Within Truckcom you are able to set up various Email Templates to make sending job related emails easier. These can be configured to automatically include details related to the specific job and can be used for example to send Late Notifications to a customer.

To set up a template, first hover over your username in the top right and select Admin Settings (this section is only available to users with admin rights on your Truckcom system).

In the navigation bar select the tba Email Templates.

You will the see a grid, containing all the email templates you have set up. It will be empty to start with so click the Add Item button to create one.

Name – enter the name for the template. This will be displayed in the list you can select from so make sure it is something to explain what it relates to.

Subject – the Subject line of the email

CC Address – the address this email will also be copied to

From Address – the address this email will be sent from. If this is left blank the emails will be from the email address related to the user

To Address Format – there are 3 options to choose from here

• Use Customer Address – the email address related to the customer the job is for will be used, if it exists.
• Use Subcontractor Address – the email address related to the subcontractor this job is assigned to, if it exists.
• Use Custom Address – the email address can be entered at the point of sending the email. It can also be configured to auto populate, details below.

Once you have entered the details on this form, click OK. You will then see a row relating to this entry in the grid.

To customise the email body, Right Click on the row and select Customise Content.

An email form will open up, at the top of this you will see the same fields from when you first created this item. You can edit these here as required.

Below this is an email editor which allows you to enter the text that will be sent as the body of the email.

In the toolbar of this editor are various text editing controls – you can use these to format the text as required. The item on the far right of the toolbar allows you to fill in predefined field properties, for example you can include the ETA entered against the job, on a late advice email.

These field templates can also be used in the other fields on this form, for example in the Subject line of the email as shown below.

Once set up as required this template will be available to send an email relating to any job in your system. On the Jobs grid, Right Click on the row you want to send the email for and select Send Job Message (if this is not visible you can Customise the menu to include it).

You will then see an Email Form, the first field here allows you to select from the list of Email Templates you have got set up. Selecting one of these will auto-fill the rest of the details on the form for example the Subject line now includes the actual details relating to this job .

You can modify any of these fields as needed and then click Send to send this email.

Within Truckcom you are able to set up reports to show breakdowns of the data that is within your Truckcom system. There are many possibilities of report that you could create depending on what you are interested in seeing.

On the Reports tab you will see there are a number of default reports that we have created for you. These will be displayed with the Report Owner as Truckcom. You are able to customise these as required and save a copy of this as a new report. You can also create you own report from scratch if there is something specific you want to see.

Once a report has been created only the owner (the person who has created it) is able to edit it. They will be visible to all users of your Truckcom system but it will not be possible for them to change anything that has been set up.

There are a few different report visualisations you may wish to use, these are the options shown under Graph Type – Bar, Line & Pie as well as None (no visualisation just a data grid).

We will use one of these default reports to explain how you customise a report, the same principle can be applied to any report that has been created.

If you right click on the report row and select the option View Report a new tab will open up.

On this page you will see 3 areas. The top of the report will display the visualisation selected – in this case a bar chart.

Below this is at the bottom on the page is the report data grid. Here you will see the underlying data that makes up this report.

Similar to the other areas of Truckcom you are able to change the Date Range, enter Search Text or select a Custom Search to further filter the data displayed.

In this particular report we have nested rows, indicated by the arrow next to the row title. Clicking this will expand the Resource Group and show Resources within it and the data that is added up to create these totals.

To the right of the screen are the field selectors. You will see all the available fields listed here in the All section. You can click and drag any of these as required to change the data that is displayed in this report.

The way these reports are structured is similar to that which you may be familiar with from an Excel pivot grid. You can specify Rows, Columns, Data and Filters as shown.

Any changes you make will update the report displayed on screen.

There are some more advanced settings you can apply to further manipulate the data that is displayed. For example clicking on the filter icon next to one of the fields allows you to apply a filter to it.

In this example only rows that have a PTA Present are included.

Also by right clicking on the Items field you are able to modify how the values are displayed. For example selecting Percent of Row Grand Total Count will change the data in the data grid from numbers to percentages.

