New Jersey-based Arsenault Associates, working with its customer Aqua America Inc., has developed a new option for its Dossier fleet maintenance software called Invoice Data Import. Invoice Data Import is an optional feature

that eliminates data entry of outside vendor invoices to save time and money while increasing data accuracy and improving control of fleet expenses for fleets that depend upon outside service vendors.
Aqua America of Bryn Mawr, Pa., is a water utility company with operations in 13 states from Maine to Texas. It runs 1,200 pieces of rolling equipment trucks and tractor trailers that haul for its expanding wastewater division. About 400 vehicles are maintained at company sites in Pennsylvania. The rest are maintained by vendors at remote locations throughout other states.
"We have been using Dossier at our company-run locations in Pennsylvania since 1997," said Charles Stevenson, Aqua America fleet manager. "But as the company began to grow, I found we would need a part-time person just to key data from repair orders and invoices from vendors maintaining our equipment in other states."
Aqua America found itself processing about 1,000 lines of vendor transactions every month, each subject to transcriber errors, Stevenson said.
Arsenault developed the solution:
Service vendors send invoices and repair orders in electronic files that Invoice Data Import brings directly into Dossier. The feature helps track and evaluate work performed by outside fleet service providers as well as update fleet costs, repair order histories, PM services schedules and meter readings - all at the same time.
Manual data entries - and the errors that go with it - are eliminated. Users have a history of each data import transaction and can produce repair order history and repair order summary reports on service work performed by any and all service vendors.
Aqua America said it has achieved tangible gains from using Invoice Data Import with its Dossier software. Now, data import is automatic and error free, according to Stevenson, and he's especially pleased with the range of information imported.
"Now the data and the resulting reports are at my fingertips,"
Stevenson said. "We are in a much better position, not just to track equipment and costs, but to compare various vendors, now and in the future."
Invoice Data Import is now available to all Dossier users as an option with the newly released Dossier 4.4 software.
For details, visit www.arsenalt.biz.