this load so you would save and now we have a load and trip saved but now we need to do the actual invoice off of this load and this trip so here you scroll down and then it gives you an option to create the invoice and then the system will just go in order so this is the next invoice number was 1818 so that gives me that number and you know i just go with that an invoice date you can change that and then you can create remit too but you don't have to do it because i already have that information on the in the first step that we did where i added the broker's name and then you can you know you have other options here but i don't do any of that i just go ahead and create invoice that's all i do and now the invoice is created uh this is their address it goes to them from me uh it has all the information about the load pick up delivery date from two uh their order number and the fee and that's all you need uh now you can uh uh send this via email to the broker you know to their email um because like when i first put it in here like you would select that gt gt that we just created and then it would send it to this email address you can attach a rate confirmation and a bill of lading but i don't do it that way i do it another day another way so here if you go to detailed pdf then it will produce a pdf invoice uh for you so now this is a legit invoice here look uh look at this okay so this is it this is the invoice i like so that's and then here it says please send checks to this address because i'm building them directly here if you were doing factoring [Music] then you would put like when you set up tracking office at the beginning you know you can add this information that will automatically be placed on the invoice and it will say something like this invoice is only payable to rts factoring or whoever you factor with i say rts because i worked with them and you can go to description of this video if you're interested in factoring uh with them uh but this is my invoice okay so what i do is i download it i download it to my uh computer uh ex exactly to uh google drive okay so i go to google drive to my company my invoices and i have all my invoices here in folders so i would create a new folder for each invoice so new folder and i name it same as the invoice number and i would just save it in this invoice into the that folder okay so i would save it and then i would go back to the email that contains the rate confirmation and then i send the save the rate confirmation to that same folder and then i go to my bill of lading to my uh first email and uh wherever i um where we where they send me pods and i save it to the folder okay so now all these are saved in in that folder so the advantage of doing this is like my google drive is set up on all my computers and and my phone so i can access all these informations about uh all my companies on my google drive so all my documents are accessible from anywhere in the world and then i would just go to invoices and then find this once you already uploaded it so you already uploaded it to google drive and then you know when wherever i am i can access it so i have all my documents i have the invoice the bill of rating here and the rate confirmation uh just sitting there saved for whenever i need if i need them in five years they're right there and no matter where i am so now we have this draft here that you know from before but usually i would just like go back to that to trucking office and then if you click on the company name yeah you have their email that's the email i saved before and then i would just uh email that invoice to this email address and then uh you can drag that as well like you click but hold it click on it and hold it and just drag it to that tab and then you can just drop it here um to the the draft okay but we already had it before so i'm going to delete it and then i i have templates uh for invoices and then i just click invoice for uh so this is my template when i do invoices so all i have to do in this case is just add the email address and then paste that because this is the last number i paste if you remember that order that rate confirmation number i copied it from before and it saved it it was saved and then i just pasted it here in the subject line and then i would go to my documents and here is that invoice and then i would just drag them and drop them to that email and they're all here like this so this invoice is sent ready to be sent to a gt world while um you know the subject says invoice for you know that order they know like when they receive the invoice that what what this is it's an invoice for that order and then all i do is place says please see attached invoice and then the the invoice is here only one broker i had complained in so many years because i uh uh attached um uh three attachments you know they want it to be in one attachment you know the the everything all these documents they want and i told them that and they said well no no no a lot of brokers are doing it this way it's a common practice well it's not you know i sent a 10 over 10 000 uh invoices so far and and you're the only ones that requested that but anyway so just click send and that invoice is sent and that's it sometimes they have a system that automatically replies and tells you that they received it which is really cool but most brokers don't have that let me see about this slow do what is this going to text us maybe i could book this load see like cool i see here here we are yeah it just reply email receive thank you payment stat and then you can you know where to ask for a payment status and all that so so i like it when they have a confirmation but anyway i was looking at this law let me just okay so this is it uh i hope this video was helpful to you and i hope it clarified some things for you even though we might be using a separate system or different system but anyway uh thanks for watching come back for more uh subscribe like the video share it and then i'll see you around