At the bottom right of the screen are 3 buttons. You can

• Print the report (which will also allow you to save this as a PDF if required).
• Save the report (as described previously, you can only save reports which you have created)
• Save Report As – this will create a copy of the report which you will be the owner of, including any changes you have made.

Back on the Reports grid, there are a few other options you can select when Right Clicking on a report row.

View Grid – this will open up a new page which will show you all the data included in this reports dataset. You can then view and filter this as you would the rest of the data within Truckcom.

Send Link – this allows you to send a link to this particular report page including all the filters that are in place when you saved the report.

There are a few ways that Truckcom can help alert you when you are doing work within the Direct Vision Standard (DVS) zone.

The DVS zone covers the same area as the London Low Emission Zone (LLEZ) so the following steps are applicable for both of these zones.

• You can set up email alerts when one of your vehicles enters the DVS/LLEZ
• Configure a warning pop up to display when assigning a resource or vehicle to a job within the DVS/LLEZ
• Display an icon indicating the job is within the DVS/LLEZ

The first thing to do within Truckcom XT is to enable these warnings. By hovering over your username and selecting Edit My Details you will see a pop up similar to the below.

The tick box labelled London Low Emission Warning is what you should turn on, as shown, to start seeing the DVS/LLEZ warnings across Truckcom.

Similarly, if you are interested in warnings relating to the London Congestion Charge you can also enable these here.

The final thing you can turn on or off here are whether you wish to receive emails for these warnings. By ticking the box labelled Email Warnings and ensuring you have an Email Address entered you will receive emails warnings when one of your vehicles enters these particular zones.

To configure alerts when assigning particular vehicles to DVS/LLEZ based jobs, go to the Vehicles tab. Select the vehicle you wish to update, right click and choose the Edit option.

Under the details tab you will see a field labelled LLEZ Warning. This is a free text field which you can enter any text into, the text here will be displayed in a warning pop up if this vehicle is assigned to a job within the DVS Zone.

When assigning this Vehicle to a DVS zone job you will see a warning pop up with the text entered previously.

You can also set up the same feature to display warnings when assigning a resource to a DVS job. To do this go to the Resource tab. Select the resource you wish to update, right click and select Edit. The LLEZ Warning field can be found on the Other Items tab of this edit form.

When assigning this resource to a DVS zone job, the following warning pop up will be shown.

The final part of the DVS/LLEZ warning functionality that is available is the visual icon that will be displayed against the jobs.

On the Jobs tab you will now see a green Z icon against any jobs that are all/partly within the DVS/LLEZ.

You are able to filter the data shown in this grid as with all the other icons displayed within Truckcom.

Truckcom XT provides the functionality to create various Dashboards that can be set up to show different widgets containing a number of percentage of items for various search criteria. These can be useful for seeing at a glance various metrics that are updated throughout the day. Thresholds can be set up to colour these widgets when the result is above/below a given amount.

Dashboards are set up using Custom Searches against various datasets. This will be explained later on, if you require any help getting these custom searches created for use with the dashboards then please Contact Us

This is an example of a Dashboard showing various information about the status of jobs for the current day.

You can access the Dashboards area of Truckcom XT by hovering over the Reports menu option and selecting Dashboards.

From here you are able to add a new Dashboard by clicking on the Add Item button. You can create multiple dashboards that can display various data widgets as required. These will be visible to all of your companies office users, but will only be able to be edited by the creator or owner of the dashboard.

When the Add Item button is clicked you will see the following form. Give your dashboard a name here and select from one of the Dashboard Type options. For this example we will select Mixed.

• Mixed – the dashboard can contain data from various sources
• Driver – the dashboard can only contain data related to Drivers (you will be able to specify an additional Driver Group filter to the dashboard)
• Job – the dashboard can only contain data related to Jobs (you will be able to specify an additional Customer filter to the dashboard)

After clicking OK you will then see a new entry in the grid, with the name you entered for the dashboard. Right click on the row and select View Dashboard to add some data to it.

The dashboard will be opened up in a new browser tab, to start with it will be blank.

To add the first widget to it click on the red Add New Widget Button at the bottom right of the screen.

The Add New Widget form will then be displayed with various fields to be entered to set up this widget.

