Frustrations his family agricultural contracting business experienced in keeping track of its employees and sending invoices out on time inspired Will Dunn to create Ag-Drive during the Covid-19 pandemic.
When travelling abroad across New Zealand and Australia after university, he realised the ‘paperwork problem’ was common to agricultural businesses worldwide.
His response was a new digital app to help agricultural contractors and farmers manage their business more effectively and improve cashflow.
The app launched in summer 2021, initially in the UK, followed by Australia and New Zealand and is now available in Ireland.
Ag-Drive
Since launching, he has updated the app regularly in response to user feedback, designing it “for simplicity to support all users”.
Recent improvements to the team job’s function, include:
- Allowing multiple operators to record their work under one job;
- Specify multiple locations for a job;
- To schedule a job without allocating any one specific operator, giving flexibility to businesses;
- Invoicing using the user’s preferred currency and local tax rate.
The platform connects seamlessly with accounting software, QuickBooks, Sage, and Xero, for simplified invoicing and record keeping, ensuring customers know exactly what work has been completed and when.
Each job sheet can be attached to the invoice for complete transparency.
Invoicing
Will explains:
“As contractors and farmers, we knew there must be a better way to manage teams, timesheets, and get our invoices out quickly and easily to improve our cashflow.”
“Ag-drive replaces time-consuming paperwork with digital timesheets, field mapping, job recording for teams of any size, health and safety checks, and integrations with common accounting software for easy invoicing.”
“We’re taking the pain and hassle away from running a busy contracting or farming business by putting everything on your phone, on a cloud-based system.”
“We have had great feedback from early users of the app in Ireland. We look forward to demonstrating the benefits to farming and contracting businesses at the ploughing match in September.”
He says that Ag-drive is improving how the contracting and farming industry works by making every job “accountable and traceable”.
He believes that regular invoicing is more efficient than doing it a handful of times a year, and integrating Ag-drive with accounting packages “takes away a lot of the hassle” associated with traditional paper-based timesheet systems.
Cost
Ag-drive offers a free 14-day trial, with no need to provide credit card information on sign-up.
After the free trial period expires, users can continue using Ag-drive from €12 per month, depending on their team size.
‘Ploughing’ 2022
The Ag-drive app is available on both iPhone and Android smartphones.
A desktop version is also available and can be utilised for invoicing and processing time/job sheet information.
Visit its stand in the Innovation Area at the National Ploughing Championships 2022 in Co Laois next month.
Other articles on That’s Farming:
