Meet the young farmer who has launched an app to replace paperwork and enable agricultural contractors to be paid on time

Last month Ag-drive won a silver award for innovation at the British Farming Awards and Will is now signing up hundreds of agricultural contractors who are realising that his all-in-one cloud-based app sees an end to countless unnecessary hours of paperwork, greater traceability and most importantly of all for their businesses, faster payment of invoices.

“The agricultural contracting sector has millions of pounds worth of tackle sat in the shed and yet we’re still largely invoicing off the back of a fag packet right across the UK, Ireland and worldwide,” said Will.

“Pen and paper recording is a massive problem and it needn’t be that way anymore.

“We were using a paper-based system at BHE. All of our operators filled out a timesheet every fortnight and then we would have to take these timesheets and re-enter all the information from them into a paper-based master diary. From there we would then have to re-enter all the information into the invoicing system.

“The biggest pain that contractors have is not getting paid quickly enough and the biggest beef most have is that contractors seem to be financing farmers for long periods of time, yet we were doing nothing about speeding up this process.

“Paper recording is all time wasted when there is something that can be done automatically. Paper and pen is often inaccurate, late or illegible. For an industry that believes in such as robots, sensors, autosteer and variable rate applications we were woefully archaic in our ability to invoice and get paid quickly.

“Using Ag-drive 20 per cent of all of our payments are now on receipt of invoice and even if not on receipt the whole process is still far quicker. Paper recording often means that an invoice is only generated perhaps a month after the job has been completed.

Will said that the time he spent on farms in Australia and New Zealand brought the idea home to him when he came across other apps used in non-agricultural businesses.

“I realised there was a massive opportunity here. The reason why we’ve created Ag-drive is that we want to make a difference in the industry. Every contractor must want to speed up the process of being paid and Ag-drive gives them far more than just instant timesheets, it makes every element of the job totally accountable.

“The main functionality of Ag-drive is to be able to record the job and to see exactly where operators go in the field and from there be able to approve and send that job with a click of a button on their smart phone that will create an invoice directly into the accounts package.

“All of our operators has a smart phone, we can direct them to the field where they are working that day and we have all the job instructions on there, attaching any photographs and other instructions.

“We are also able to give them their health and safety checklists, checks so that they know they are safe doing work. When operators start the job we have a live location of where that operator is and a live location trail where we can see exactly where that man is across the field. How he’s getting on.

“All of this makes their life easier in being able to fill out information on the phone. It means we’re not chasing them because they are recording all the jobs live, as it is happening. Everything is 100 per cent accurate, traceable and accountable when we invoice a customer.

Will was at the Midlands Machinery Show last week, he’s travelling right across the UK and Ireland talking with agricultural contractors and will be at YAMS to be held at Murton in February.

“I’m driving new signups in the UK throughout the winter as it is a time when I can speak to contractors who are largely a bit freer to do so.

“Agricultural contractors seem to be absolutely obsessed with being on the tractor seat making sure the wheels are turning but it is cash flow, specifically getting paid quicker, and not machinery that this is all about. Being able to record jobs digitally and invoice immediately is going to revolutionise the whole industry.

“The key thing is that we’ve got it linked in to common accounting software like QuickBooks, Xero and Sage. As soon as the job is completed we can approve it on the mobile, approve it on the dashboard and draw up the invoice.

“We send a PDF job report showing exactly what we’ve done, with all job details, when we started and finished, photographs, notes, information, exactly where the operator has been.

“If I do a job now, I can send the invoice that same day and we might get paid the next day.

Everybody using Ag-drive has this potential right around the world.

Will said getting some agricultural contracting decision makers changing a system they have used for many years, however archaic, is a challenge but one he’s winning.

“Once the money is coming in quicker than they’ve ever had before they realise it’s a no-brainer. I believe in ten years’ time we will be digitally recording everything.

For more information you can contact Will at www.ag-drive.com