Display Text – This will be displayed at the top of the widget, it can be left blank.

Dataset Name – Select one of the available datasets from the list. This will affect what data you are displaying in the widget, if you need help choosing please let us know.

Custom Search – Select one of the available custom searches from the list. These are linked directly to the dataset chosen above. You can set these up from the various grids within in XT, for example you can add a custom search to the Job Dataset from the Jobs grid.

Date Range – Select a date range option from the list. This will be used when querying the data for this widget. This can be overridden at a dashboard level, more on this later.

Dataset 2 Name – The same as Dataset Name, select this if you wish to display a percentage in this widget. The data from the first dataset query will be divided by the result of this query. This can be left blank.

Total Number Custom Search – Select one of the available custom searches from the list to be used to calculate the total. Linked to the dataset selected above and only required if a percentage is required.

Use Total Count for Percentage – If you wish to use the total count of the items returned from the Dataset 2 query as base of the percentage. This overrides the custom search selected above.

In the example dashboard below we have set it up to show the percentage of jobs from the last week that are Ready to Invoice. This will display the percentage of jobs that are returned by the first custom search out of the total number of jobs that exist.

The following section of the form can be used to specify the widgets appearance if required.

Background Colour – select the colour for the background of the widget

Text Colour – select either Black or White depending on the background colour selected above so the text is visible.

Widget Width – enter a percentage of the screen to set the widget width. If you want to display 4 widgets in a row regardless of screen size enter “25%” here. This can be left blank to use the default widget size.

The final section of the form allows you to set up Low and High Thresholds as required which will change the colour of the widget.

Low Threshold Value – enter a number here, if the result of the query for this widget is lower than this the colour selected below will be set.

Low Threshold Colour – select the colour to change the background to

High Threshold Value – enter a number here, if the result of the query for this widget is higher than this the colour selected below will be set.

High Threshold Colour – select the colour to change the background to

Once created you will see this widget displayed on the screen. If you hover over this you will see both the Edit and Delete options. To add more widgets repeat the previous steps.

A dashboard level date filter can be set using the controls at the top of the screen, as mentioned previously selecting a Driver/Job specific dashboard will allow you to set specific filters as well.

It may be useful to know that you can minimise the Truckcom menu bar by clicking the arrow icon in the top right area of the screen.

By doing this you will have more space to display the dashboard content, which may be useful if you wish to display this on a monitor/tv screen visible to multiple users. The content of the dashboard will be automatically refreshed every minute.

If you have any questions or need any assistance please Contact Us

There are various ways which you can customise the invoices created by Truckcom in order to meet the requirements of your business.

The first of these is to include a company logo/letter head at the top of the invoice. This is the same image that is included at the top of the other documents generated from within Truckcom. If you have not already added a company letter head you can do this from the Admin Settings section and you can find more information on how to do this on this support article: https://support.truckcom.co.uk/2020/12/09/truckcom-xt-explanation-of-basic-settings/

Also customisable is the footer text displayed on the bottom of the invoice. If you want to display the same text for all invoices then you can set this as described in the explanation of basic settings support page above.

If you require different invoices to be sent out for different customers or groups of customers, for example invoices with different payment terms, then the following steps should be followed.

Create a Parent company

From the Companies tab click on the Add Item button and fill in the form. In this example we will be setting up a parent company with payment terms specifying the invoice must be paid within 30 days.

Note: The Invoice Address field is mandatory, but for this particular parent company it will never be used so you can safely add a dummy address here. The only fields that you need to fill in to set up a parent company are Name and Notes (this is where the invoice footer text will go).

You can click on the button on the right of the notes field to open up the text editor which will allow you to enter as much text as required, using the enter key you can add new lines to your footer text.

Once you have added this company you will see it in the companies grid alongside your other companies.

In order to utilise this parent company you now need to select the various companies you wish to apply these payment terms to. If you right click on the company row and click on Edit you will see the edit form.

On the Other Items tab you will see the Parent Company field. Click on this and the search for and select the parent company that you previously created.

Repeat these steps for any other parent company groups that you wish to create and add any number of companies to these.

