How to Develop Trucking Management Software:

A3Logics 19 Aug 2022

Transportation business has always been managed manually, hence solutions are not always optimized. For instance, overloaded or underutilized freight capacity. Not integrating technology with time leads to a lack of proper information and incomplete data about the truck’s load factor or shipping orders.

Another drawback of not implementing automated systems in your logistics business is that it will always keep you under the veil of where the products are being delivered, what is the exact location of your product as well as how well your carrier is able to perform the assigned task.

By introducing a robust TMS, companies can minimize miles, maximize weights, and calculate days or weeks needed for delivering any product. Companies can manage and streamline the logistics, allowing you to save time and money. If we take a look at the statistics –

Global TMS market size was $2.5 billion in 2019, which is expected to touch $4.8 billion by the end of 2025.
As per Cerasis, TMS solutions can reduce freight invoice payment by 90-95%.
By 2022, businesses will spend $1.94 Billion on TMS applications for better management to route, automate payment processes & freight auditing.
The global TMS market between 2020 to 2027 is registered to have a CAGR of 9.6% growth rate.
TMS can physically connect business to supply chain partners increasing profit & customer satisfaction, thus holding a significant value of around 35-40%.
TMS can provide extra opportunities to find most effective shipping options and eCommerce, affecting 96% of all shippers.

The logistics industry can accentuate their success rate with effective management in their distributed system. Adopting automated systems, such as logistics transportation software, facilitates companies with optimized functional activities, resulting in expansion of the line of operations and adding value. A trucking management software system can aid you with lots of other overhead stressful work. Before highlighting advantages, let’s learn the role and need for TMS.

What is Trucking Management Software?

Freedom to open roads and moving from country to country is all trucking about. The trucking business is directly related to the logistics and transportation business. The trucking management system does not help with the rules and regulations of another country but surely can make the paperwork easier and quicker. If you are any of the businesses – trucking, logistics, or transportation, you know how difficult it is to track and manage your trucks and products being carried by these trucks. Additionally, you have to manage –

Invoices
Mileage Reports
Expense Records
Dispatch Records
Driver Pay Records
Interstate Fuel Tax Agreement (IFTA) reports and payments
Truck maintenance records
Management reports

Most of these reports have heavy calculations that require accuracy and may turn into penalties for not being done correctly. Instead of spending hours over a giant stack of papers, figuring or even refiguring to ensure no error is made or no data is left, simply have a TMS implemented.

Thanks to our IT consultation services providers, who keep on evaluating the market and work on the pain points of business providers. With technology-enabled robust solutions, companies can make business operations hassle-free.

Trucking management software is a great example to suggest as it can reduce the headache of maintaining files, always having clear and error-free reports in no time so, you actually focus more on hauling freights.

Benefits of Integrating TMS

Not just for tracking and managing trucks and goods, integrating trucking management software can let you achieve great customer satisfaction and loyalty. An extensive TMS offers –

Gain predictive visibility
Optimize delivery Operations
Evaluate Profit Margins
Reduce logistics expenses
Calculate resource utilization
Better manage and mitigate risks
Trace and track of delivery vehicles
Promote accountability among drivers or carriers

Some additional benefits of implementing trucking management allow companies to evaluate factors, such as bad weather, traffic jams, and other hurdles on the delivery route. The predictive analysis and real-time ETAs offer promising results to customers.

Transparency

Integrating TMS increases transparency, which is most needed today. With TMS, companies can locate data in one place, making it easy for them to track shipments quickly and easily.

Accurate Data

With multiple advantages aligned, accurate data is among one. Definitely, when you add automation and intelligent technologies, such as ML and Artificial Intelligence solutions, you expect to receive low to no errors in the data while saving a lot of time by eliminating manual work.

Cost-Saving

When companies optimize their task and use technology, such as Artificial Intelligence for automating decisions & freight audits, load consolidation, they tend to save time, optimize their route beforehand, and reduce overhead charges.

Improved Warehouse Management

When you automate most of the work, you have resources where human intervention is needed thereby, amplifying productivity and easy management of load storage with TMS and shipping through dispatch management software.

Optimized Finances

By integrating trucking management solutions, companies are most likely to minimize inaccurate charges, duplicate payments through automated analysis, reporting, and auditing facilities. Moreover, TMS makes financial monitoring simple and clear.

Who can Benefit from TMS?

Trucking management systems are used by businesses that have to ship, move, and even receive goods on a regular basis. For instance –

Distributors
Manufacturers
Retail business solutions providers
eCommerce solutions provider

So any retail or eCommerce software solutions can have TMS integrated within to accelerate their business operations. Let’s move forward with understanding features to determine what makes a good trucking management software.

Features of Trucking Management Software System

To have accurate and seamless management of your trucks and products, you must ensure to have these features integrated or developed by your enterprise software development company.

