Rob Hayes proprietor of Banjos contacted George James to see if a system could be provided that would enable his company to track stock and sales information for his fleet of 10 sandwich vans.

As well as stock tracking and sales information, banjos also needed the system to provide the van drivers with a “sales till” type operation and thereby ensuring that the value of the transaction was accurately calculated. Banjos were not exclusively a cash company and provision was made to replace the “black books” that were run by the van drivers with a simple customer ledger operation. This allowed greater control by management and the provision of simple statements for the credit customers.

A system was proposed that was based on hand held terminals that collected the information in a batch mode while on the rounds and then updated a Microsoft Access database back at the head office.

George James provided a front end application to the Access Database which among other things allows the allocating of a van or vans to a round, and also which stops were on which round. With the use of specially written reporting tools it can help identify which rounds were performing well, and specifically which stops. The use of Access as the database allows the user to produce their own ad hoc reports using either Access’ own reporting facilities or the use of Crystal Reports.

The system has been written in such a way that other modules can be easily implemented and added to increase the functionality as the business advances.

Visit Banjos Web site: http://www.robhayes.flyer.co.uk/