Now when you carry out your invoicing for these particular companies you will see the footer text is that which you entered in the Notes field for the parent company. You can edit this at any time by right clicking on the parent company and selecting the Edit option.

The following explanation is only applicable for administrators, if you are not an admin user you will not be able to access the settings explained below.

As a new signup to Truckcom you will have filled in various sections to set up your system, including setting your haulage type and adding resources and customers to your system.

There are many other additional settings that you are able to change depending on your preference that will change how your Truckcom system functions. The following guide will explain some of these.

You can access the admin settings at any time by hovering over your username in the top right hand corner of Truckcom. You will then see the Admin Settings options, this will take you to a new page.

On this page you will see several different tabs, each of which will allow you to manage various aspects of your system. The first of these is the Basic Settings tab.

On this tab you will see a screen that looks similar to the initial screen you entered your data in when setting up your Truckcom system, in fact it is the same screen with some additional sections added.

The first section we will cover here is Select Account System. You are able to choose the required option from the list displayed which will alter the file that is generated when you have completed and invoiced some jobs.

In the Add Extra Charges section you are able to enter a list of values that represent the various extra charges you may wish to apply to a job. To do this simply enter the text values on separate rows. Once added you will then be able to select from these options when you select the extra charges options against one of your jobs.

Job Statuses and Colours

The Enter Job Colours section allows you to configure various job statuses within your system to be coloured differently. A job that is set with one of these statuses will be displayed with the text in that colour.

In order to set this up enter the name of the status and then make a selection from the list of colours in the grid.

Job Status keyboard shortcuts can be set up to allow the status of a job to be easily changed with a single key press. In order the set this up the name of the status must start with a number followed by the name of the status. This number provides the order you are able to switch between the statuses in. For example:

In order to change the job status (and colour) using the keyboard shortcut, you must have a job or multiple jobs selected and then press the 5 key to move through the statuses in ascending order or press the 6 key to move in descending order.

The final colour related configuration you may wish to set up is to highlight the whole job row colour instead of the text colour. To do this click on the Advanced Settings tab and then search in the lit of settings for Vivid Colours. Right click on this setting value and select Adjust Setting. On the pop up displayed select Vivid Colours as shown below, and click OK.

These jobs are displayed with Vivid Colours selected.

These are the same jobs with Normal Colours selected

Customise Documents

In this section you are able to alter the various documents that are generated by Truckcom.

If you require your documents to include you own letterhead or logo you can upload this here, on the right hand side you will see the image requirements in order to make sure this is the correct size and quality to be used. You can click the link to download a sample image which you can then edit in any image editing software to include the logo, address and any other company details you wish.

Once you have this file prepared you can upload it here where it will be available immediately.

The other text areas in this section allow you to enter customised small print text that will be displayed at the bottom of the various documents.

There are many other settings that can be accessed through the Advanced Settings section. If you require any assistance or further explanation into any of these feel free to contact us and someone will be happy to help.

Whilst logged into Truckcom as a sub contractor you will see a limited set of information and will have a cut down set of actions that you are able to perform.

On the Jobs screen you will see a list of the jobs that are assigned to your resources, you can change the date range of the jobs you are looking at using the date filter at the top of the grid.

There are various actions that you can perform against these jobs which you can access by right clicking on one or more of these rows in the grid.

From this menu you can view the details of the job by clicking on Details

You can edit various parts of the information about the job by clicking on Edit

Clicking on Update Times will open a pop up in which you can enter the ATA (Actual Time of Arrival) and ATD (Actual Time of Departure) when you have arrived/departed the stop location.

Clicking on Upload POD will open up a new tab (please check that your web browser is not blocking pop ups if you do not see this). On this new tab you can drag and drop a POD file which will be uploaded against the job and visible to the rest of the users of this Truckcom system.

These right click menus are customisable so you may see different options, or a different order to those shown above. If you are not able to access the options you require the administrator of your Truckcom system should be able to add these in for you.

It is possible to create custom views which can be shared between all users of your Truckcom system. These can be created for any particular grid and will be visible from the Choose a View drop down list at the top right of all the various grids within Truckcom XT.

To create a new custom view select the Create a New View option from this drop down list.

