Powered Now is UK produced software that is designed to help tradespeople such as gas engineers, plumbers, electricians and builders. It helps them to keep on top of managing projects, quoting, invoicing, tracking payments and accounts as well as the assignment of work to their engineers.
Creating all paperwork related to the job like Gas Safety Forms is also included. There are a lot of software accounting solutions on the market but the one offered by Powered Now approaches the task in a different manner.
Gone are ledger, nominal accounts, trial balances and an invoicing module tacked onto the sales ledger. Powered Now approaches the task of running a services-based company by being able to either start with a Project containing the multiple quotes, jobs and purchases or you can skip this stage and just create a quote or a job or skip all these stages and just produce an invoice for those small one-off jobs. Such is the flexibility of this well thought out program. Once a document is produced it can be emailed to the customer and the system will monitor to see if it is read and accepted, prompting you if the customer has not opened the message so you can chase things.
The application is very job focused, this being the way most tradesmen think. The good news is that it removes a lot of the puzzling terminology associated with keeping the books.
Powered Now is also different in the way it has been built, it runs from the cloud, and you use either an iOS or an Android mobile app or via a web-based browser for use on the desktop or laptop. All your data is held on Powered Now servers so backups are automatically dealt with. You can of course download this data if you need it.
One of the issues with such on-line software is what happens if you don’t have a connection? In the office this is rarely a problem but when out on the road working at a job this can be a major issue. Powered Now has solved this issue by using a synchronising process that runs in the background so you can fill in the details about a particular job and when your device connects to the internet then everything is updated. There are a few things that can’t be done offline such as post code lookup but this should not be too much of an issue in a real life scenario.
A new powerful feature of Powered Now is its ability to produce industry specific certificates and forms. In our world of ever-increasing paperwork the need to produce these is ever more important. This feature auto fills the data in the form where it can and prompts for information it needs to help this tedious but necessary task. In fact by using this method it effectively reminds the person doing the work of the actual stuff that needs doing and so may save a return call. New certificates and forms are continually being added with the latest being a comprehensive list of green energy documents.
I tested this first as an anonymous user to get a feeling of the level of support. The test companies that are set up you for you in the free 14-day trial period enable you to get up and testing quickly. Most of us have a particular area that we need to try out and assure us that the application will fit our needs and having projects, contacts, quotes and jobs presetup helps to quickly get the hang of the system.
Powered Now also offers free hand holding sessions helping you to setup and configure the system to suit your needs. There is a lot of customisation should you need it. You can set this up yourself but if you do need help then a one-on-one hand holding session is available free-of-charge, but for most this should be unnecessary. It is however handy to know that the ability to tweak things to suit your needs is there.
The on-line videos are a great source to get you started before asking for specialist help and these take you through the various stages in easily digestible amounts. Be prepared for a number of emails during your 14-day trial as features are described to you, this should not be of concern and are extremely helpful when getting to know the features.
When you decide to go ahead you can either pay monthly with no commitment or pay annually and save the cost of a couple of months. The Business package is only £15/month but it is really the Professional package at £25/user/month that will give you VAT returns, Forms and Certificates as well as abilities to manage a team of workers with live tracking and chat with your engineers that will give you the most benefits. Finally the Premium package at £37/user/month gives a portal where your customers can see their documentation as well as a powerful drag and drop scheduling capability.