1. Load Planning and Dispatch

Any trucking management software allows you to check when the load has been entered and processed and when it will be ready to dispatch. However, dispatches can be pre-planned with just a few clicks away.

2. Billing and Invoice

This is the most essential and time taking process for any business. Preparing bills and sending invoices to customers has become a lot easier with TMS. This feature also lets you easily track the progress of the invoices and receive payments.

3. Order Processing

Instead of processing orders manually, TMS gives you freedom by taking orders from the order processing system. The system contains necessary fields and features required, such as origin, destination, date, time, & many more.

4. Vehicle Management

With this feature in your TMS, you can see the real-time status of the vehicle – used or available. Vehicle management lets you identify features of the vehicle to recognize your property, such as make, model, length, engine, type, and much more. Additionally, you can track the precise location of your vehicle.

5. LTL Orders

LTL is Less than a truckload of cargo. With this feature, you can track unlimited stops and customers per load in your truck. This way, companies can utilize truck space while enabling efficient transport loads to maximize profit.

6. Document Management

Integrating a trucking management system allows you to manage vital documents properly and easily. Documents, such as invoices, receipts, legal docs, tickets, & more, can be looked up easily, taking less time to search.

7. Fuel Management

Trucks run on fuel, and not managing them properly may lead you to spend too much on them. Now, no more waste spendings, track every spending with fuel management while optimizing it to safely keep for future requirements.

8.Truck Routing

Many trucking software management solutions offer truck routing features while some may not offer. However, this feature will let you generate routes and calculate miles for order quoting as well as fuel management.

9. Reports and Analytics

Another common feature of TMS is to get deep insights into your business. With reports and analytics, you get weak and strong points, which displays the scope of improvement. In addition, you get to generate employee reports, vehicle reports, financial reports, & much more.

10. Load Tracking

The companies need to know whether or not they are completely utilizing the load space of the truck. Moreover, your customer can also check and track the load online.

11. Integrated HR

This is something you would want to have in any management software. TMS gives you freedom from the pain of recruiting employees and onboarding. You can review resumes, schedule interviews, and hire employees seamlessly.

12. Payroll

Integrated TMS can have a payroll feature to credit the salaries of the employees easily. With just a few clicks, companies can process salaries avoiding all hassles.

13. Accounts Receivables/ Payables

With this feature in trucking management software, companies can quickly identify amounts payable or receivable so, you pay your dues on time and receive payments on time by sending reminders.

Additional Features –

– DOT Compliance

You can also look for software with DOT compliance. If not, you can ask your professional provider to integrate DOT regulations and compliance, such as logs, records, violations & more.

– EDI Integration

This can be an additional feature that you would want to integrate. Companies can integrate EDI solutions to improve their business.

– IFTA Compliance

In order to get free from figuring out reporting requirements and make calculations easier, companies can generate a report and automate calculations on IFTA software.

– Service/Vehicle Maintenance

You can get an onsite or off-site repair facility by watching over the records on the maintenance records of your truck. Moreover, you can schedule the periodic maintenance of your vehicle to avoid any failures during the route.

– ACH Direct Deposit & Check

You can integrate the direct payroll deposits feature in your TMS. This not just saves time but also money to hire resources and print checks for multiple payments.

Functionalities That Influence The Cost of TMS

Is it a standalone product or may contain multiple components for a broader suite? The cost of any product development depends on the company’s objectives and the need for a unique set of technical functions to support these needs.

Additionally, integration of technology or 3rd party services also boosts the development budget. Finally, the entire cost of product engineering services is calculated based on the complexity and time it will take to complete the development process.

Stages of Trucking Management Software Development:

Step 1 – Discovery Phase
Step 2 – User Interface & User Experience Design
Step 3 – Front-end and Back-end Development
Step 4 – Transportation App Development
Step 5 – Quality Assessment
Step 6 – App Launching
Step 7 – Post-launch Support

To sum up, the approximate TMS development cost may range between $200-$300K. However, you may come across other costs, such as Cloud solutions, License, and implementation & support costs but, the above mentioned is a common cost range.

The number of monthly movements or transactions can cost between $1.00 to $4.00 per freight load booked in the cloud system.

In case you want to purchase a licensed TMS, you should expect the price between $10,000 to $250,000, excluding the annual maintenance cost, which may vary from company to company.

In a Nutshell

Many businesses were able to attain seamless collaboration with truck drivers and office staff, lowered risks, enabled quicker deliveries, offered higher fleet visibility, and ultimately happy customers with the help of logistics software development companies.

An efficient TMS makes your job a lot easier – whether it is trucking or managing the trucks carrying loads. Its comprehensive features let you manage multifold operations quickly with one dashboard.

So, if you are in any one of the businesses mentioned above, you can connect with us for the best IT professional services to help with TMS to enlarge the circle of your business.