On the following pop up, enter the name for this view. This will be how it is displayed within the drop down list for your users to select it.

Once the page has reloaded, go back to the Choose a View dropdown and select the new view that you have just created.

With a view selected you should now see a tick box in the bottom right with the text Enable View Editing

To make changes to the columns in the selected view you need to ensure this is ticked. Doing so will enable the Columns button above the grid.

Click on the Columns button will open a pop up with a list of all the available columns that are not currently in the grid. You can simply click and drag a column from this list into the position you require in the grid to add it. To remove a column simply click and drag the column header into this list and it will be removed.

You can also reorder columns by clicking and dragging on the column header and moving it to a new position. A red line will indicate where it will end up when dropped.

To make the most of the available screen space you may wish to reduce the width of some of the columns. You can do this by clicking on the right or left border of the column header and dragging it to the left or right as required.

Any changes you make will be automatically saved and reloaded when this view is next selected. Please note, all views are shared across all users of your company so any changes made will affect the columns that they can see.

All users can have their own set of default columns which can be modified in the same way as above without affecting other users. To select the default column view, choose the blank option from the Choose a View dropdown. The above steps can then be followed to customise this view as required. The Enable View Editing tick box will not be visible so this step can be skipped out.

We have created some introductory videos explaining some of the basic features of Truckcom.

1. Creating a job

2. Assigning a resource to a job

3. Introducing a driver

When we first created your Truckcom trial system, we put in some standard job templates which we felt might suit the type of haulage you selected. However, we realise that some operations may benefit from more templates, or from adjustments to the standard ones.

We will be pleased to discuss this with you to see how we can assist you with this. Just Contact Us to get started with this.

When using the previous version of Truckcom, Truckcom ST, you were required to use Internet Explorer. This was due to a reliance on Microsoft Silverlight, which is no longer supported by other modern browsers.

With our new version, Truckcom XT, this is no longer the case. We have created this version using the latest technologies and now strongly recommend that you use a more modern browser, NOT Internet Explorer. There are a number of known issues with using Internet Explorer meaning you may have a negative experience using Truckcom XT.

The browser we recommend is Google Chrome, which is now the most widely used browser . You can download this for free from https://www.google.com/chrome/ if you do not already have it installed on your computer.

Once installed you should access Truckcom XT by going to https://xt.truckcom.net/. You should find all the same features as in the previous version although are there some differences and improvements in how things look. This post explains Truckcom XT a little further.

Please let us know if you have any issues getting started on the new version or if there is anything we can do to make switching from Truckcom ST easier for you.

There are a couple of ways to control which jobs each customer user sees. The first way is using the “Contact” column in the jobs grid:

If a company has just one user, whenever jobs are created the contact defaults to that user. However, this isn’t retrospective; if you create a new user associated with a company, all jobs that area already created won’t have that user as a contact on them. One way around this is to do a multi-edit on many jobs, and change the contact on all of them to the company user.

Of course, some companies may have multiple users, and adjusting the contact on different jobs is a good way to make sure that each user only sees the jobs you want them to see.

There is also a way to make all a customer’s jobs visible to a user without adjusting contacts on jobs. In the user list, there is a column available called “Master Customer”

If, for a user associated with a customer company, this “Master Customer” box is ticked, that user will always see all jobs for that company, regardless of whether they have a contact set.

It’s easy to set up user accounts so your customers and subcontractors can access data in your Truckcom system. This note explains the basics of how to set this up, followed by how you can control what external users see and what they can do.

Please note: All the options described here are available to administrator accounts only.

Setting up a Customer/Subcontractor login

Setting up customer and subcontractor user accounts is easy. As an Administrator, right click on the company you wish to add the customer/subcontractor login for, and select Add User

You will then see a list of existing users. Unless you have already added this user previously you will need to click on the Add Item to create a new user

The New user form will then be shown. You should complete all 4 fields on the form: Name, Email Address, User Name, and Password. Once finished click the OK button to add the user.

This form should then close and in the list of users you will see the new user that you just created. Click on this row to select it and then click on the OK button in the bottom right hand corner to add the user to the company.

