Compare
Iron Dispatch vs paper, spreadsheets and big rental software
Most oilfield service companies are not choosing between two software products. They are choosing between the ticket book, the spreadsheet somebody built four years ago, a rental system built for equipment yards, and this. Here is what each one does, and where it leaks.
Example data
Side by side
What each one does, and where it leaks.
| What you need | Paper and phone calls | Spreadsheets + QuickBooks | Big rental software (built for equipment yards) | Iron Dispatch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The day’s dispatch, visible to everyone | —Whiteboard and phone calls. One person knows the plan. | ~A tab somebody updates. Drivers still ring in. | ~Usually built to schedule from a yard, not for lease roads and well sites. | ✓One board; the driver’s phone shows their stops; the map shows the trucks. |
| A ticket for every drop, delivery and pickup | ~If it got written. Then it rides on the dash for a week. | ~Typed up from the paper ticket, later, by somebody else. | ✓Yes — often as a form the driver fills in. | ✓Made automatically when the job is marked done, with photos on it. |
| Signed on location, or later when somebody is there | ~If somebody is standing there. Usually nobody is. | —A spreadsheet cannot take a signature. | ~Signature capture is common; check whether yesterday’s ticket can be signed today. | ✓On the driver’s phone, off / optional / required per company, never blocks the job. |
| Rental days counted from delivery to pickup, at the rates the customer agreed to | —Somebody counts on a calendar at month end and hopes. | ~A formula per unit, kept right by hand. Swaps and mid-month rate changes need careful hand fixes. | ✓Yes — this is what the big rental systems are for. | ✓Daily / weekly / two-week / monthly by total days out, the right combination applied for you, swaps count as one rental. |
| Fuel gallons matched to the drop and to the tank | —Gauge readings in a notebook. | ~A fuel tab that drifts from the truck, and nobody knows by how much. | —Varies by product; most are built for iron, not gallons and tanks. | ✓Gauge photos, gallons on the ticket, and a correction from any screen moves the inventory. |
| Works with no signal on the pad | ✓Paper always works. That is its one real advantage. | —Not from a truck. | ~Some field apps save without service; many need a connection. | ✓The field app keeps taking logs, hours and photos, and sends them when the truck has service again. |
| Employee hours from the same phone that logs the work | ~A time card in the truck, added up on Friday. | ~A timesheet tab somebody totals, or a separate time-clock app. | —Usually a separate time-and-attendance product, bought and connected on its own. | ✓Clock in on the app that logs the work; travel and on-site hours land on the job. Crew fix their own hours within your window and say why. You approve, lock, and send approved hours to QuickBooks. |
| The invoice comes from what the crew actually logged | —Rebuilt from tickets and memory. | ~Re-keyed into QuickBooks. Two places, two versions of the truth. | ✓Yes. | ✓A draft built from what was logged; the tickets are listed on it; a button to send it to QuickBooks. |
| Knows what a well site is | ✓The driver knows. | ~A column of names. No coordinates, no travel hours to charge. | ~Usually a “job site” address field — not a well site with the travel hours you charge for it. | ✓Sites with coordinates, arrival recorded at pinned sites, travel hours per pad, and which customer each pad bills to. |
| What it costs | ✓A ticket book. Plus the leaks above. | ✓A QuickBooks subscription and somebody’s evenings. | ~Usually per user or per unit, and usually a project to put in. | ✓One flat price for the company. Never per user, never a share of what you invoice. |
✓ does it · ~ partly, or only with effort · — does not, by its nature · The three columns that are not us describe a way of working, not any particular product. Features vary — check the exact system you are looking at.
Current technology
Built on what a phone can do now.
Works with no signal
The field app saves fuel logs, hours, tickets and photos on the phone and sends them itself when the truck has service again. Nothing waits on a bar of signal, and nothing gets typed twice.
On any phone from a link; store apps coming
Open the link on any phone or tablet — iPhone or Android — and add it to the home screen; it works like an app. iPhone and Android store apps are coming, same app, same login.
Knows when the truck arrives
At sites you have pinned on the map, the phone’s own location records the arrival and starts the on-site clock. Tracking is a setting, and nothing is tracked off the clock.
Photos and a signature on every ticket
Gauge photos, proof photos and a signature drawn on the phone ride on the numbered ticket the customer gets by email — before the invoice ever asks them to remember.
It tells you; you do not go looking
Notifications to phones: a job assigned, a customer request, a unit down with nobody on it, a help request from the field. The owner and the office see it on the board.
Talks to QuickBooks Online
Connect once. Invoices and approved hours go across with a button press, and the connection’s credentials are stored encrypted.
Backed up every night, off site
Your company’s records are copied to a second location nightly. Tickets are frozen when they are made, and every correction and sign-off keeps who did it and when.
One login, every screen
Phone in the truck, tablet in the shop, desktop in the office — one account, each person seeing the screens their role needs, and the map refreshes on its own.
When the other three are the right answer
Sometimes they are. Here is when.
Paper can be enough for two trucks and a customer who pays on a handshake. It stops being enough the first month somebody cannot say which day a heater came off rent.
Spreadsheets and QuickBooks are right for as long as one person can hold the whole operation in their head, and they are what almost everyone starts with. They stop being right when that person wants a week off.
- Big rental software built for equipment yards is right if you rent from a yard to a construction site, your customers submit through OpenInvoice, or you need accounting inside the same product. It is usually a bigger system than an oilfield fuel-and-iron company needs, and it is rarely built around a pad, but for some companies that is the correct trade.
- Iron Dispatch is right if your day is trucks going to well sites with fuel, heaters, generators, tanks or a mechanic, and the thing that hurts is getting all of it onto an invoice you can defend.
Prices are on the pricing page, in full.
What it does not include
QuickBooks stays your books.
It does not replace QuickBooks — that stays your books. It does not submit into a customer’s own invoicing system such as OpenInvoice or OpenTicket. It is not an electronic driver logbook and does not track hours-of-service.
This page uses no customer logos, ratings or testimonials — only what the product does, next to what you run today. If you want to talk to a company that runs it, ask us.
See it next to what you run today.
Bring what you run today. We will put the same week on Iron Dispatch next to it, and tell you honestly which is better for you. No card to start.