Case study: JEG International Limited.
A case study involving Sage and other integrated software.
JEG International Limited is a road haulage operation based in Wakefield, West Yorkshire. It commenced trading in early 2000 and currently operates nine vehicles, and is classified as a general haulage operator, including conveyance of hazardous material. The company undertakes much of its business in Spain and the South of France.
The Managing Director is Jimmy Gillespie, and the office administrator is Claire Senior. Jimmy has been in the road haulage industry for a number of years, whilst Claire has also had previous experience in the industry and had used a Sage accounting package many years ago.
When the company commenced trading, Sage Line 50, Accountant Plus was installed. Claire needed to exercise control over the financial affairs of the company in an orderly and timely manner. Her previous experience had been with a manual accounting system that was both time consuming and 'you never knew where you were'. Claire had found Sage to be easy to follow and user-friendly. Being self-taught, she has also customised the package to produce management accounts in a manner that allows her to control the financial position on a monthly basis.
The areas that Claire most appreciates relate to firstly, the bank function - the reconciliation tells her at a glance what the current cash position is, and secondly, the ageing of debtors and creditors. In this way she is able to control the cash flow of the company on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Previously, many of these tasks had been undertaken by hand. Claire also finds the VAT reconciliation a great help at the end of each VAT quarter.
Jimmy, in the meantime, had been looking for a Traffic Management System (TMS), which preferably linked to Sage. He had had previous experience with other TMS packages but none had fully satisfied his requirements. Through the Sage Additions web page, Jimmy was introduced to a Traffic Management package (TMS) called Haulier.
Jimmy was looking for a number of specific items, namely, resource allocation (i.e. vehicles and drivers) and status of current work in progress; direct link to Sage for invoicing when jobs were complete; job profitability, especially when sub-contractors are used and the ability to 'pull-up' customer activity.
A three-user Haulier system was installed in mid 2000 and is seamlessly linked with Sage Line 50 Accountant Plus. Standing data entered on Haulier is transferred to Sage without the need to input the data again into Sage. When work is completed in Haulier, this is invoiced directly through Sage and the ledger accounts are updated automatically. In addition, Claire can quickly ascertain from the Haulier software her purchase invoice accruals - for instance awaiting invoices from sub-contractors. The company have also installed Sage Payroll - the ability to produce payroll details quickly for such a small operation is essential.
JEG International has benefited considerably from using Sage and Haulier. The accounts are produced quickly each month and credit control procedures speedily activated. The throughput of work is handled efficiently by the Haulier TMS and many tasks previously undertaken by hand, particularly trying to determine job profitability, are now computerised allowing the management team to concentrate on managing the business.
