Fleet Success Monthly: February 2023

Get your fleet operation on the road to success with monthly tips, trends, and news.

Topics this month:

• New Features Released into RTA’s Web Solution
• Get to Know Us: Employee Spotlight – Robert Davis
• Training Tip: What To Do If Your Technicians Forget to Clock Off
• Training Sessions in March
• Need an Outside Perspective on Your Fleet? Ask Our Consultants
• Fleet Success Summit: Avoid the Price Increase
• Sign Up Now for RTA Connect
• Podcast Recap: Efficiency vs Productivity
• New Client Welcome!
• ICYMI: Friday Fleet Tip

Now Available in RTA Web Solution: Purchase Order Requisitions

We recently added new features to our RTA web solution.

One of the features we know will help with your day-to-day is Purchase Requisitions.

Do you often find yourself wanting a less formal document to gather your thoughts before officially turning a Purchase Request into a Purchase Order? The new Purchase Requisitions feature lets you create a Purchase Request with items that can be added or deleted before getting approval and turning it into a Purchase Order. What’s more, you can make the requisition accessible to allow any number of staff to add to it so that you can review their needs and process a PO accordingly.

We’ve also added these other key PO tools:

• Purchase order approvals: We’ve added the ability to Approve and Request Approval for Purchase Orders on RTA Web. This should help with inventory controls and making sure that proper authorization is sent before completing a Purchase Order.
• Requests: The new Requests menu option identifies what the system recommends you should order. This is a new feature designed to help you make quick and easy purchase orders/requisitions based on the stock that has fallen below the reorder point or has been requested by your technicians. For your convenience, you can also export the information!

We believe these features will help streamline purchasing, PO management, and parts inventory management, and we are excited to hear your feedback!

In addition to the above Purchase Order features, we also added these tools:

• Work orders ready for review: Are you tired of sorting through a long list of work orders to see which ones have all their lines closed and just need to have the WO itself closed? This new feature will help. You can now easily eliminate open WOs with closed lines by selecting the impacted work orders in bulk and quickly closing them.
• Adding attachments: When looking at a vehicle file, do you often wish you could rename attachments to make them something more relevant? Now you can! With this release, in addition to renaming files, you can also search for them and order them by name or by type.
• Assign jobs: This feature, formerly known as “Schedule Jobs,” gives supervisors more control over adding and removing technicians to jobs. This allows you to assign jobs to technicians; release a technician’s remaining hours and add them to the unassigned job list; reassign the remaining hours to a specific technician; and remove a technician and their hours from the assignments.
• Add an asset using a template: When adding new vehicles into RTA, do you find yourself entering the same information over and over? We have a much faster solution. You can now use a template when adding assets of the same make and model. All of the data will be copied over from the template – including PM schedules – making it a much faster process.

If you’re interested in learning more about our RTA web solution, let our Sales team know!

Get to Know Us: Employee Spotlight – Robert Davis

Our engineering team is always working hard behind the scenes to bring our clients new features and tools in the RTA system.

This month, get to know Robert, one of our senior engineers.

“He constantly drives the team to become better, and consistently lives the core values of humble, hungry, and smart,” said Jacob Turley, Director of Engineering at RTA.

Jacob adds that Robert helps the team identify areas for improvement, but also “constantly reminds us of the things we are doing right and doing well!”

“He is a core member of our team who puts pressure on us to continue to focus on the things that matter,” Jacob said. “We appreciate Robert and everything he brings to the team!”

Training Tip: What To Do If Your Technician Forgets To Log Off

One of the questions I get asked most often is, “How do I fix a technician’s time when they forget to clock off?”

There are two ways to do this. The first is using the F3 override function. This is used in the Paperless Shop module and will allow you to back out a labor transaction that is currently clocking time. This is best used when a technician forgets to clock out overnight or on Friday when they leave for the weekend. The F3 override will essentially let you turn back the clock and end that transaction when it should have ended.

This function only works if the technician did not clock off or onto another job. If they ran too much time on a job and then clocked into something else, you would need to correct that transaction through the second option, which is “Edit Labor Transactions.” This one is a bit more involved but will fix those transactions.

To set up the F3 override function, you need to get into your user profile in RTA desktop. Go to the Misc tab and uncheck box #170. This will grant F3 override permission. For help with editing labor transactions, see our Knowledge Base.

Thanks to RTA Trainer Nathan Schafer for this month’s tip! If you have any questions or need more information, contact our Support team or Training team.

Join Us for Upcoming Training Classes

Each month we offer learning sessions with our expert RTA trainers to ensure your staff has the knowledge it needs to efficiently navigate the RTA system. Take a look at some of our upcoming classes:

3-Day Basic Training (March 7-9): This is a 3-day training course aimed at new RTA users. This class will teach the basics to get you up and running in the system so you can complete your daily work.

3-Day Advanced Training (March 14-16): The Advanced Full-System Training is designed for those who have used the basics of RTA and are ready to take their systems to the next level. Some previous experience with the RTA software is recommended.

Need an Outside Perspective on Your Fleet? Ask Our Consultants

Is your fleet operation running fine, but you know it can be more efficient? Or maybe you have a problem that you just need an outside perspective on. Our RTA consultants are here to help! With more than 100 years of fleet industry experience between them, our experts can help you identify inefficiencies, define better processes, or solve specific problems.

To learn more about RTA Consulting, please contact our Sales team.

Fleet Success Summit: Avoid a Late Fee!

Are you thinking about attending the Fleet Success Summit, but haven’t yet registered? Sign up today before late fees go into effect March 1!

We’d love to have you join us in Las Vegas, March 21-22. We have 12 incredible speakers who are excited to share their fleet and leadership experiences with you, and discuss the importance of Stakeholder Satisfaction, Intentional Culture, Resource Efficiency, and Risk Management.

Sign up today to reserve your spot!

Sign Up Now for RTA Connect

We are now accepting registrations for our annual users’ conference, RTA Connect 2023!

This year’s event will be held Oct. 3-5, in Las Vegas. Our agenda for the 3-day conference will include training classes, sessions on the latest industry trends, leadership workshops, and information on the latest features in RTA’s software.

Sign up now to take advantage of Early Bird pricing!

Podcast: Efficiency vs Productivity

What’s the difference between having an efficient shop staff versus a productive one? Not sure? Our podcast hosts break down the key differences in a recent episode of “The Fleet Success Show.” They also provide tips on how to make your technicians more productive.

Listen to the episode here.

Welcome To Our New RTA Clients!

We added several new clients in February, including the following:

• Town of Norwell Fire Department
• Pulaski County Board of Education
• J.E. Culp Transport

Social: ICYMI: Friday Fleet Tip

Are you leveraging your software integrations? Ben gives tips on how to better utilize these in a recent Friday Fleet Tip.