Propickup Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/94279
MONEYMATTERS GEOTRACKING WASTE When a little black box and a computer can save your company money By Robin Walton, CPA T o hear my husband, sons and brother- in-law describe it, I'm some kind of a control freak. While it's true that some accountants sim- ply keep track of the money, I have a vested interest in the bottom line of our construction company and fi nding waste is one way I can help us all meet our fi nancial goals. Lately, geography has played a role in my tracking potential fi nancial waste. We've been bidding a lot of jobs out of town, which makes transportation costs an important consideration. Each job is calculated with a certain num- ber of round trips to complete the contract. Unnecessary trips must be kept at a minimum to maximize our profi ts. Additionally, our crews are spread out over more area and not everyone is as trustworthy as they could be. You'd think with jobs being hard to come by, everyone would be on their best behavior, but recently an entire crew found themselves 6 PROPICKUP December 2012 as part of the unemployment statistics for getting creative on their time cards. Our com- pany is not alone. Employees who show up late, take a long lunch and return to town early (amazingly clocking a full shift) will help themselves to other "fringe benefi ts" as well. According to the National Labor Bureau, 5.7 percent of workers engage in moonlighting or side jobs (in service industries the number is even higher). Not only lost income for your business but also potential of inventory stolen from you when company vehicles are used after hours. This is enough to keep a fi nancial control freak like me awake at night. What I need is a way to keep track of our company's vehicles, and there are a number of companies across the country off ering such services. One we are looking at is US Fleet Tracking (USFT). They off er a variety of devices to give you all kinds of live information with up to 1-second updates (diff erent update speeds available for diff erent subscription rates). Having an extensive GPS tracking system like this prevents abusive use of company vehicles while helping optimize routes, prevent backtracking, and improve customer response time. All positive things toward improving a stronger corporate bottom line. RETURN ON INVESTMENT There are several ways "geotracking" can benefi t your company such as cutting back on nonproductive miles saves in fuel costs. Some USFT customers see signifi cant re- duction in fuel consumption right away with an overall decrease of 15 percent in the fi rst few months. Less nonproductive miles reduces the costs of maintenance (oil changes, tires and repairs). You can even set up maintenance