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Agricultural contracting throws up many challenges – not least getting the job done, breakdowns, bad weather and finding suitable and committed staff.
At the same time, once the tractor is parked in the shed on completion of a job, contractors need to scrutinise time sheets and raise invoices for payment.
At Fieldays, UK-based Ag-drive showcased a new paperless solution for agricultural contractors that should make the end of the day tasks just that bit easier. Designed by a third generation farmer/contractor and agricultural university graduate, Will Dunn – who started Ag-drive two years ago and wanted to solve the everyday challenges his father Simon faced in their family’s contracting business based in Yorkshire, UK.
“From growing up working for the family contracting business and then coming home full time after university, I wanted to improve the running of the contracting business at home.” Dunn said.
“At home, my old man used to spend hours trailing through job sheets every week, which seemed bizarre in an industry that operated high value machinery. In many cases, he was still invoicing based on notes written on the back of a cigarette packet.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, with a little time on his hands, Dunn started to develop the Ag-drive app and web portal.
Ag-drive is an all-in-one app for agricultural contractors that eliminates the need for paperwork. It streamlines the process of job recording to invoicing with common accounting software packages like Xero, Sage Online and Quickbooks. Other key features include live location tracking of operators, timesheets, field mapping, job reports, health and safety checks as well as invoicing.
Having launched in the UK in June 2021, Ag-drive took the best innovation at the LAMMA agricultural machinery show, earlier in the year. It now has contractors signed up across the UK, Ireland, Canada, USA, Australia, and New Zealand.
“As a finalist in the Fieldays Innovation Awards, we’ve noticed that NZ contractors appear to be more ready to adopt technology compared to contractors in the UK,” Dunn says. “So, it’s an ideal event to launch Agdrive formally to New Zealand and build on our existing customers over here.”
Ag-drive is available on both iPhone and Android smartphones and has been designed for simplicity to support all users. A web version is also available and is mainly used for invoicing and processing time/job sheet information.
A free, 14-day trial gives users the ability to try all the features before committing to a monthly subscription, starting from $20 per month, depending on the size of their contracting team.
www.ag-drive.com
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