Once this is done you will see the user you have added in the Users column against the Company

Sending User Details

With a new user created the easiest way to send their login details is to right click on the Company again and click on the View Users option. On the pop up that is displayed you can right click on the user that you require and select the Send User Details option. This will open up an email form allowing you to send the link to your Truckcom system and the user details to the new user.

Controlling what users can see

The easiest way to understand what these users can see and do is to try logging on to Truckcom using the new user accounts yourself.

For customers, they see just their own jobs in the jobs tab and they have restricted options. Please see https://support.truckcom.co.uk/2019/11/08/controlling-visibility-of-customer-jobs/ for further details on how to control which customer jobs are visible.

Subcontractor users see more tabs, but of course only see jobs which are allocated to them or to their vehicles, and they also have restricted options.

Creating Custom Views

There are some advanced options for controlling exactly what users see and controlling what customer users can do regarding creating and editing jobs.

Please see https://support.truckcom.co.uk/2020/11/03/creating-custom-views-in-truckcom-xt/ for more details on how to create custom views

There are three ways these named views can work for customer and subcontractor users

1. A named view called subcontractor is automatically applied to all subcontractor users. If such a view exists and is applied, these users cannot change their column view
2. A named view called customer is likewise automatically applied to all customer users, with the same restrictions
3. Last but not least, you can give a view any name (for instance you could call it Customer Group 1) and then you can set the “Template Group” entry for certain users to be the same name (to get to the user list, you can click on your user name at the top right, then click on “Settings” then “Office Users”. You can do this for normal accounts as well as customer/subcontractor accounts):

There are also other important ways that you can control what customer users can do regarding creating and editing jobs.

When you click on “Add Item” (logged in to your own administrator account) in the jobs tab, you see a list of job templates. If you scroll across you will see the “Show To Customer” column:

Any job template with a tick in this column will be visible to all customers. By default, any customer that can see one or more templates will also be able to edit jobs. You can stop them being able to edit jobs, if you wish, by including the suffix nojobedit after their name in the user list.

You can also apply a more fine-grained control over which users see which job templates. This approach works for customer users, and also normal users if you need these kind of restrictions.

It works by matching entries in the “Group” column in the job templates list, as highlighted below, with the template group entries against users previously described

In the above case, there are two job templates that are available to customers, but “Edible Plants” as shown in the previous user grid screenshot would only be able to see “Container Export”.

Two final points to remember here:

1. Users with a blank entry in their template group see all templates (or if they’re customers, all templates with “Show to Customer” ticked)
2. Templates with a blank entry in their group are visible to all users (although of course customers would only see them if “Show To Customer” is set)

With all these options, the best way to understand and apply them is to perform tests on new accounts by logging in to them yourself, before providing the user details to the real user.

Barcode Scanning

The red box in the screenshot above shows the column that holds all the barcodes for any particular job. In this column the barcodes must be encased by “B:{}” and if there is more than 1 barcode they must be separated by a “^”.

For example:

• 0000011842-001
  • Would not be valid by itself in the “Load Details” column
• B:{0000011842-001}
  • Would be a valid barcode
• B:{0000011842-001^0000011842-002}
  • Would be a valid list of barcodes

Mobile App

Scanning on the mobile app is a very simple process. Once the driver has logged on and declared themselves “On Site” for the job they will see the following screen.

Clicking on the “POD” button will show you a list of options which can be taken for the ePOD, but we are only interested in the “Labels” button.

Clicking on the “Labels” button will bring us the list of barcodes set for the job.

The barcodes list will only show the number of items that needs to be scanned (before scanning anything). So, because we have 2 barcodes for this job the barcodes from top to bottom will show “Item 1” and “Item 2”.

Clicking on “Scan” will immediately bring up the scanning camera. Line up the red line on the screen with the barcode available to scan the barcode.

The camera screen will automatically close and show you the list of barcodes, but now the scanned barcode will have changed colour from grey to green. It will also show the scanned barcode next to the item number.

Viewing the Scanned Barcodes in the Truckcom Web Portal

Logon to Truckcom XT and find the corresponding job in the “Jobs” grid.

The red box in the screenshot above shows the column that holds the scanned barcodes for the job. You can hover over the particular row under that column to show a popup with all the scanned barcodes.

The barcodes are in the format:

{Barcode Number} {Date & Time Scanned}

For example:

0000010330-001 15/10/2019 12:32:30

You can also look at the scanned barcodes for each individual stop. The red box in the screenshot above shows the “Scanned Barcodes” column in the “Job Details” view within the “Stops” grid. This screenshot also shows an example of what the information looks like when hovering over the cell.

There are various options in TruckcomXT now available which allow you to customise how information is shown to you on the screen.

First, the software has light and dark themes. Light theme looks like this:

… and dark theme looks like this:

The way you choose which theme you want is via the menu at the top right with your user name:

In the screenshot above, you’ll notice a couple of other things you can do to customise your view:

• There is a new “compact mode” which allows you to get more data on-screen. In compact mode, there’s less padding around the text in grids:

• There’s a new “High Contrast” mode which makes the text bolder against the background:

• And last but not least, you’ll notice a little upwards pointing arrow at the top right of the screen. If you hover over it, it turns red, and you get a hover message as shown below. Clicking on this minimises both menu bars at the top of the screen. This is another method of maximising the amount of useful information you can show on screen

When you click it, both menu bars collapse to a narrow black area across the top of the browser

To get the toolbars back, you click on the small down-arrow at the top right of the collapsed bars.

A particular point to note is that the collapsed menu bars are very appropriate to use if you want to use separate browser tabs. To do this, for instance, in the Tracker tab, right click on the Jobs button in the menu and select “Open in new tab”

Then you will have two active tabs, one for the tracker, one for Jobs, which you can click between very quickly. Then you can collapse the menu bars in both tabs to maximise the amount of useful information on the screen:

We hope these view options will be helpful to users.

We’ve tried to make getting started with Truckcom as easy as possible for new free trial users. And always remember, at any stage in the process, we’re Here To Help.

When you sign up, a new, fully functional Truckcom system will be created for your company immediately. At the same time we send you a Welcome email so you have a web link to easily get back to Truckcom if you don’t want to continue with the setup straight away.  If you do want to get straight into the setup process, you’ll then be taken to a page that helps you set up your personal user account to use Truckcom:

As soon as you’ve done this, you will be taken to a setup screen which looks like this:

The idea here is that you answer a few questions about what you want to do with Truckcom, and we help you to set up some initial content in your Truckcom database – things like customers, vehicles, and drivers. You can import data from files into this screen if you need to. You don’t need to do it all at once – you can close your browser, then come back later (using the link from your Welcome email), and the screen will be as you left it.

Once you’ve done the essential things (the ones with an * against them in the screenshot above), you can then start using TruckcomXT. You can always get back into the setup screen if you need to though – if you wanted to add more customers, or drivers for instance.

As soon as you get into the TruckcomXT, you will see a short video in which we explain some of the key features that are useful for all new users.

Once you have finished watching this there are a few interactive guides that we have put together to walk you through the key features that we think you should know about. You can access these from the pop up in the bottom right hand corner of your screen,

We highly recommend completing these guides to make sure you have the best understanding of the system as possible at this stage.

It’s easy to pay for Truckcom by Direct Debit. We recommend this method as a good way of ensuring your bill gets paid on time and to ensure no difficulties with account suspension in the event of late payment.

To set up your direct debit:

1. Fill in our Direct Debit Form
2. Send a scanned copy to our helpdesk

Any questions? Contact Us

http://support.truckcom.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Example-Billing-Confirmation.xls

The above file is a billing confirmation XLS file sample

It has three columns. The first corresponds to job reference, the middle one is Load Id, and the last column is total price.

You don’t need to include entries in the Load Id column, but you can if it helps to narrow down the matching.

You load this by right clicking on the company and selecting “Load Billing Confirmation”. Then Truckcom will show you a page which highlights any differences detected.

http://support.truckcom.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/sample-tariff.xls

The above file is a sample tariff file. If you load a file like this to a company, using “Upload Tariff File” (on the companies right click menu) then when you right click on a job or several jobs and select “Calculate Price”, it will price jobs based on distance (in the first tab, “Import”) unless it can match a job to the locations in the second tab (the Destination tab).

Each company can have a separate file; or you can upload the same file to several companies at once.

To use the distance tariffing, every address in the job needs to have been “geocoded” (that is, pinpointed on the map). When you look in the Details form for a job (right click > Details) any stop where you see a pin icon (highlighted in yellow below) has been geocoded. Generally, any address which has been entered with a valid postcode will have been geocoded by Truckcom.

When you put entries in the destinations tab, the following steps are what Truckcom does when it does a price lookup:

1. It finds the company name, town and postcode for stops 1, 2 and 3 in the job
2. Then it steps through the tariff list in the destinations tab in the file, row by row, starting at the top and working downwards
3. As soon as it finds a row which matches the stuff it got from step 1 it uses that price and stops looking
4. The matching rules are that it checks for rows where the job content “contains” the file content; and this is not case sensitive. So “Leeds” contains “leeds”, and a blank entry in the file matches anything in the job (basically any string “contains” a blank string)

 

Updated Tariffing Method 

The previous method for auto tariffing has existed for some time and although still very useful the following updated method has since been implemented to provide some different functionality including handling single and round trip tariffs and auto applying certain extra charges. The following link is a sample tariff file which will help explain the following process.

https://support.truckcom.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Example-New-Tariff-File.xlsx

This “new tariffing” method can be switched on for a set of particular customers on your system, it will then work alongside the previous method. Alternatively it can be switched on for all of your customers if you do not require the previous method. 

To switch this feature on first go to the Advanced Settings screen located under the Admin Settings option. Locate the setting called “Customers For New Tariffing”. 

To enable this, adjust the setting value and enter a comma separated list of customer names (these should be how they exist on your Truckcom system). 

To enable this for all customers simply enter * in this field.

You will then need to create your required tariff file, using the example above as a template. Columns A and B work the same as the previous method, containing the start and end mileage of the tariff band. Column C should contain the single trip rate and column D the round trip rate. Once you are happy with the file upload this to the company/companies you require it for. (Note the previous step involving the admin setting)

Another useful part of this method of tariffing is to auto apply extra charges when the rate is calculated. 

To set this up, again go to the Advanced Settings tab under Admin Settings and this time locate the setting called “New Tariffing Charge Types To Auto Apply”. This time adjust the setting value to contain a comma separated list of charge types – these should match the entries you see when applying an extra charge to a job.

In order for this to work you then need to set up the default rates or percentages for those charge types for the customers in question. The easiest way to do this is to locate a job for the customer and open the Extra Charges pop up. You can then enter the values into the Rate or % of Job Price columns as required and hit the “Save Default Rates” button as shown below. 

Now with everything in place, on the job you wish to rate, right click and select “Calculate Price”. With all the above in place the correct tariff rate should be selected and applied to the job along with any charges specified.

Note: Single Trip/Round Trip rates are chosen based on the start and end location of the job. We look at the area and district parts of the postcode to determine this.

In order for Truckcom to successfully send emails which come “from” your own email address, there is an important technical task which you, or more likely, your IT services provider, needs to do.

Email systems implement sophisticated measures to try to make it hard for spam email to be sent and received. Once of these measures is called “Sender Policy Framework” or SPF for short.

What SPF does is record for a particular email domain, which servers are “allowed” to send email for addresses in this domain. In order for Truckcom to send emails which come “from” your email address, there needs to be an SPF entry on your email domain which authorises our server as a legitimate sender.

SPF records are public records on the internet. To show you an example, any email addresses which come from an email address which ends with truckcom.net (for instance noreply@truckcom.net) are authorised to be sent from the TruckcomXT email server, which has an IP address of 35.176.48.101:

(the screenshot above was generated from an online tool called mxtoolbox. This is free to use, just go to https://mxtoolbox.com/spf.aspx and enter the domain name for your own email domain)

So, in order for Truckcom to send emails “from” your email address, you need to contact your IT/Internet service provider and make sure they have an SPF entry for your email domain which includes 35.176.48.101 as an authorised sender.

If you need further advice or support about SPF records, please contact our helpdesk.